Why we need to call time on the 10am check-out deadline

Josh Martin is a London-based journalist who writes across business and travel topics.

OPINION: Want to lose friends and alienate people as an expat back in New Zealand? One shortcut I can recommend is rattling off a list of improvements you’d like to make to your old country, influenced by your worldly experience overseas.

But, if you’d indulge me just this once, I’ve an easy idea that’d make the New Zealand tourism experience just that much more user-friendly: the 10am check out – where bleary-eyed guests must depart hotel rooms or bach rentals – must end. Somebody tell the Aussies too.

Like a pest species invasion, this rule has taken hold in our amenable climate and thrived. It’s borderline criminal, especially when combined with a check-in time as late as 4pm – a treat awaiting me and the family at our recent AirBnB rental.

“Check-out strictly 10am!”, the house rules book yelled at me, without a hint of flexibility. No, “unless by prior arrangement” or “unless you’re just easing into the day, relaxing with a cuppa, hitting up the breakfast buffet or sleeping off a big night of local hospitality”.

No ifs, or buts, pack up you stuff and go. And go quickly.

Obviously, we complied with our hosts’ demand, no final morning sleep-ins or breakfast banquets when we were having to partake in the polite Kiwi personality trait of the “pre-cleaning clean” (we can’t have the cleaner thinking we’re animals). So, I did expect to be greeted upon departure by a Jif-toting, yellow-glove-wearing extraordinaire, but no such luck; I can only guess somebody did pop in within the subsequent six-hour window.

It may sound completely inconsequential, why does it matter if your stay comes to an abrupt end an hour early? But the tight timekeeping means the anxious travellers pack the night before and miss final sights, the less anxious pack bleary-eyed at 9.50am and miss items. Both probably miss breakfast.

And there’s no leeway for late arrivals the night before. And all just to join a snaking queue of like-minded hotel guests all departing right on the final 10am whistle.

The tourism workers will roll their eyes at my first-world problem whinging – doesn’t this entitled guest know we need that crucial hour between 10am-11am, and in the worst cases 3pm-4pm to vacuum, mop, wipe, spray, tuck, polish and in time for the next arrivals?

But, as you may have witnessed in your own travels, the 11am check-out and even 2pm check-in times of Europe and beyond result in pretty much the exact same levels of perfectly starched linens and polished porcelain thrones as equivalent Southern Hemisphere abodes.

We must rise up against this tourism industry tyranny, this inhospitable hospitality and at least, in your politest penmanship, request 11am room departures. That final hour of holiday rest is golden.