29. The Upgrade | Weekly - Broom Service

How housekeeping staffing determines early check in and late check out

Oct 27, 2026

🪄The witch only books hotels with great broom service 🪄

If you missed it or if you’re new here:

Travelers,

It’s Halloween week! While I’m a lover of all seasonal transitions and holidays, Halloween has eternally been my favorite. I love everything about it - watching spooky movies, decorating our house (we have a 12-foot-long blow up snake in our front yard because my daughter loves snakes, go figure), and dressing up.

It’s travel season for me, which means I’m pinging around the world escorting groups on various trips I’ve built. This weekend, my business partner Kylee and I traveled up to Aspen to host a mahjong retreat with the Mahj Squad for 31 women. The group made custom hats at Kemo Sabe, ate dinner at Catch, went on a hike through the aspens, and of course, played tons of Mahjong while staying at the Hotel Jerome.

If this sounds to you like a blast, (it was), join us on our next mahjong retreat in February in Sonoma!

While Halloween is full of ghosts and ghouls, I think the scariest thing about being a travel advisor right now is booking channel ubiquity. For those who aren’t in the industry, there several different ways you can book your travel - direct with the hotel, via an OTA like Expedia or Booking.com, via credit card portal, through a travel advisor like me, or now, via AI. As credit card portals arm wrestle advisors for booking channel supremacy, and as more and more people become advisors, what do perks like early check in and upgrades of one category even mean any more? Let’s take a look this week at one of those perks - early check in/late check out, from a housekeeping perspective.

This week’s article for paid subscribers will be a Travel Dispatch with my full Costwolds itinerary of all the lovely things we did and places we went on the Belle Vie Cotswolds retreat run by photographer Molly Carr.

Happy Travels,

Anne Marie

Yours truly with my business partner, Kylee, at the bar in Kemo Sabe in Aspen on the Camp Mahj Mahjong trip we hosted last weekend

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Housekeeping – how early arrival and late checkouts actually work

What a room turn costs in minutes and staff, and why Amex’s guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout perk is the envy of every travel advisor consortium.

When I was a teenager, I spent a few summers rotating through the housekeeping, maintenance, front desk, and the bell departments at several of my family’s hotels in Waikiki. I loved the guest interaction of front desk, the bellmen who became my friends, and learning to fix things in maintenance, like broken AC units and toilets that wouldn’t stop running. What I loved most was housekeeping. My project-based mind found each room turn incredibly satisfying, and I enjoyed the rhythm of it. At home, my husband would tell you I am not a tidy person, but something about cleaning a room for others brought me joy.

I was recently lucky enough to be quoted in Jacques Ledbetter’s article in Forbes where I noted that Amex is travel advisors’ biggest competitor. A childhood friend of mine commented on my Instagram post about the article, saying “The one category upgrade pulls me back to AMX every time…that is very compelling even though I think travel advisors are vital right now with the crowded environment. Maybe Virtuoso can match the category upgrade perk of AMX?” I reminded her that we too can get our clients upgrades – depending on availability – as well as late checkout and early check-in. Then I gently reminded her to book with a travel advisor.

The difference is the guarantee vs. the “depending on availability” language, and every luxury travel advisor will admit that it’s a gamble we have little to no control over.

As much as (some of) my friends and family like to support my business and book through me as an advisor, I do still run into the endless Amex vs. advisor channel debate, and it crushes my soul a little when a friend or family member chooses to book through a credit card channel to receive double points in promotion, to use their credit card points, or to chase after that 4 p.m. checkout and one-category upgrade perk that we just can’t compete with. Do I know I’ll take better care of my clients than Amex? Absolutely. But that’s not always an easy sell.

I could and probably will craft an article about credit card portals vs. advisors vs. hotels competing with us to drive their own direct bookings, but that’s a different piece. In The Upgrade this week, I want to look specifically at that late checkout and early check-in clause, and what it does for housekeeping.

