What Is Your Hotel Room’s ‘Best Before’ Date?

‘Best before’ dates are a really common concept, often seen on business-to-consumer products; some products have ‘best before’ dates that are 10 years after the product release date, while others (like milk, cheese and bread) have exceptionally short lifespans—sometimes as short as a week.

Strangely enough is that one highly perishable consumer product is almost never considered to have a ‘best before’ date: the hotel room. Here’s why I say that hotel rooms have a ‘best before’ date: an empty room is an expired one, after which the empty room becomes a liability, not an asset.