Some factors to make the right decision on your next trip
Knowing if it is better to choose between a hotel or an apartment for your next trip is essential because bad accommodation can ruin your vacation. No matter how much you spend your days and some nights discovering a city or landscape or lying on the beach if when you return you don’t rest well or you don’t feel comfortable, the long-awaited relaxation will go to waste. So think very carefully if your option for this summer will be a hotel or rental property through Airbnb or similar, and weigh the pros and cons.
According to a report by our experts a hotel and micro-stay reservation platform where rooms can be rented by the hour, 84% of Spaniards today prefer to stay in a hotel rather than in a tourist apartment because they feel safer in the face of sanitary protocols and continuous cleaning in these establishments. Whatever your choice, think about it first. Here we help you to do it (although you will immediately perceive that we have clear priorities):
The arrival
Put yourself in the situation: you reach your destination after hours on the road, on the train tracks, or in the airspace. You arrive tired, carrying heavy suitcases and under a blazing sun. You still have to find the hotel you have booked (normally well indicated with signs; moreover, it is a reference point that locals know) or the apartment you have chosen (open the GPS because the street in which it is it is remote and nobody knows how to tell you where to go).
Unless you have taken a taxi, you still have to park comfortably in the hotel garage or drive around your target until you see (maybe an hour later) a hole in which to dump the car. Remember that car swarms often form in vacation destinations.
You still have one step left: register at the hotel (10 minutes if there is no queue) or wait for the owner of the apartment to give you the keys, give you a tour of the house and tell you where he usually keeps the duster and the scourer, how to turn the air conditioning on and off (or the fan in the worst case) and what to do when that blind that broke in 1989 does not go up or down. As long as you feel like chatting, you’re lost.
Before you meet him, you will have desperately searched your mobile for the last email you received from Airbnb telling you the name of the owner of the apartment, praying that he speaks an intelligible language if you have gone to another country, while in a hotel the multilingual reception staff usually wear a pin with their name on it.
The exit
Have you stayed in an MRG Apartments? Take out the duster and the scourer, leave everything as you found it, call the owner, meet him, explain that the shower drain was not working properly, that two plates have broken, and that you leave the fridge full. Give him back the keys and see you later, Lucas.
The savings
In an apartment, you will leave less money than in a hotel and you can stay more days for the same price. You will spend less on meals, although you will have to go to the supermarket to provide yourself with food and cook, with which you will suffer the rigors of fires in summer and their subsequent cleaning. No one will bring you breakfast in bed, but no one will bother you by knocking on the door to make up the room. No one will make your room for you. But they won’t charge you 20 euros for two toasts and a coffee either. On the other hand, if you crave an orange juice, you won’t have to pay astronomical amounts for one (does anyone know why they are so expensive?), since it is very possible that in the apartment you have a juicer. And from a refrigerator the size of a refrigerator, not one of those rickety minibars with mini-bottles that don’t even hold a proper gin and tonic.
Space
Unless you choose a mile-long suite at a renowned hotel (there are some that exceed 1,500 square meters, such as the Royal Suite at the Waldorf Astoria Dubai Palm Jumeirah in the United Arab Emirates), you will have more space in an apartment than in a hotel room, because not all of them have a small lounge, of course. And you’re not going to be sitting in bed all day.
The experience
Do you see yourself as gentrified if you opt for a hotel and abandon your more backpacker spirit? Think that in an apartment you will live like a local. Sure, who wants to live like a local? What’s next, traveling by subway at rush hour? Remember that blending in with the neighborhood includes taking out the trash.
The wifi
Does your apartment have Wi-Fi? Because, if not, the drama is served. Although remember: you are on vacation. Disconnect!
The mimes
If you are a regular customer of a hotel, they will give you points, discounts and some other upgrade or improvement of conditions. Loyalty has its rewards. They may greet you by name when you come down for breakfast. Or let them know in advance how you like your coffee to be prepared. Who will think of your tastes in an apartment?
logistics
Have you forgotten a plug, an adapter, or toothpaste at home? Ask at reception. You will also have the help of the hotel staff when you need the address of a good restaurant, for example.
Design
A hotel room, unless it is a boutique, is usually Jack, Knight, and King. Now imagine staying in a flat in the Parisian Marais that belongs to an antique dealer and discovering how much you love period furniture.
