Did you know that you could use a hotel just for the day, and not even spend the night? I never heard of such a thing. It’s one of those ideas that made me think “That’s makes perfect sense. Why didn’t I think of that?”
There is a service out there called Hotels By Day, which uses the share economy model. If a hotel room isn’t being used for the day, they make use of it. Through the Hotels By Day website and mobile app, hotel rooms in their network are shown the price and available times of check in and check out.
Hotels By Day truly enhanced my family road trip in so many ways. I will my personal experience by using Hotels By Day, as well as exactly how this service works.
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First, let’s give a general overview of what Hotels By Day is. There are a lot of hotels out there that may not make full use of their rooms during the day. Hotels By Day lists these rooms, and anybody could book and reserve these rooms. You get full access to all the amenities of the room, such as the pools, the gyms, and whatever else that the hotel has to offer. And the only difference is, you use the room anywhere from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.. So, you don’t actually stay the night in the hotel.
Some people may use this service if they’re at an airport for an extended layover and they don’t want to be in the airport the whole time. Some families maybe road tripping and want to use the room just for the day, such as ourselves. Or, if people are on a business trip and are at a conference, and just want the hotel just for the day and not spend the night.
Our Experience With Hotels By Day
With our personal experience, we were driving from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to New York to visit our friends and family, and show off our new six week old daughter. We decided that to drive the whole way through. We drove straight from 11:00 pm, and we got to New York around 2:30 p.m. It was a dreary 15 hours with a four-year-old and a six week year old baby.
I prefer driving at night because there are no cars on the road. Nobody’s asking to eat or diapers to be changed as much compared to the day. So, that’s why I prefer to drive at night and rest during the day.
So, we decided when we were to drive from New York back down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we were gonna stop sort of in the middle of Washington, D.C..That’s roughly the halfway through. We decided to book a hotel just for the day so that we could continue to drive through the night.
We left New York around 4:30 am and got to Washington, D.C. at our Marriott Residence Inn, in Arlington, Virginia, at around 10:00 a.m. Check in was at 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. We checked in, put our stuff in the room, and then we went to get some Ethiopian food.
We love eating Ethiopian food any time we’re in Washington, D.C. After getting our Ethiopian fix, we planned to see some monuments, but the rain changed our plans. A nice nap was a good substitute for the Abe Lincoln memorial.
Exhausted from the drive, I took about a three and a half hour nap. During that time, my wife went to the gym and my daughter went to the pool. We had full access to all of the amenities. One of the reasons why we chose this hotel was because it had a refrigerator and small kitchen. We cooked some food when we got hungry.
Check out was at 6:00 p.m. For check in and check out, it was pretty much the same as any other hotel process. I gave my credit card when we checked in for incidentals. When checking out, the card was already on files. We booked our hotel day about two or three days before we actually went to the hotel, They have a cancellation policy of up to a night before, and it’s completely free.
Once we booked our day in the hotel, we got a few email reminders to confirm that our hotel was reserved. It was pretty simple from there on out.
Now that you know my personal experience with Hotels By Day, let’s head over to hotelsbyday.com, and I’ll show you exactly how their service works.
How To Use Hotels By Day
In the video above, I give step-by-step instructions of how to use and book a hotel room for the day. If you have ever booked a hotel using a third party service, like hotels.com, then you can easily navigate Hotels By Day.
Cons Of Hotels By Day
The only downside with Hotels By Day is that the hotels are location-dependent, meaning that you could only use hotels that are in the Hotels By Day network. It can’t just be any hotel that you want. For example, there are no hotels in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, that are part of the Hotels By Day network.
According to their website, they are adding more and more hotels to their network everyday. With hotels benefiting from this service, I predict the majority of hotels joining the network.
Bottom Line
Overall, I definitely recommend Hotels By Day. To get 5% off your Hotels By Day stay, you can use this link here.
I had no idea that you can book hotel rooms by day. I was under the impression that you could only book conference rooms or the use of a piano for the duration of an event instead of a room. My husband wants to hold a state of the company address, but since they decided to move their operation online after the pandemic started, they don’t have an office space anymore. He would have to fly in to their central location, so I would imagine he would want to freshen up before the conference. I’ll suggest that he look for a hotel who would allow him to book both a conference room and a separate hotel room to use for the day.