HOTELS

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Hourly Room Rentals Go Mainstream
July 17, 2007

Most of the time, if a person were to tell you he booked a hotel room for a couple hours, it would probably conjure up images of a seedy window-barred motel and might spur the assumption that he probably did not go there to, you know, sleep.

The icky connotation associated with shorter-short-term bookings will probably never go away entirely, but hoteliers in Spain are making a pitch to legitimize by-the-hour room rentals. Some 200 or so member hotels in the Asociación de Hoteles de Sevilla have begun offering vacant rooms for mid-afternoon siestas, selling up to four hours in the room at rates discounted around 75% off. The siestas, incidentally, are being re-branded as “Iberian yoga,” which does sound a bit more cultured than “Spanish nap.” The hotels are targeting businesspeople who want to sleep off their lunch wine before returning to work and beachgoers looking to escape the intense mid-afternoon sun.

While Seville hoteliers are no doubt excited about the creation of a new revenue stream, the region’s Hostelry Union is not too thrilled with the concept, as it means more work for hotel staff in the form of additional check-ins and housekeeping. The siesta sales “could be a way of dignifying the old custom of hiring hotels by the hour,” a union spokesman told The Independent of London. That was my first thought when I heard about this, too, but then again, I forgo US$30 hotel siestas in favor of US$2 Red Bulls to get me through the day.

Milwaukee’s Hotel Metro considers hourly “Romance Pacakges” (OnMilwaukee.com)
Hourly Hotels of New York City (Gridskipper)

Posted by Adam Kirby on July 17, 2007 | Comments (0)