Grown-up Travel Tip: Time your hotel check-in right to get a better room

We’re in holiday mode here at Grown-up Travel Guide – as you read this post we’re exploring Sardinia in Italy with limited access to the internet to update the site. Still, rather than close up shop we delved into the archives and have dusted off some of the earliest articles published back when we were lucky to get 50 readers a day. So you may well have missed these, yet we consider them just as relevant and useful now so hopefully you’ll have something to tide you over before we return. Of course we’re still putting out daily photos and some new articles too – we’ve actually been abroad since last Thursday but scheduled the new stuff to automatically publish in our absence. See you in a couple of weeks!

Travel tip #2: Check in to your hotel at the right time for a possible upgrade

Image (c) weatherframe.com

The time of day you check in to a hotel can have a direct bearing on your chance of scoring a free upgrade to a better room – perhaps even a suite. The day of the week may also play a part…

Sounds good, I’ve always wanted to stay in the presidential suite!

Well steady on, that may be pushing your luck a bit. But the fact is that the desk staff at your hotel will have a better idea of how many empty suites or deluxe rooms are available in the early evening. And quiet days are even better – Sunday evenings for example when the weekenders have left.

Sounds logical…so what do you do?

Actually it’s as simple as just asking. Safe in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be able to sell the suite to another guest anyway, they may be willing to bump you up. This works more times than you’d think and what do you have to lose? It doesn’t hurt to be polite, reasonably well-dressed and not bark your request at the staff…

I’ll bear that in mind. Any other advice?

Being a member of the hotel’s loyalty scheme (if it has one, most do) might play in your favour too. We’ve got a major series of articles on hotel loyalty schemes and frequent flyer programmes on the way.

Have you tried this method? Do you have any other hotel-related tips? Whatever, we want to hear from you. But we’ll still block any offensive stuff of course. Or spam…

Andy Higgs
Andy Higgs

I know what it's like to go from being a crazy backpacker without a care in the world, via being a vaguely sensible parent to being an adventurer once more. In other words, evolving into a Grown-up Traveller.

Like everyone else, I love to travel, have visited a lot of countries and all that but my big thing is Africa.

I also own and run The Grown-up Travel Company as a travel designer creating personalised African itineraries for experienced adventurers

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