The room-turn window

For most hotels around the world, checkout is at 11 a.m. or noon, and check-in is at 3 or 4 p.m. When my clients travel, I do my best to learn what time they expect to arrive and request an early check-in, but in most cases, the earliest possible is 2 p.m. because frankly – based on typical hotel staffing models – it’s just not logistically possible to turn a room that quickly. I still receive requests from clients who want a 10 a.m. check-in, and I have to tell them that if they want their room that early, they need to book it beginning as of the night before. There is usually much grumbling, but seasoned luxury travelers who have been to Europe more than a few times know this drill and expect to book the night before so they can shower when they arrive bleary eyed after the red-eye from the US.

Unless a hotel is at high occupancy during something like New Year’s week (or Festive as we call the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s in the industry), most hotels at the luxury level will accommodate an early check-in at around 2 p.m. Late checkout is a bit harder these days. However, Amex has managed to negotiate a guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout for their top tier. That guarantee loses me more bookings than I’d like to admit.

Why checkout is at 11am and check-in is at 4pm

Gary Vallen, a hospitality consultant and co-author of a textbook on hotel operations, told The Washington Post that the times are “a function of housekeeping” steps: the guest checks out, the room is stripped and cleaned, it comes back online, and an inspector signs off.¹ Pretty straightforward.

Extra COVID cleaning protocols reported in CoStar found the new cleaning standards added 6 to 8 minutes to each room turn after checkout.³ Many hotels kept the later time once life returned to normal, pushing standard check-in times from 3 to 4 p.m. across the industry. Simultaneously, many workers left hospitality during the pandemic, leaving fewer housekeepers on staff.²

A handful of hotels guarantee times. TravelSort lists The Peninsula, with check-in from 6 a.m. and checkout until 10 p.m., and Hotel de Crillon, with blackout dates.⁴ One Mile at a Time points out that hotels with many elite guests struggle to honor 4 p.m. late checkouts and still release rooms at the published check-in time.⁶

How hotels handle early arrivals and late departures

Guaranteeing a 4 p.m. checkout means the hotel cannot sell that room the night after without risking an angry arrival who can’t get into their room until 5 p.m. in the best-case scenario, so Amex relationships cost hotels that additional night to accommodate the perk. I have been on the receiving end of angry calls from clients whose rooms aren’t ready at the guaranteed time, despite emails from me ahead of time advising the hotel of their arrival times and requesting early check-in.

When a luxury hotel misses a 4 p.m. check-in deadline, that’s a major red flag to me that the hotel isn’t staffed properly.

The reason late checkouts are usually determined the morning of departure is because the hotel often does not know before then when the next guest will actually arrive, whether any housekeepers will call in sick that day, or whether it will have to accommodate last-minute bookings.

How long a room turn takes

Larry Mogelonsky of Hotel Mogel Consulting writes that a typical room attendant needs 20 to 30 minutes to clean a room properly.⁷ HotelData.com benchmarks put the 2025 average at 24.67 minutes per occupied room across U.S. hotels of every class.⁸ Hospitality Institute puts a clean checkout at 20 to 35 minutes and a suite at 45 to 90.⁹ OxMaint, a software vendor, says luxury properties run 35 to 50 minutes.¹⁰

I would say at the luxury level, hotels typically average a 45-minute room turn, with large suites well beyond that.

While my operations finals grade from business school at Darden may not have reflected it, I really did enjoy Ops. An eight-hour shift totals 480 minutes. Twelve rooms at 40 minutes fill that shift, and so do eight rooms at 60 minutes. That aligns with the 8 to 12 rooms per attendant that sources cite for luxury hotels.

How many housekeepers a five-star hotel employs

Sources mix two yardsticks, rooms per room attendant per shift and total staff per room.

On rooms per attendant, TUMI Hospitality ties 13 to 14 rooms per shift at standard full-service hotels to Cornell research.¹¹ Hospitality Institute gives 12 to 16 for full-service hotels and 8 to 12 for luxury.⁹ On total staff, the Bermuda Hotel Association’s president said a five-star hotel generally has one to two staff per room.¹²

So, at 8 to 12 rooms per attendant, 100 occupied rooms need roughly 8 to 13 housekeepers on the floor each day.

The math of the 11-to-4 window

Although a 45-minute room turn and a five-hour window between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. look like plenty of slack, that time disappears once you account for a large number of nearly simultaneous departures.

Operations has a term for this: Takt time, which is the time available divided by the number of units that need to be finished. I ran it for a hypothetical 200-room hotel at 90 percent occupancy with 60 checkouts in a day.

