What checkin and checkout date to pick when arriving/leaving after midnight?

This is what you need to know.

Hotels if booked after 3am will then count as a full day and check out would be the following day at specified check out time.

Say you book a room one night and regardless if its the 11th at 11pm or an hour later on the 12th at 12pm
You’re check-out time would be 10:30 or 11:00 depending on hotel

If youre a member of that hotel you can ask for a late check-out and stay till 1pm possibly 2pm if they are not crowded.

This is fact and you can ask anyone hotel or call the representative lines from the parent company.

The way to work it out for yourself is to think about it this way. Imagine a “normal” customer on a one-night stay who, say, checks in at 5pm and checks out at 10am the following morning. Any time you’re in your room, that other person can’t be there. The other person would have obviously paid for their night’s stay so, unless the hotel gives you a nice deal, you must pay for that night, too.

When you arrive at 2:30am on Monday, the hotel had to keep your room empty from 5pm on Sunday, so they couldn’t accommodate one “normal” customer. This means you need to pay for the whole night of Sunday-Monday: you need to book the hotel as if you were checking in on Sunday.

Likewise, if you leave your room at, say, 11:30pm on Thursday to catch your flight early on Friday morning, the hotel wasn’t able to accommodate a “normal” customer checking in at 5pm on Thursday, so you would need to pay for that night, too. However, you can get around this by checking out of your room earlier. Some hotels will allow you to check out a couple of hours later if you ask them; some may require a small payment for this (much less than the cost of a night’s stay). Most hotels in my experience will look after your bags for you after you’ve checked out. I’ve never had to pay for this but apparently some hotels do charge.

So, my recommendation is this:

• Ask your hotel if they can look after your bags between the time you check out and the time you leave for your flight.
  • If they can do that, book the hotel for check-in on 12th February and check-out on 16th February.
  • If they can’t, you’ll have to decide whether you want to pay for an extra night (check-out on 17th February) so you can leave your bags in your room, or if you’ll check out on 16th February and look after your bags yourself for the day.
• In either case, advise the hotel that you will be arriving very late, and estimate what time that will be. This is important because they might cancel your booking if they think you’re not coming. Most online hotel booking systems have a box in which you can add information like this; if you’re booking over the phone, obviously tell them when you book.
• Consider late check-out on 16th February, if it’s an option and it’s reasonably priced. That would give you your room until around lunch time. (If the hotel will look after your bags, this probably doesn’t matter much to you.)

It really all depends on if you want to use the room or not. Hotels usually can store luggage for you. If you want to take a shower or change clothes as soon as you reach the hotel I would recommend to include the 12th and reach-out to the hotel mentioning you will be arriving late.

If that’s not a must you could make your reservation from the 13th. Upon arrival in the hotel you could check if they have a room available. Maybe you get if for free as a goodwill gesture, maybe they will charge you for it. If they haven’t got anything available you will still be able to leave your luggage until your room becomes available.

Regarding check-out it’s more or less the same. You can leave your room before check-out time and leave your luggage at the reception. If you want to use any of the facilities of your room after 10:30 you can request a late check-out. Sometimes this is offered for free, sometimes for an additional charge. 2AM is however really late, think of late-checkout as noon, 2PM maybe 4PM at most. So if you really want to leave from your room to the airport your only option will be to include this day in your reservation.

If you want to get into a hotel room before 12:30pm on the 13th, you will have to request 12th Feb and tell the hotel it’s a late check-in. Because they say that check-in only goes until 22:30 (10:30pm), you should call them to see if they can check you in when you arrive in the very early morning.

For the check-out, if you want to stay in the room later, you’ll have to request a late check-out or pay for the 17th.