Early check-in and late checkout: What are they and how to manage them?

If you've never dealt with early check-in or late checkout during your time managing tourist apartments... truly consider yourself lucky. The truth is that it's very common for Airbnb guests to need one of these two options to enter or leave your accommodation. But first, let's define what these two concepts are.

What are early check-in and late checkout?

Early check-in, or early arrival, is an extra service you can offer your guests where they can, if agreed, arrive before the check-in time. Late checkout, on the other hand, consists of allowing your guests to depart later than the maximum departure time. As we said at the beginning, it's possible that your guests had plans with friends before entering your apartment... and they were stood up. Instead of walking up and down the street with all their luggage, they call you to do an early check-in. However, you haven't finished cleaning the accommodation yet. What can you do? Or perhaps your guests' return flight was delayed and now they have more hours than they anticipated before leaving. Instead of waiting for 6 hours at the airport, they ask to leave later or have a late checkout. You, for your part, need to clean and prepare your Airbnb for the next guest. What can you do? As you can see, early check-ins and late checkouts are very stressful situations for both guests and hosts. You just have to take a look at the discussions in the Airbnb community. Below we explore some tips that can better prepare you for these situations.

Minimize unnecessary early check-ins

If it's already hard to deal with unexpected early check-ins – like the ones we mentioned in the examples – don't volunteer for unnecessary early check-ins. Don't offer this service directly in your listing. It's the fastest way to lose your mind as an Airbnb host. Imagine managing early check-ins at 9 or 10 in the morning every day. Coordinating and being effective with these early early check-ins is complicated with one or two apartments. Imagine the difficulty with more! Therefore, be very precise with how you communicate check-in or arrival instructions in your listing. A good example would be something like "check-in time is from 4 PM onwards". In this example, there is no ambiguity. Of course, if you are doing in-person check-ins, it's advisable to set a time range (for example, from 4 PM to 9 PM) to avoid late-night check-ins. Or even better, you can use a smart lock system that allows you to do remote check-ins. This way, whether your guest arrives at 4 PM or 3 AM, as long as it's not an early check-in, they can arrive autonomously.

Store luggage for guests with early check-ins and late checkouts

Your guests will bring luggage and suitcases. If they also come from afar, there will most likely be a lot of luggage. Whether they want to do early check-ins or late checkouts – or simply if they arrive earlier or leave later – your guests will appreciate it if you allow them to leave their bags somewhere, even if only for a few hours. This will improve your Airbnb ratings. If you have space in your tourist accommodation, you can use chests with padlocks so they can leave their luggage there.

Recommend what to do or where to go in the meantime

Now that they are no longer burdened with luggage, you can surprise them by going even further: what will they think of your accommodation if you also recommend things to do to kill the free time they have until they can check-in?

Recommend things they can do, bars or restaurants where they can eat something, places to see, etc. This is a great option to make a good first impression on those guests with early check-in or late checkout.‍

Do you know how much you can save if you allow your guests to arrive autonomously? Find out with the self check-in savings calculator. Download it for free.