For the Plats: Check-in After Midnight
 

Hey fellow FTers and SPG Plats,

My flight will arrive in BKK on Jan 28 at 1145pm and I will likely be checking in close to Jan 29 1am. Do you still book the room from Jan 28 or do you book it from Jan 29 and they can do "early check-in" for you as Plats?

Does anyone have experience with this before?

Thank you.

I've always treated that as a straightforward case of check-in for the evening of arrival (maybe leaving a note not to cancel your room if you're after midnight). After all, you're getting the room for essentially an entire night.

If you're SPG75 you could try You24 (which I admit I've never tried), but in general my personal rule is any early check in before sunrise is taking the piss.

I don't know any property that would treat this as anything but the night of the 28th.

In BKK, I doubt that you would be permitted to do this as "early" even if the place were empty.

For what it's worth, it's a part of the world where many overseas flights arrive at odd hours and it's not unusual for people to book the night before or pay for the night after checkout on the other side of the stay.

I've booked night prior for 9am arrival so it's completely bonkers to book 1am and assume property can/will let you check in when normal check in time is sometime after noon. Of course, YMMV if Your24 invoked and approved.

Thanks, guys, for the inputs. I will book the 28th. Again, I'm just sourcing opinions but would be perfectly fine to pay.

I seem to recall a policy that you could do Your24 starting at 9am and get a late/4pm checkout, if you were PLT75. So that seems to be the earliest possible for elite members. 1-2 am is way, way early.

The policy you mention simply means that if you apply Your24 as early as 9am, you're still able to enjoy the plat 4pm checkout. Any earlier than that, and you're looking at a 24h limit (i.e. Check in at 6am must checkout at 6am on day of departure).

The other side of checking in early is check out late. I agree that anything earlier than 5 AM should be night before. Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit was nice to let us check out much later than 4 PM for a midnight departure to FRA. We left early enough to be able to enjoy massage at TG Lounge.

I have a similar issue coming up in Beijing, although not as extreme as JCFans -- my flight arrives at PEK at 05:00 and I will probably arrive at the W Beijing Chang'an at around 07:30.

I expect I will be totally knackered flying the red eye from Australia so I'd like to check in and go to sleep straight away -- should I be booking the night before, too?

Personally, I would chance it. But if you absolutely must have the room, the only way to guarantee that is to book the night before.

Next month I will be arriving in BKK around 3:00 AM.
I have booked the 4 Pts for the evening before my arrival time ( since it will be only sleeping and no use of other benefits),
and then in the afternoon I will move to SGS.

With these hours I have lots of experience with. As Plats I consistently put this info in my booking details and arrive at the hotels around 8am. Either two things usually happen: 1) the upgraded room/suite is ready for me, or 2) they will have a room ready but not upgraded.

Early in the morning I would say sure 29th, but your 1am arrival is more late arrival than early arrival.

I will do something similar in March: booked the Aloft for 1 night (arrival is approx. 06:20 AM at BKK) for the evening before my actual arrival at BKK and in the afternoon I will move to the SGS

The hotels in India really make out well on this. Typical arrival times for long haul flights is 11p - 1am and typical departures run midnight to 4am so hotels get folks booking night they arrive when the get to hotel at early am hours and departing guests generally get at least a half day charge if not a full night to hold a room until 9 or 10pm day of departure. So hotels get to rent the room twice for the same night and have a standard housekeeping shift that turns rooms over in the hours around midnight.