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For: Allegra Khomara, 17, King George V School
Imagine you are flying to Australia from Hong Kong, and you arrive at midnight in the middle of the country’s hottest month. There was constant turbulence on your 10-hour flight, and you haven’t slept in 30-something hours.
You’re in a foreign country. You don’t know where anything actually is. All you want to do is take a shower and hop into bed and sleep.
Global common practice in the hospitality industry is to check in between 2pm and 4pm, and check out around 11am or noon. This gives housekeeping the necessary time to deep clean rooms and change linens after the previous guests depart, as well as maintain the currently occupied rooms.
Still, a 24-hour check-in grants the maximum value for money for the guest. Most issues can be fixed by setting a single rate within a 24-hour period.
Hotels can monetise flexible hourly bookings, especially if there is a system where the guest can estimate the time of checkout before booking. Hotels can then organise room allocations based on those timings, slotting in daytime-use occupancies or brief windows.
Hotels usually rely on synchronised departure and arrival times to assign receptionists, organise shifts and give housekeeping time to work. But these jobs are done within the span of five hours from 11am to 4pm, with staff having limited time to manage rooms and guests.
Having 24-hour check-ins reduces bottlenecks for staff.
Instead of a swarm of guests heading in that causes queues and major blockages, entries would be staggered, reducing the “rush hour” burnout. Additionally, instead of forcing housekeeping to clean all vacated rooms in a tight window – which could potentially lead to improper, rushed cleaning – staggered departures and arrivals allow steady, manageable waves throughout the day.
A 24-hour check-in means more staff on standby. This may increase labour costs. However, as technology improves and automated kiosks become more popular and convenient, this change would give hotels an opportunity to modernise hotel technology with self-service check-ins and reduce costs in the long term, especially as upgraded infrastructure becomes a unique selling point for customers.
A 24-hour check-in would have its difficulties, especially at the start. However, guest satisfaction will increase, which will pay off.
Against: Cherish Chiu Cheuk-wing, 16, Leung Shek Chee College
Establishing 24-hour check-in policies at all hotels would not be ideal as this rule would create significant operational bottlenecks. It would be a logistical, financial and operational nightmare.
Staff would be forced into unpredictable, rolling schedules, leading to increased burnout and limiting the hotel’s maximum room turnover and profitability.
The hospitality industry standardises check-in around 3pm and checkout from 11am to 12pm. This creates a two- to four-hour window for room turnover and maintenance. If every hotel were bound to a 24-hour cycle, it would cause uncertainties.
First, pricing would be significantly more complicated, with hourly rates that fluctuate rather than a flat, predictable “nightly” rate. Instead of this straightforward fixed rate, hotels would have to dynamically calculate prices based on shifting entry times, leading to fragmented booking systems and hidden fees.
Second, hotels would face constant rolling arrivals, preventing front desks from managing peak hours or guaranteeing room availability for incoming guests. Hotel staff would have to be on 24/7 standby at the front desk and ensure a certain number of staff are on duty.
It also requires lighting, heating and cooling, and computer systems to run at full capacity all night. At a time when this industry is actively trying to reduce its carbon footprint, overnight energy consumption for the convenience of a minority is environmentally reckless.
Maintenance crews often use the “off-peak” overnight hours to perform critical tasks, such as carpet cleaning and plumbing repairs. A 24-hour check-in policy means these vital, disruptive tasks can no longer be done without disturbing active guests.
Lastly, standard check-in times align with typical travel habits. Guests arriving outside standard hours can usually coordinate late check-ins directly with a front desk or use automated self-service options. The proposed policy would create a heavier workload for staff.
The financial cost of this chaos is passed directly to the consumer. Shift changes and overtime pay will inflate operating budgets.
Hotels should absolutely offer late-night arrival assistance like lockers – a solution that requires no staff. But a mandated, fully staffed 24-hour front desk is an inefficient, costly and unsafe demand.