Sixty rooms at 45 minutes each add up to 2,700 minutes of work. Between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., the hotel has 300 minutes, so it needs a finished room every 5 minutes. At 45 minutes a room, that takes 9 attendants simultaneously cleaning checkout rooms. That figure assumes every guest leaves at 11. Many leave earlier and their rooms get cleaned sooner, so 9 is the worst case scenario. I found no data on how departures typically spread across a morning.

Shrink the window, and the same 2,700 minutes need a bigger crew on the floor at once:

Noon to 4 p.m. leaves 240 minutes and requires 12 attendants.
Noon to 3 p.m. leaves 180 minutes and requires 15 attendants.
1 p.m. to 3 p.m. leaves 120 minutes and requires 23 attendants.

The total work is fixed at 2,700 minutes. A noon-to-3 schedule adds six attendants during the window, about 67% more, and on standard eight-hour shifts that comes to 48 more paid hours a day to clean the same number of rooms.

Hotels could hire more housekeepers, which will ultimately drive room rates up.

Or, they have a second shift that starts around 11 without adding headcount, since guests who are staying on limit how much work a morning crew can do. Hotels can also give late-departure rooms to late-arriving guests and clean early-arrival rooms first.

They can keep a room empty the night before, which costs a night of revenue, or charge a fee for late checkout and early check-in.

Occupancy obviously determines staffing. At 70% occupancy, a hotel has clean, empty rooms, and an early check-in costs it nothing unless it has ratcheted down its housekeeping staff due to lower occupancy projections for a season. The squeeze comes on sold-out nights.

How Amex got its 4 p.m. checkout

Fine Hotels + Resorts launched in 1991 with 120 properties. Together with The Hotel Collection it now covers more than 3,400 hotels in 116 countries.¹³ FHR is the only Amex program that guarantees a 4 p.m. checkout at every participating hotel, and The Hotel Collection does not guarantee it.¹⁴

Audrey Hendley, president of American Express Travel, told From the Tray Table that her during ongoing conversations with hotels, the 4 p.m. checkout is a recurring topic. Amex adds properties in an annual decision window, and the benefits go only to Platinum and Centurion cardmembers who book through Amex Travel.¹⁴ Amex has not published what it pays hotels for FHR bookings, and the contract terms are not public.

Amex and travel advisors are arm wrestling for clients, and Amex recently decided they’d cut advisors out of the ability to book our clients.

Forbes reported on Oct. 14 that travel advisors could book these benefits through a channel called RezSaver until Sept. 15, when Amex ended that access for Fine Hotels + Resorts, The Hotel Collection, and Cruise Privileges, so qualifying reservations now go only through Amex Travel.

Jay Johnson of Coastline Travel Group, (we are hosted under Coastline), which has about 575 contracted advisors, told Forbes the 4 p.m. guaranteed late checkout is “the one thing that drives us all a little crazy.”

Forbes also quoted me calling Amex our biggest competitor.¹⁵ Thanks for the press mention, Jacques Luxe Ledger: Private Edition!

I could not locate data on the channel mix for luxury hotels between direct, Amex, advisors, and OTAs (online travel agencies) like booking.com. However, I did find the following info.

Forbes reports that hotels get 40–70% of their business from agencies.

MMR Hotels, a revenue consulting firm, suggests target ranges for luxury hotels: direct 35–45%, OTAs 25–35%, corporate and GDS (Global Distribution System) 15–20%, and “other” 5–10%. These are the consultants’ recommendations, not measured data. They don’t separate advisors, consortia or card programs, so Amex and advisor bookings fall inside “direct,” “GDS” and “other” depending on how each hotel codes them.

