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Fractional Hotel Pricing - What a Bargain!
The Travel Tightwad · January 21, 2002

Does your hotel charge by the hour? I didn't have the nerve to ask the clerk when I checked into an Ontario, CA, airport inn at 2 a.m. recently. I should have.

Fractional pricing, or charging a guest for only part of the day, isn't limited to the no-tell motels of the world. Legitimate properties can, at their discretion, lower your room prices based on the time of occupancy, saving you up to half off the daily room rate.

Hotels tend to mark their rooms down fractionally at this time of the year, when occupancy is low and they're struggling to remain competitive with other properties that are deeply discounting rates. Consider my experience, which happened in January in a half-empty California hotel.

My red-eye flight from Phoenix to Ontario was delayed by an hour, and when I arrived at the car rental counter, it was closed. I only had two choices: either call a relative or get a room for the night. I don't know about you, but my family doesn't like to be woken up at 2 a.m. and asked to come to the airport. In fact, they're very inconvenienced by it.

I went to the phone bank and called the first hotel. "Got any rooms?" I asked.

Yes, I was told. The rate was $80 a night.

At this point in my trip, I couldn't really think straight. I'd been on a plane for what seemed like days. The smoky terminals and noisy slot machines on the Las Vegas layover had worn me down. "I'll take it," I whispered. "Just send someone over to pick me up."

Later that morning when I checked out of the hotel, the receptionist looked at my arrival time and squinted at her terminal. "You haven't been here that long, Mr. Elliott. I'm going to adjust your bill." And she did. She revised it from $80 to $40. I gratefully accepted her discount, but as I signed on the dotted line, curiosity got the better of me.

Was she just being nice because I'd only slept five hours, or was there an official "by the hour" price?

"We have a half-day rate," she said. "It's not something we advertise, but it's in the system."

This isn't a lodging trend that's unique to airport hotels. Bruce Blondina, a consultant based in Ledgewood, NJ, says the same thing happened to him when he checked into his Manhattan hotel at 2 a.m. on Saturday, even though he'd had a reservation for Friday night. "The desk clerk decided not to charge me," he recalls.

At the Boston Marriott Copley Place, traveler Kenji Hubbard had his room rate reduced to $175 because he only stayed a half-day, a savings of $14 a night. That's not as dramatic a discount, but over several hotel stays, it could really add up.

How do you find out if your hotel prices rooms fractionally? It's not a question you'll necessarily get an honest answer to over the phone. I mean, if you were an innkeeper, would you ever admit to pricing rooms by the half-day? Even Basil Fawlty knows that's bad for business.

Instead, time your arrival carefully. If you can push your check-in past midnight, then you stand an excellent chance of getting a significant reduction. Especially if there are uncontrollable circumstances (a late flight, traffic, or bad weather), then your hotel is likely to either offer you a half-day rate or discount.

A word of warning: Don't try this with a small hotel or bed and breakfast. Obviously, those properties don't have someone on duty 24 hours a day, so you'll only end up waking the innkeeper and then irritating him the next day by asking for a price break. I'd recommend taking advantage of fractional pricing at the right time of year (mid-winter), at the right property (a large chain hotel), and under the right circumstances (you've already cautioned them about a late arrival).

Otherwise, just pay the daily rate. And be grateful you haven't checked into a place that offers rooms by the hour.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.