How to Book a Luxury Hotel Room for an Hour
Many reputable hotels are happy to book your tryst. You just need to know how to ask.
Every man – well, every man who travels – knows that there’s something singular about hotel sex. It’s a chance to be reckless and outside yourself, an opportunity to get truly weird. And you want it when you want it, which is sometimes when you’re still in town. That’s no problem if you know how to arrange a short (but not too short) stay.
Mainstream hotels – not to mention luxury chains – rarely advertise hourly rates, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Hospitality industry insiders will tell you there are several ways to spend the same amount you might at a fleabag motel and get a room with a view and a shower big enough for two.
Day-use packages, like those offered during daytime hours at many airport hotels and on sites like DayUseHotels.com, are a bit of a euphemism and can work out well if you’re looking for a lunchtime frolic – but they’re not always the cheapest option, when you break things down by the hour.
We asked Bob Diener, co-founder of Getaroom.com, for a bit of guidance to help us navigate the world of un-publicized rates and per-hour deals.
How To Get an Hourly Rate
“Luxury hotels, and the range of hotels on our site, aren’t renting by the hour. But what a lot of hotels are doing that they don’t necessarily advertise is allowing people to come in and rent a room by the day for a few hours. How they’re packaging it these days is by using deals that let you use the room, the gym, and the pool. But what many people don’t know is that looking for secret rates is a better way to get a lower room rate.”
How to Get a Secret Rate
“Hotels like keeping their rates higher publicly, but on a limited basis they’re offering special rates for those who know how to get them. We have 40,000 hotels participating with unpublished rates – they’re willing to give us better rates if we don’t publish the numbers online.”
“It’s usually about 10 to 20 percent off the published rate on our site and other sites, but it’s sometimes as high as 50 or 60 percent. If you only want to use the room for a few hours, spending time to call in and ask about these unpublished rates makes a lot of sense.”
How to Get a Room at Night
We often have people who say they’re flying into a city and landing late, say 2 AM. Most hotels won’t let you even check into your room until the afternoon. So this is another time when booking the unpublished rate can save you. You book the room for the night before your late-night arrival, then you can check in at any time.”
Photos by Philipp Nemenz / Getty Images
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