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A better gauge of occupancy in a suburban hotel could be to take a look at the parking lot around 4AM, and/or count the people arriving on airport shuttles, especially at hotels popular with the flight crew.
Traveling for business, road warriors are may only be in the room to sleep. I'm nowhere near the hotel at 8PM; often I'll catch the last flight in, check into the hotel around midnight, and be up and out by 8.
Wasn't sure where to stick this post, apologies if its in the wrong section, but i want to bring something up and ask if any of you have had the same experiences.
This seems to be universal from city to city, doesn't matter the star rating of the hotel, i encounter almost the same situations at every hotel i'm in and that situation is this.
I never see anyone in any of the halls, there's rarely lights in the room, the hotels seem deserted and it just seems that there are plenty of empty rooms, i rarely see anyone in the elevators, you can hear pins drop in these places and yet, there are times when i get the 'last room' or the place is 'completely booked'.
Does anyone know what i'm talking about? i'll walk thru hotels and say to myself "there's zero chance that all these rooms are filled". I'll walk outside in the parking lot at a reasonable hour, lets say like 8pm and you look up and every room is dark, there's not a creature stirring and yet, there's 'no rooms left'.
i guess from an economic standpoint, hotels have to give off the impression that theyre sold out, but many of them are not, especially now with the advent of air bnb and couchsurfing where you could lay on someone's couch for free or rent a room for a fraction of the cost of a hotel.
To me, this is one of life's greatest unsolved mysteries, why hotels seem basically empty when the front desk is telling me there's no rooms left.
What time of day are you there? Isn't it possible the rooms were reserved but people just aren't in them? I only go to a hotel to sleep so you'd never see me in one in the middle of the day.
Wasn't sure where to stick this post, apologies if its in the wrong section, but i want to bring something up and ask if any of you have had the same experiences.
This seems to be universal from city to city, doesn't matter the star rating of the hotel, i encounter almost the same situations at every hotel i'm in and that situation is this.
I never see anyone in any of the halls, there's rarely lights in the room, the hotels seem deserted and it just seems that there are plenty of empty rooms, i rarely see anyone in the elevators, you can hear pins drop in these places and yet, there are times when i get the 'last room' or the place is 'completely booked'.
Does anyone know what i'm talking about? i'll walk thru hotels and say to myself "there's zero chance that all these rooms are filled". I'll walk outside in the parking lot at a reasonable hour, lets say like 8pm and you look up and every room is dark, there's not a creature stirring and yet, there's 'no rooms left'.
i guess from an economic standpoint, hotels have to give off the impression that theyre sold out, but many of them are not, especially now with the advent of air bnb and couchsurfing where you could lay on someone's couch for free or rent a room for a fraction of the cost of a hotel.
To me, this is one of life's greatest unsolved mysteries, why hotels seem basically empty when the front desk is telling me there's no rooms left.
I didn't read all the replies so maybe this was mentioned before. I use to work at a hotel (in the kitchen), but I am familiar with other areas of hotel operation.
Some rooms may not be available because they haven't been cleaned yet. Most hotels run under a labor budget where they are only allowed so many employees (salary) per revenue generated (hourly or daily). A guest may have stayed in a room on Monday, but it won't get cleaned until Wednesday or even later because of this "budget".
This gets out of whack when a hotel gets an unexpected surge of business. One great example would be a change in weather (such as a blizzard). IF the previous employees didn't have time to clean the rooms they would just remain empty. Although in extreme cases I have seen the manager clean rooms to open them up for occupancy.
Whenever there was a blizzard our hotel would be fully booked even if it was the weekend. I could never understand that. At least half the guests were locals. Perhaps they were afraid of losing power ?
Money laundering. Some customers are good to show some customer flow but they need to get the cash into the system. Those vacant rooms show up as revenue.,,,,said half in jest
I never see anyone in any of the halls, there's rarely lights in the room, the hotels seem deserted and it just seems that there are plenty of empty rooms, i rarely see anyone in the elevators, you can hear pins drop in these places and yet, there are times when i get the 'last room' or the place is 'completely booked'.
Does anyone know what i'm talking about? i'll walk thru hotels and say to myself "there's zero chance that all these rooms are filled". I'll walk outside in the parking lot at a reasonable hour, lets say like 8pm and you look up and every room is dark, there's not a creature stirring and yet, there's 'no rooms left'.
To me, this is one of life's greatest unsolved mysteries, why hotels seem basically empty when the front desk is telling me there's no rooms left.
My wife has worked for a number of hotels, and I've worked in more than a few myself. The hotel can be sold out, even 'walking' guests who had booked reservations (overbooked) to other properties, but trying to guess the state of occupancy by the activity you observe is practically useless. It's not like all of the guests are all in their rooms with the lights on or meandering about the hallways.
