This doesn't pass the sniff test.

Why would the candidate be on the hook for the flight change and extra night at a hotel?

When I interviewed with Google ~10 years ago, they booked and paid for my my flights (from China to the US), hotel and car hire. I didn't have to book, pay and then ask for reimbursement, let alone foot the bill myself.

The 'two days' sounds weird to me as well. In my experience (on both sides of the table) face to face interviews were scheduled to be on a single day.

Perhaps things have changed or your friends were interviewing for very specialist roles?