A longer stay is not a cheaper night.

Riasi, Schwartz and Liu published a result in 2017, in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, that runs against intuition. On average, the hotels in their record charged more per night as the stay got longer. Not less. More.

The intuition is easy to recognize. Someone booking four nights usually assumes the fourth will come a little cheaper than the first, like a larger pack of almost any product. That expectation is real. The rate in the record is also real. They are not the same fact, and they do not point the same way.

A single tonight number cannot hold both. It shows one figure for one night and assumes the night is the whole story. It is not. Length changes what that night is worth. A Thursday inside a three-night booking is not the same product as a Thursday sold on its own. In the record, on average, the per-night figure rose when the stay got longer. The paper does not pin that movement on one reason at one hotel. It reports the direction.

That last word needs to be read slowly. “Direction” means up or down. It does not mean a percentage that can be copied onto a particular hotel’s Friday. The paper does not say “charge X percent more from the third night.” It says that, on average, the night came out more expensive when the stay was longer. Applying a hotel’s own percentage means looking at that hotel’s own stays. The paper does not do that job for the hotel.

The reason beside the rate therefore has to say two things: whether the stay is one night or several, and what effect that length had on the figure. If it does not, the person reading the number fills the gap with the usual expectation, which is the one the record tends to contradict. The explanation is not extra. Without it, the number is read backwards.

So do not assume a longer stay should be cheaper per night. In the published record, on average, the opposite happened, and that finding is a direction, not a percentage to copy. Beside the rate, say whether the stay is one night or several, and what that length did to the figure. A discount, if there is one, has to come from your own stays.