As You Stay Review – Discounted Hotel Rooms Where You Pay For The Time You Stay

Introduction

As You Stay is relatively new app that lets you book hotels & receive discounted rates, the twist is that you don’t book hotels by the night but rather just the specific hours you need them. The concept is that sometimes you might just want a hotel for a few hours (e.g if you need to get some sleep before a flight or after a flight and before a meeting or if you want a day room when your in the city).

It’s not a new concept and it has been tried before (with very limited success). The idea is that it’s great for hotels because they are able to sell the same room multiple times or utilize room inventory that would usually go to waste without cannibalizing their own bookings by offering the room at a discount elsewhere for the full night (and even doing this would normally cause big issues with various price match guarantee policies and third party booking contracts).

The problem with the idea is two fold:

• It’s difficult to get that critical mass that is needed. Nobody wants to use the app or service when they have limited hotel selection and no hotels want to be listed if there are no users.
• They don’t seem to be able to price the rooms low enough to make them enticing. I mean they have some nice hotels in New York, but I don’t think $69 is particularly great value for an hour (although 5 hours at $73 is more enticing). Keep in mind those prices are pre-tax.

Coverage

At the moment As You Stay operates in the following cities:

• New York
• San Francisco
• Chicago
• Washington
• Boston
• Newark Airport
• Downtown Miami
• Miami Beach
• New Jersey

I personally see the most use in hotels near an airport as it’s rare I actually need a full night at those locations. At the same time a lot of airports already have hotels that you can purchase time in blocks at (I make frequent use of such a hotel in Singapore if I have a long layover and need to sleep).

What I Don’t Like

All that being said, the thing that I hate about As You Stay the most is the fact that it’s app only. I really really really hate this trend, I get that more and more people are going mobile/tablet only but if I’m preparing for a trip I’d much rather book something like this in advance on my laptop rather than using my phone. By all means invest in a streamlined app that is easy to use but please at least have a decent desktop solution as well.

I also don’t like the pricing for extremely short stays (sometimes I literally just want to have a shower and sleep for 15 minutes). I get that you still need to deal with check in and also cleaning but sometimes the lowest one hour rate is more expensive than a full stay at a budget option and do I really need that level of opulence when I’m going to be there for a few hours?

What I Do Like

• They have a referral program. If you’re referred you’ll get $25 towards your first stay and the person who referred you will get $25 after you’ve completed your first stay. My link is here if you want to use it (also rather than cluttering the comments at the end of this post, you can share your referrals and get another readers referral link by clicking here).
• They have a rewards program. I have no idea how it works, but apparently the more hours you stay the more ‘free hours’ you get. This is why you need a proper website so you can explain this.
• Choose the hours you want. Sometimes you’ll want to check in late and check out late the following day as well, this is possible with the app and depending on the hours you choose it can still be cheaper than booking a regular room (e.g rather than check in at 2PM and check out at 12PM the following day you might be able to select check in at 10PM and check out at 4PM the following day and it still be cheaper).

Our Verdict

Will I use As You Stay? In it’s current form, probably not. It’s on my phone now so I guess if I remember to check and I need a last minute/few hour hotel stay I’ll give it a check but I’ll probably be more likely to just book somewhere cheap for a regular night. I guess I’d probably be most likely to use it when I’d normally need to book a two night stay somewhere under normal booking rules and with this app I could just book hours instead.

Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments and remember to share your referrals in this linked posted.

Hat tip to Mile Nerd