Some are sleeping because they need to be traveling early. Some haven't actually arrived because they are traveling late. Some are out to dinner somewhere else, or drinking or whatever. The room is just a place to crash when they are finished doing whatever else it is that they came for, not like houses in a neighborhood where 8PM everyone is watching TV after dinner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scratch33
I've experienced that "no rooms available" situation from time to time when traveling by motorcycle. Front desk clerk sees a bunch of 'biker'-looking types come in and automatically thinks there'll be trouble; or in certain towns the hotel owner has a standing order not to rent rooms to motorcyclists based on previous (bad) experience. Got into the habit of either making reservations in advance, or calling the hotel first rather than walking in.
On bike trips, we usually don't know where we are going to end up until we are nearly there. It makes much more sense for us to stop one time, grab a list of places in the area and start making calls to find out who has rooms, and then book them from the call. It's a PITA to ride around to check out each hotel/motel in person to enquire as to whether they have rooms available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MLSFan
It's not really "true". They keep rooms open for VIP and staff. Think if the boss came in, he couldn't get a room?
In my experience, this is hardly ever the case. Not saying it doesn't happen somewhere, but I've never seen it.
Quote:
Also same with selling rooms to companies. Some like airlines always have rooms reserved at nearby airports for pilots/missed flight comps. Or sites like orbitz reserves rooms so they can resell them on their own site.
It's like a sports game, a company could buy out the tickets and the game could be "sold" out, but if the company doesn't fill seats there won't be many in attendance.
Companies book rooms in 'blocks'. At some point, there will be an enquiry as to whether all the rooms have been checked in, or, if not, the 'block' should be released. If the block is not released but no one checks in, the company still has to pay for the room. The hotel doesn't care if no one is in the room, they are getting paid anyway.
The other thing I don't understand is that hotels are willing to let rooms go empty rather than lower their rates. They seem to prefer 100% of nothing rather than 50% of something.
i thought of this and have been shopping on hotwire, priceline, etc and prices don't go down when it gets to be 9pm and later, they would rather have an empty room than chop 50 off the price, i guess i can see the logic, if they chopped 50 off the price after 9pm who would book at 8:59? nobody who's checking in late is ever going to book in advance if they know the prices drop 50 pct nearing midnight.
if i was in charge of national laws i would require hotel companies to make an attempt to fill rooms and there would be a steep tax on an empty room if there was no attempt to price the room according to the time of day, for example, if checkout is 11am and someone wants to rent a room at 11pm, they're only renting for 12 hours but paying for 24, that would stop if i was in charge.
A better gauge of occupancy in a suburban hotel could be to take a look at the parking lot around 4AM, and/or count the people arriving on airport shuttles, especially at hotels popular with the flight crew.
Traveling for business, road warriors are may only be in the room to sleep. I'm nowhere near the hotel at 8PM; often I'll catch the last flight in, check into the hotel around midnight, and be up and out by 8.
good points, i'm extremely observant as to the 'traffic' in the hallways, elevators and whatnut, and plenty of times, i don't see anyone in either the elevator or the hall even though priceline will say '1 room left'.
What time of day are you there? Isn't it possible the rooms were reserved but people just aren't in them? I only go to a hotel to sleep so you'd never see me in one in the middle of the day.
im there at normal times mid afternoon check in, i'll hit up a bar-restaurant happy hour at 7pm, go out for some business and then head to my room at 11 or 12, just never see a 'sold out' hotel, i also look at the 'privacy' signs on the doors, you rarely see those either, so someone who's just there to sleep would likely put out a sign, i don't see a sold out amount of signs, not even close.
you are right, its possible someone reserved and paid for the room but it just never got used, like a company who buys blocks of rooms in case someone needs it, that's possible, i hadn't thought that the room would be paid for with nobody in it, but that happens at sports stadiums so i guess it can happen with hotels.
I didn't read all the replies so maybe this was mentioned before. I use to work at a hotel (in the kitchen), but I am familiar with other areas of hotel operation.
Some rooms may not be available because they haven't been cleaned yet. Most hotels run under a labor budget where they are only allowed so many employees (salary) per revenue generated (hourly or daily). A guest may have stayed in a room on Monday, but it won't get cleaned until Wednesday or even later because of this "budget".
This gets out of whack when a hotel gets an unexpected surge of business. One great example would be a change in weather (such as a blizzard). IF the previous employees didn't have time to clean the rooms they would just remain empty. Although in extreme cases I have seen the manager clean rooms to open them up for occupancy.
Whenever there was a blizzard our hotel would be fully booked even if it was the weekend. I could never understand that. At least half the guests were locals. Perhaps they were afraid of losing power ?
interesting, thanks for the input.
they should offer 50 pct off a room if you clean it yourself lol
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