Originally Posted by writerguyfl

As a former Revenue Manager, I can tell you that average length-of-stay and arrival/departure patterns have far more impact than hotel size. It doesn't matter if your hotel has 100 rooms or 500...if you only have 30 checkouts, there's not much wiggle room to offer a late checkout.

Although some people might assume that a large hotel always has hundreds of daily checkouts/ins, that's not necessarily true. One hotel where I worked had 360 rooms. During the business week, our average length-of-stay was over three nights with the bulk of arrivals happening on Monday. Due to that, the average number of departures/arrivals on a Tuesday or Wednesday was 50-80 rooms. And, if there was a city-wide convention, that number would drop to 25-30.

I hope I explained that adequately. For the record, I'm not saying that hotels shouldn't offer late checkouts to their elite members. The explanation provided above really only applies when a hotel is close to being sold out. And, from an operations perspective, hotels with short average length-of-stays (like airport properties) should have a much easier time offering a late checkout.