Posted by one of our clients:

Currently hotels have fixed slots for check-in and check-out times. Obviously guests can sometimes make use of early check-in or late check-out services at an extra cost. So far this has been the smartest and most flexible way of managing the demand for different arrival and departure times. This requires a lot of manual interference from front desk teams, who need to manage the inventory, add additional items on the bill and have to manually approve or reject the early check-in or late departure.

What I am looking for is a PMS and booking engine that allows me to offer different arrival time and departure time slots, based on a fixed price or percentage basis that can affect the base rate of that specific night both in a positive (guest pays more for each hour extra) or negative way (guests gets back money for every hour they need the room less than the given standard time). After the final price has been calculated and time slots are confirmed the reservation is pushed in to the PMS with the correct interval and adjusted price.

I believe this is the best possible way of making the direct sales channel more interesting and competitive by offering a level of service and freedom to the guest OTA's are not able to match yet. I also believe this can radically change the way we manage our inventory and has the potential of increasing the room revenue by a significant amount.