You're not serious are you?

[PoliteBoy]

...Is what I wanted to say to the guest who booked over the phone tonight.

Just another call on a slow night at the front desk of a motel. Or it should have been if it didn't throw me for a loop for the rest of the night.

So this lady and her hubby are driving up the coast and they need a place to sleep. Give them the room rate and everything...then requested a 2AM check in.

2....A.....M....

Our desk closes at 9PM. I'd understand if it's before midnight, but 2AM is insane. That's less than half a night's stay coz our check out time is 10AM. At most, you'll be getting 5 hours sleep before the sun comes up.

I went blank for about 5 seconds and let the lady explain herself. Turns out they were travelling from Sydney up to the Gold Coast, which is at least 1000KM (621M) and takes well over 10 hours. Assuming they were already on the road, the call at 5PM meant they wouldn't arrive for another 9 hours.

There is something wrong with this whole situation both in terms of logic and common sense.
First of all, your lack of pre-planning is horrendously short-sighted.
Two, there are dozens of small towns with a few guaranteed to be tourist towns in that distance, use them.
Three, it's bloody dangerous to try and slog hundreds of K's late at night, in freezing weather just to reach a motel.

Well, I took down all the usual details and pre-charged their credit card for good measure. But seriously, I don't care where your destination is, it's better to play it safe and get an actual full night's sleep instead of plowing through the night for a 5 hour nap so you can be fully rested and fresh as a daisy for the next day. Again, there are dozens of towns between where we are and where you're driving, rest there for the night for your sake.

This is gonna be such a headache in the morning.

[Pixelated]

All I can say is

Wouldn't surprise me at all if they found they HAD to stop somewhere else along the line to get some sleep, and never made it to your place at all. I'm not the world's greatest travel planner, but that just boggles the mind.

[wordgirl]

If it doesn't make sense for you to staff someone that late (especially if you think it's unlikely they'll actually be there at 2 a.m.) and check them in, just say no.

But ... with two people in the car it's perfectly logical that one is driving and the other is sleeping; it could well be that their main objective is to have someplace to stop and get cleaned up. In my high-tourist, high-transit area, this is not a rare thing at all.

Preplanning and foresight are sometimes unattainable luxuries when it comes to travel - recently I had to make two cross-country trips (think: Boston to Sacramento) in the course of a week. At one point I spent 21 hours in transit just to be in a particular city for three hours -- if someone who didn't know why I was doing what I was doing looked at my itinerary, I'm sure they would have called ME "horrendously short-sighted," but funerals and car accidents don't always happen at the most convenient times.

(I rarely go against the contention that "this customer is sucky," given the venue, but in this case, they may well be doing exactly what they need to do to meet their precise needs.)

[Cai1987]

Meh, I've done weirder things on long road trips. We drove from upstate New York to central North Carolina (almost 700 miles, took us about 14 hours with stops) in one go last weekend because I had to work the next day. We were going to stop but the prospect of stopping somewhere late at night and then getting up to get back in the smelly car for another 3-5 hours just didn't appeal (plus the cost).

My family regularly made the drive from central Pennsylvania to North Carolina over the last few years in one day/overnight, and that's a solid 10 hours too.

[amylouky]

We do this all the time on our way to the beach, which is an 11-12 hour drive. We'll leave home around 7 PM, drive to a city that's a little more than halfway so we get there around 2 AM (counting dinner and restroom stops). We'll get 6-7 hours of sleep and resume the drive in the morning. We usually don't even change clothes (I know, eww) so we can just get up and go in the morning.

It works much easier for us this way for several reasons. One, the kids are usually sleeping in the backseat by the time the sun goes down. Two, the traffic is a lot lighter at night, and three, this schedule gets us to our destination right around 2-3 PM, which is checkin time at most hotels/condos in the area.

Never thought it would seem strange to someone.

[Racket_Man]

I used to do something similar when going from Cheeseheadland Central to where my Mother was. approx. 600 miles about a 10 hour drive time with 2 breaks. on the open road (Interstate highway system) the speed limit is 65 or 70MPH I set the speed cruise control to 4 or 5 mph above the limit and ... well...... cruised. I left home about 5am and got to Moms area around 3pm

[slyfoxxy]

If there's more than one person who can drive, it's not that illogical. Drove the 16 hours from Sydney to Adelaide in one go a few years back with my fiance. Only stopped to rest, pee and eat.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

We do this all the time on our way to the beach, which is an 11-12 hour drive. We'll leave home around 7 PM, drive to a city that's a little more than halfway so we get there around 2 AM (counting dinner and restroom stops). We'll get 6-7 hours of sleep and resume the drive in the morning. We usually don't even change clothes (I know, eww) so we can just get up and go in the morning.

It works much easier for us this way for several reasons. One, the kids are usually sleeping in the backseat by the time the sun goes down. Two, the traffic is a lot lighter at night, and three, this schedule gets us to our destination right around 2-3 PM, which is checkin time at most hotels/condos in the area.

