Ask HN: Why don't hotels let you pick your room?

As for why you can't pick your room in a typical hotel, I'm not in the business but I can imagine the reasons are mostly advantageous only to the hotel. Not really for malicious reasons, but just designed to maximize occupancy. I kinda imagine a Tetris type of board where, if the hotel management is allowed to control it, will be packed with no void spaces - always as close to full capacity as possible. In fact, it will be overbooked with the expectation of cancellations. If they let the visitors control it (i.e. choose your own room) then the schedule will have a lot of void spaces (unbooked days) with the best rooms taken and the less desirable ones unbooked.

There are times when I would pay a premium with no-refund allowed if I could lock in a specific room, though. I'm sure others would as well. There's probably an opportunity for a hotel to do this.

Since we're talking about hotels, I think the business in general has a lot of faults. I get more perks at a $10 per night hostel or $50/night Airbnb apartment, than I do at a $300 per night hotel.

When you book a hotel for $300 per night, they nickel and dime you for everything. Wifi? You'll need to register for it at the front desk, and pay $20 per day. Oh, want a bottle of water, or small snack, that's another $10. That hostel, or cheap-o hotel will give you free wifi. I'd say half of the Airbnb places I've stayed at left beer or a bottle of wine in the fridge, and a few places had a giant fresh platter of fruit on the kitchen table.

Why doesn't this happen with a $300 per night hotel? To me, this is a complete turn off. I'll avoid the fancy hotels, because I don't know where it'll end. They're trying to gouge me at every single corner when I've paid a premium, and instead of being an appreciated customer, I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. My parents are well off, and I know they feel the same way. When they go on vacation and stay at a high end hotel, they have to tip people left and right. They're forced to use the staff at the entrance for carrying their bags up to the room, and then they need their wallet ready to tip them for that 2 minutes of work. What kind of awful first impression is that? You're on vacation, paid a small fortune for a room, and within minutes you need to shell out more cash.

Yes, I know their thought process is they can squeeze absurd prices out of people that have money, but I think it's completely backwards and destroys their image and sense of luxury.

I think there's a business for a mid-range hotel with perks. Take a mid-range hotel with $150 per night rooms. Add $15 of free perks, and charge $165 per night for your rooms. With that $15, you could give every visitor free wifi, 2 bottles of water, a couple of bananas/oranges, bag of chips, couple of health bars, bottle of juice, 2 beers or a bottle of wine, and small bag of nuts. To me, that's a huge difference in service and experience for a small price. It would make me book that place every night of the week, and I'd recommend it to others. I'd put employees or clients up in such a place, knowing they're feeling pampered. Why doesn't this exist? Would this not be appealing to anyone else?

In addition, there are frequent customers who may need a last minute room and companies (such as an airline when a flight is cancelled or overbooked or delayed) that may need a block of rooms on short notice.

An airplane on the other hand is a public space, and the individual has much more limited control over much less space...trash an airline seat and you're probably going to jail.

However, Room 77 just recently announced a licensing deal with Google that indicates somewhat of a pivot to mobile with a portion of their team joining Google (http://skift.com/2014/04/07/room-77-taps-google-for-an-exit-...).

As a lifelong student of hospitality, former hotelier, and now cofounder in a hotel startup, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see hotels letting travelers pick their own rooms. This would be a logistical nightmare with preparing rooms, early checkins, late checkouts, stayovers, etc. In Vegas forget about it; there are days when a hotel will turn over 1000+ rooms and it would be impossible to do so in an orderly manner. First to checkout are the first cleaned and the first available to whomever is at the front desk. Plain and simple.

Inventory in other hotels can get tricky with numerous bed types, room types, room view upgrades, etc. It sounds like a great idea for travelers, but a nightmare for hotels who would have to deal with irate guests if they didn't get their desired room.

Commodification is a thing right now with hotels (think of all those upsells on planes like extra leg room; a company called Nor1 - http://www.nor1.com/ - is working on streamlining hotel related upgrades) and the 24 hour stay (not so much technology behind this one, it's built into their property management systems). So if you check in at 6pm the first day you have to be out by 6pm the next day (or whatever time you checked in). If the 24 hour thing works, pre-checkin room selection might stand a chance and get built in to as a part of the upgrade process (I'd imagine it'd encourage you pick a better view or room type and for a fee).