Attention roadies, day trippers: Check in, and pay, for just a few hours (www.chaturmusafir.com)

Attention roadies, day trippers: Check in, and pay, for just a few hours

(Micro-stays are catching on as hotels, apps and websites allow business and transit travellers, roadies and day trippers to check in — and pay — for just a few hours.)

There used to be just one kind of place that gave out rooms in hourly batches. Not any more.

Responding to demand from travellers — mainly business and transit, but also day trippers and roadies — www.chaturmusafir.com website is helping guests book rooms for anything from 3 to 12 hours, and pay accordingly. Guest has to verify their account in advance before getting this facility.
And no, these aren’t just rest houses and lodges; they range, in fact, from budget to boutique and starred hotels..
The term for such bookings is micro-stays, and the concept first became popular in Europe during the economic downturn of 2008, after which it spread to the US and then parts of south-east Asia.
With changing market dynamics, including online bookings and real-time reviews, hotels too must change, says Adarsh Shetty, president of AHAR, the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association. “Micro-stays are a reflection and a part of that change.”
They’re certainly making some hotels more popular.

Chatur Musafir allows guests to book hotel rooms in packs of 3, 6 and 12 hours. In 19 months, the website has seen 14,000 micro-stay bookings at 2-, 3- and 4-star hotels across 20 cities.

“In a price-sensitive market, if we can resell the same room in a same-day cycle and double our revenue, then why not,” says Sujith Chandrasekharan, director of rooms and the man leading the micro-stay initiative at Park properties across Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa and Navi Mumbai.

At the Taj Lands End in Mumbai, there is no new-age aggregator involved, but the five-star hotel came to the micro-stay model on its own. Land’s End now offers four-hour stays between 9 am and 6 pm.

“Given today’s hectic work schedules, people find it difficult to plan holidays in advance. Checking into a hotel, even in their own city, can provide a break from the routine. Since these guests may not necessarily want to rent the room for an entire night, we came up with the micro-stay option,” says Zal Tarapore, director of rooms at Taj Lands End.

Courtyard by Marriott in Gurgaon and Sahara Star in Mumbai both introduced micro-stay options three years ago too, responding to the many short-stay inquiries they received from business travellers.

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How Chaturmusafir Started

Two years ago, ad executive Preeti Jain and her husband Manish, a businessman, were travelling from Coimbatore to Jodhpur by flight and then train, with a nine-hour gap in between.

“We needed a room for, say, six hours. Just to wash up and relax. But we still ended up paying the full day’s tariff,” says Preeti, 35 Co-Founder . “We decided to do something about that, and that’s how Chatur Musafir [Smart Traveller] came into being.”

Their website now allows guests to book hotel rooms in packs of 3, 6 and 12 hours. In 19 months, it has seen 14,000 micro-stay bookings at 2-, 3- and 4-star hotels across 15 cities, including metros like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, smaller cities like Jaipur, Kochi and Amritsar and pilgrim towns like Shirdi & Katra.

Mumbai-based businessman Manoj Mehata, Director @ Kora Gifts used the website while driving to Gandhidham, paying just Rs 1,400 for a 12-hour stay at a 3-star hotel in Ahemedabad, which would have otherwise cost Rs 3,000 (for 24 hours).
“I much prefer inter-city drives to trains or flights, but finding a nice, reasonable place to stop for the night was always a problem,” he says. “Four months ago I stumbled upon Chatur Musafir while searching the internet with word combinations like Hourly Hotels, short-stays etc. This time, I checked in at 10 pm, slept through the night, had a shower the next morning, grabbed my complimentary breakfast and was back on the road by 8 am. It was convenient and great value for money.”

IN A NUTSHELL: WHAT ARE MICRO-STAYS?
* Disrupting the traditional 24-hour check-in-check-out cycle, micro-stays allow travellers to book hotel rooms for fewer hours and pay less too.
* While Japan’s ‘capsule hotels’ that offer tiny sleeping spaces to businessmen and its ‘love hotels’ for space-starved couples have been around for a while, micro-stays first become popular in Europe during the economic downturn of 2008, and then spread to the US and south-east Asia.
* Here, hotels ranging from budget to boutique and five-stars such as Courtyard by Marriott in Gurgaon and Sahara Star in Mumbai have begun to offer the option over the past three years.
* Websites and apps such as 6 Hourly, Stay Uncle, Chatur Musafir and HotelsAroundYou have also joined the game, acting as aggregators and tying up with hotels to offer packages in cities across the country.
* Options range from 3 to 12 hours, although many aggregators refuse to entertain unmarried couples.