Free cancellation used to run until the afternoon of arrival at most hotels. Deadlines have moved steadily earlier, and in busy markets they now fall days or weeks ahead.
Late cancellations are hard to replace
A room released on the day of arrival has very little time left to be resold, and the pool of travellers still searching that late is small.
The later the release, the deeper the discount required to fill the room, so the hotel loses either the sale or the rate.
Moving the deadline earlier returns the room to inventory while there is still time to sell it at a normal price.
Booking behaviour changed the exposure
Comparison platforms made it trivial to hold several refundable reservations and decide later, and a large share of those bookings were never going to be honoured.
That inflates the apparent booking pace, which distorts the forecast the pricing system depends on and causes rooms to be priced against demand that does not exist.
Earlier deadlines suppress speculative holding, because a reservation that cannot be cancelled cheaply is only made when the trip is real.
Event dates get the strictest terms
Where demand is concentrated on specific nights, the cost of an unsold room is highest and the deadline moves furthest out.
Minimum stay requirements usually appear alongside, and some properties switch entirely to non-refundable terms for those dates.
The same property can therefore offer flexible terms for an ordinary week and prepaid, non-refundable terms for a festival week.
Rate types now differ mainly on flexibility
Most hotels publish a prepaid non-refundable rate alongside a flexible one, and the gap between them prices the option to change plans.
Semi-flexible rates sit in between, allowing changes but charging a fee or forfeiting a deposit, which is often the better value of the three.
The flexible rate is genuinely worth its premium on trips with connecting travel that might fail, and rarely worth it on a fixed short break.
Reading the terms that actually apply
The deadline is stated in the hotel's local time zone, which catches travellers cancelling from a different one on the final day.
Third-party bookings are governed by the platform's terms as well as the hotel's, and the stricter of the two applies in practice.
Where plans are uncertain, booking a flexible rate and rebooking non-refundable once dates firm up captures most of the saving without the exposure.