Travel Deal of the Day (August 29, 2008)

Most people assume that the only “stays” you can purchase from a hotel are overnight stays. But, most hotels offer a few other types of stays that can be helpful, especially when traveling on business.

The Deal:
Hotels offer a few non-traditional types of stays that can be helpful to know about:

(1) Many hotels allow you to purchase access daily access to the fitness center/spa/other facilities when you are not staying at that hotel. This is especially common at airport hotel locations. This can be very helpful when you either have a long layover or have a redeye/overnight flight – in such cases, you can purchase the daily access so that you can shower and freshen up before a meeting or other activities later in the day. (Do not forget that if you have a hotel room booked for that evening, that hotel will often allow you to use facilities for free even if you arrive at the hotel well before check-in time.)

(2) Many hotels will sell “day rooms," allowing you to stay all day in a hotel room without paying for use of the hotel room overnight. (Day rooms can be very affordable, as the hotel usually can sell you the room for the day and sell that same room to someone else for use overnight.) Again, this is most common at airport hotel locations. This can be very helpful if you have a tremendously long layover or if you arrive early in the morning on a redeye flight and you would like to rest before a late meeting.

How:
Most of the time, you must book these kinds of services directly from the hotel. The hotel website and even the national, toll-free reservations center may not be aware that a hotel offers these kind of services.

When you do call to make a reservation, try to negotiate the price of these services. Most of the time the hotel does not have a set rate for the above types of stays. The hotel may be willing to negotiate as the above types of stays likely will not take away from revenue earned from traditional, overnight stays (in the case of a day room - the hotel can usually still sell that room for overnight use; in the case of a spa pass, the hotel can still provide those same services to overnight guests).