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Many hotels charge a nominal “early departure fee” to guests who check out before the date they originally booked to leave. This fee is generally similar to the hotel’s nightly room rate, or perhaps a bit less.
The early departure fee is intended to protect a hotel’s revenue if someone checks out early. It also makes it possible for the guest to check out mid-stay without having to pay for all of their remaining booked nights.
For example, someone might check into a hotel for a planned 7-night stay, but then have to leave after the second day due to some sort of emergency at home or at work. If the hotel’s booking policy allows for it, this person could just pay the early departure fee and then receive a refund for the unused nights.
So, unlike many resort fees, this is a reasonable fee in theory. But it doesn’t always end up this way in practice!
High early departure fee on a one-night stay?
When making a Holiday Inn booking on the IHG website, I recently noticed that the Early Departure Fee (€129, or around AU$208 in this instance) was 58% higher than the nightly room rate (€81.63, or around AU$132).
I won’t name the hotel because this issue is not unique to that property. I’ve seen this numerous other times, and not just at IHG hotels. But as you might have guessed, the hotel in this example is in Europe.
The early departure fee being higher than the room rate would be fair enough if you were making a booking for multiple days or weeks. But I was only booking for one night.
I might be missing something, but this makes no sense to me.
For what it’s worth, this is how the IHG Hotels & Resorts Terms describes the early departure fee:
An early departure fee is applicable to guests who check out prior to the agreed check-out dates. The latest point at which the guest can change the departure date without incurring the cancellation charge is at the point of check-in.
After checking in for one night, if you didn’t like the hotel or needed to leave for whatever reason, it would make no sense to alert the hotel and pay the Early Departure Fee. This fee is higher than what you would have otherwise paid to complete your stay!
Therefore, the guest is incentivised to simply leave the key card in their room and not inform they hotel they’re leaving. This denies the hotel the opportunity to sell the room to another guest or to clean the room early. It’s a lose-lose situation for both the guest and the hotel.
Checking out early for a late night flight
Another common reason that somebody might not stay the full night on the final day of their booking is that they need to catch a flight that leaves in the middle of the night.
For example, someone might have a flight that leaves at 2.30am. Rather than checking out at 10am the day before, they might book the hotel for the night but check out at 11pm before heading to the airport.
I’ve seen a case where someone has done exactly this at an IHG hotel in the Middle East, and was charged the Early Departure Fee (which was equivalent to the nightly room rate). This didn’t end up costing them any extra, as the hotel also removed the charge for the final night from the bill. But it meant that this person missed out on receiving any points or elite qualifying stay credits for their last night at the hotel.
To be clear, this is not an issue specific to IHG hotels. It could happen at any other hotel chain, depending on the individual hotels’ policies.
Your experience with hotel fees?
Over to you, AFF…
Have you noticed any other hotel fees or charges that just don’t make sense? Or perhaps you’ve missed out on hotel points in similar circumstances? Let us know on the forum!
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