Timo Bohn, a global account director at Mandarin Oriental, called agencies the group’s core business and said its Amex arrangements carry no special room rates.¹⁵

TravelSort calls the guarantee a liability, since the room cannot be ready until evening, and says hotels sometimes close inventory to Amex during busy holiday periods and keep selling rooms through other channels.⁴ Amex Canada’s terms say noon -in and late checkout depend on availability and eligibility at check-in, and the marketing text on the same page calls the perk guaranteed.¹⁶

Virtuoso

Virtuoso is a network of more than 1,200 agency locations and 20,000 advisors. I’m a Virtuoso advisor via the agency that hosts us, Coastline Travel. Clients who book through us receive amenities that may include guaranteed upgrades and confirmed early check-in or late checkout, resort credits, and upgrades.¹⁷ Virtuoso’s amenity packages are negotiated property by property, and the standard listing reads “early check-in and late checkout subject to availability.”¹⁸

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the discussions that bagged Amex a guaranteed late checkout while Virtuoso, despite all its pull in the industry, has been unable to match that.

Why do I think this happened?

Amex sells one fixed-benefit package under its own name, so a hotel joining FHR accepts the 4 p.m. checkout as part of the program. Virtuoso sets packages hotel by hotel, so each guarantee depends on that hotel agreeing to it.

FHR reaches only Platinum and Centurion cardmembers, so a hotel can size its exposure to that group. Virtuoso is open to the public through thousands of advisors, and a network-wide guarantee would have no comparable ceiling.
Amex describes long-running relationships and an annual process for adding hotels, with the 4 p.m. checkout as a standing topic. Virtuoso reaches guaranteed times one hotel at a time through enhanced amenities.

What to do with this when you book

The travel industry has negotiated rate parity rules, where our rates are the same as booking a hotel direct, in theory. However, hotels and advisors do still see completely fabricated flash sale discounts pop up on the regular, and when our clients send them, we have to come back and tell the client that rate does not, in fact, exist.

This creates a delay and a trust issue. For hotels, it’s like whack-a-mole fighting these rates they did not approve. For advisors, we find ourselves arguing over the value of booking through us vs an OTA or credit card portal.

If you see a rate on an OTA or a channel like Tik Tok that you don’t see on the hotel’s website, chances are it is not approved by the hotel. Don’t fall for a scam.

I always tell my clients, “book the room you want, and if you get upgraded, it’s a pleasant surprise, but don’t feel let down if you’re banking on an upgrade.” If you need a room at 9 a.m., book the prior night. If you want a late checkout, ask early and ask again the night before, but don’t expect it.

If you know a travel advisor, consider supporting their business and weigh the care they will give you for a trip vs. the Amex portal. Think of it like supporting small business vs. ordering from Shein. Amex might get you the guaranteed late checkout, but they won’t be there to help you fix something when it goes wrong the same way a solid travel advisor will.

That said, if you’d like to book your hotel stays or other travel with me, reach out at AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com

🗝️ The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun

Four Seasons Scottsdale at Troon North is under contract for $372 million. Braemar is selling the 210-room resort to Evergreen Acquisitions, a Delaware LLC incorporated in June with almost no public record, at about $1.8 million per room against the $267.8 million Braemar paid in 2022. The deal was scheduled to close October 22. (AZ Big Media)

Cheval Blanc is taking over a Costa Smeralda icon. The 1960s Hotel Pitrizza relaunches as Cheval Blanc Pitrizza in May 2027, the brand’s first Italian address, with the hotel owned by Smeralda Holding, a Qatar Investment Authority company, and managed by LVMH. Key count and rates had not been published when the tracker was last verified. (Hotels for Kings)

Fouquet’s opens in Gstaad on December 4. The Barrière property has 11 suites and 6 apartments combining 33 rooms, plus a private chalet, a spa, and a Zuma pop-up, and it takes over the former Ultima Gstaad address after Paris, New York, Courchevel, St. Barts, and Mykonos. There is no online booking yet, so rates come on request. (Hospitality Net)

Winnie-the-Pooh is staying in New York. Britain renewed its push to bring the original toys home as the first book turned 100 this month, and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal answered that Pooh belongs to New Yorkers and is not leaving soon. The New York Public Library has held the toys since 1987, and Queen Camilla delivered the missing Roo in April. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Gaming tourism has reached the Oregon Trail. Kinsey Gidick drove her 11-year-old through the Wyoming stretch from Casper to Independence Rock and Devil’s Gate, and the Geekdom Travel advisor she interviewed says trips built around game lore keep growing. A February 2026 study in Tourism Management tied the release of Black Myth: Wukongto a 156 percent jump in visits to China’s Shanxi Province. (Kinsey Gidick, AFAR)