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While I try very hard to avoid red-eye flights, which just make the next day so painful, I recently found myself needing to take an unplanned red-eye flight from Hawaii back to the mainland when severe incoming storms cut my family’s trip short.
That was all going to be bad enough, but landing at 6 a.m. at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) after flying with two kids through the night and facing the constraints of normal hotel check-in times (3-4 p.m.) were going to make a tough situation pretty darn miserable.
Luckily, there was a better option. Instead of spending the day as walking zombies until check-in time at our next stop, we got some of the best sleep of our lives for just $16.50 an hour by booking a day-use room at a hotel near LAX via the appropriately named website Dayuse.com.
Here’s how “day-use rooms” work and what you need to know to save your sanity and get some rest when you need a hotel room on a schedule that doesn’t follow traditional check-in and checkout times.
How a day-use hotel room works
Some hotels, especially ones at major hub airports and in big cities, offer rooms that you can book for specific hours during the day with no overnight stay included. (Note that this is different from booking a day pass to a resort hotel that does not come with a room.)
Sometimes, you can book these day-use rooms directly with the hotel, but you may have to call to get that information or book. Thankfully, there are also some websites that let you search for multiple day-use hotels at once and complete the booking on that site.
For example, on the Dayuse.com site I used to book this room, you often just pay a small fee ($7 on my booking) to book, with the bulk of the payment due directly at the hotel at check-in. On my booking, I could even cancel for free until two hours before the end of the booking time slot in case our plans changed at the last minute, which of course happens with flights.
I’ve seen day-use rooms available as early as 5 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m., and sometimes for prices that are 50% to 75% less than if you booked an overnight stay. Some of the time slots are just a few hours, while others are for pretty long chunks of the day.
While it can vary, when you book a day-use room, you often have access to on-site amenities such as the pool or gym.
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TPG tip: If you have Marriott Ambassador elite status, pending availability, you may be able to book a room with Marriott using the Your24 service that lets you pick the 24 hours you have the room.
Booking my day-use room at an LAX hotel
I needed a room that would be ready right when we landed early in the morning. I wanted one with solid reviews and a location as close to LAX as possible. Some hotels in the area only had day-use rooms available starting at 10 a.m. or later, so, based on reviews, photos and available time slots, we booked the Sonesta Los Angeles Airport LAX from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. for $116 (plus taxes).
That broke down to about $16.50 per hour of much-needed rest, which was absolutely the best money I could have spent in that moment.
It had been a while since I booked a day-use room, but I cannot say enough great things about how easy the whole process was, from getting the included shuttle from LAX to a prompt check-in process (and access to the room a few minutes early) to the comfortable beds and outstanding hours of sleep in a renovated room.
It may sound like an exaggeration, but it truly served as a reset from not only the exhaustion from the overnight flight, but really for the entire trip, as our family vacation underwent a pretty significant unplanned pivot from Hawaii to California.
Related: The best hotels in Los Angeles for your next visit
Bottom line
Whether you are fresh off a red-eye flight, landing on the other side of the world after a long-haul flight or are otherwise in a situation where you need a room to be available at a nonstandard check-in time, a day-use hotel can be the ideal solution to that scheduling problem at a price that is often less than the cost of an overnight hotel stay.
