Can my customers book a hotel for the same night on my website if they are searching late in the evening?

Yes, in most cases they can, but how late in the evening it still works depends on the supplier and on the individual hotel. Same day arrivals are normal business for hotel content, and a search for tonight will usually return results. What changes is the number of properties and rates you see, because many hotels stop selling for same day arrival after a cut off time they set themselves.

The important thing to understand is that these cut off times follow the local time of the hotel, not the local time of your office or your customer. So a late night search for a city in another time zone may already be past the cut off there, even though it feels early where your customer is sitting. You will also notice that the cheaper advance purchase rates often disappear first for same day stays, so what remains tends to be the flexible and walk in style rates.

For same day bookings it is worth paying attention to whether the booking confirms instantly or goes on request. An on request booking that needs the hotel to reply is risky when the guest is arriving in a few hours, because the reply may not come in time. Where you can, steer same day customers towards properties that confirm immediately, and send the voucher to the guest straight away so they have something to show at reception.

Run a test search late one evening for a few cities you sell often and see which hotels and rates still come back, then ask about the same day cut off rules and how quickly confirmations reach the property so you know what to promise a guest who is booking at the last minute.