Never thought it would seem strange to someone.

Traffic being lighter at night is one of the main reasons my dad and stepmom would leave on a Friday night to go to their beach house in Oak Island (approximately 4 hours away from Greensboro.)

On the occasions I'd have the time off from work to go with them for a week, we'd leave out on Friday evening around 8 (usually we'd leave their driveway and be on the road closer to 8:30 depending on how long the stepmother's parents would stand and chat by the car) and, including a stopover for a bit to eat and a restroom break in Fayetteville, we'd be arriving at The Dragon (so aptly named because by the time you made the trip down there all you could do was drag on in) around somewhere between midnight and 12:30.

Another reason we'd leave at night like that is to avoid the rush of people fleeing the island, as the vacation rentals check out time is around 10 a.m. so that means a stream of cars driving by the house (the house is on a narrow strip of road on the eastern part of the island known as Caswell Beach and you have two rows of houses on either side of Caswell Beach Road and the Intercoastal Waterway is just past the backyard and the beach is on the other side of the street.) The bridge which connects the island to Southport (on the mainland) at the time was 2 lanes (I hear it's been replaced with a 4 lane bridge) so you can imagine the traffic congestion at that time of day.

And around 3 p.m., it's the same way only opposite with folks coming to the island to check into their rentals. So we could sit on the front porch during the hottest part of the day and watch the cars drive by.

So yeah, maybe not so unusual.

[Arcus]

Back when my job required that I drive a lot, there were times I'd need a hotel at 2am. I'd much rather have 5 hours in a hotel bed than trying to sleep for 5 hours in a truck. The worst is when you knew it was going to be a very long drive with people waiting to meet you at the other end in the morning, but your boss wouldn't let you go because he wanted a ride to the airport for a flight that didn't leave until 8pm.

[GOInsanity]

Parents would wake my siblings and I up at 5am to make the 600+ mile drive from SC to western NY.

My hubby and I made the trip from Texas to South Carolina overnight. Arrived at my parents house at about 7am.

Driving during the night is awesome traffic-wise, especially if you have a partner and can tag-team it.

[protege]

Driving during the night is awesome traffic-wise, especially if you have a partner and can tag-team it.

Depends on the road. I know from personal experience that the PA Turnpike sucks at night. Trucks seem to multiply But seriously, when I go on vacation, we usually leave the house around 8AM, and arrive in Cape May around 4:30-5:00. Granted, both of us will switch off driving, and we'll stop a few times. Throw in the traffic on I-95 near a certain big bridge in Delaware, and it's no wonder it takes all day

[Bumbershoot]

We've napped in a restaurant parking lot after breakfast. 24 hour trip, two drivers, stopping only to eat, buy gas, take a pit stop. The last food stop was when we decided to nap before finishing the drive.
Planning for a trip often falls by the wayside when reality rears its ugly head.

[AccountingDrone]

Parents would wake my siblings and I up at 5am to make the 600+ mile drive from SC to western NY.

My hubby and I made the trip from Texas to South Carolina overnight. Arrived at my parents house at about 7am.

Driving during the night is awesome traffic-wise, especially if you have a partner and can tag-team it.

I love long drives overnight, though back in the late 70s and early 80s certain trips sucked because there was a lack of open gas stations in the middle of the night [I am specifically thinking of the Rochester NY to Springfield OH run, there was one open station between the OH border and where I had to cut south, and my mustang tank would get me from Rochester to that station, then fill up, grab coffee and pee, then drive the last half of the run. I had a BF at Wittenburg at the time]

I do a booty run from Rochester to the farm in Eastern CT alternate weekends, and it is 400 miles one way. [Rob does the run from CT to NY on alternating weekends.] 6 hours, one pit stop between Albany and Schenectady, which is pretty much the halfway point. But I have no issues with longer runs, I have done the Fayettnam-CT run [Ft Bragg to Norwich] at least a dozen times, cross country to visit his family about a dozen times. I tend to drive oddly, I get a full 8-10 hour drive, then a short nap, then alternate 4 hour drives with a gas and nap stop of around an hour or so. I can't sleep in a moving vehicle, so Rob just chats or sings along with me and the radio, and naps when I nap. Every 3d or 4th nap we either get a motel room or grab showers at truck stops. If we get a room, we tend to crash for 4 or 5 hours and then get back on the road.

Back in my seriously crazy youth, I had to get me and the car to Las Vegas, so I drove the first 16 or so hours, then I popped a hit of no shit for real speed and did the rest of the trip with my nerves jangling [I had the funkiest crawly feeling on my skalp ... not fun] then I did the crash and burn sleep for about 12 hours. I think the entire drive was about 35 hours solo. Never the hell again [I doubt my body could handle the drugs any more, I am 56 now and in craptastic health.]