Many hotels will continue to do this for free, but with a more commonly used infrastructure to charge for such service, being charged for it will become more common than it would otherwise be.

For me, there are two weaknesses with this Hyatt approach: most Hyatt hotels aren’t offering this; the early-check-in requests aren’t going to be all that useful for long-term planning since the requests/reservation (for early checkin) get handled within 7 days or less of arrival. But none of this is any skin off my back, since I will continue to manage without early check-in availability.

The downside of early check-in is that many of the better rooms available for upgrading for the night don’t become available until late in the afternoon or an hour or so after guaranteed late-check-our for top tier elites has taken place.