I used to do that when I was doing extended work for a company that happened to also own a bunch of hotels. It was Pan Canadian and I had to stay at the Palliser, Banff Springs and Chateau Lake Louise for months (seven) at a time and they just comp’d my bill. Twern’t awful.
When I was at loose ends for awhile after college, I had a short-term job, just a couple of months, in a different state from where I’d been living. Renting a cheap hotel room by the week worked in this context. Trying to find an apartment that wouldn’t mind a two-month lease, and having to scrape up one month’s rent plus one month’s deposit in advance, didn’t seem worth even considering.
I’ve been told by a couple who did a lot of cruising that they once met a retired woman who lived on the ship. She got a nice room, maid service, all her meals, laundry, medical treatment when she needed it, regular changes of scenery and new company every week, all for about the same total price as a small apartment onshore (I assume the cruise line gave her a bulk discount, too, and it wasn’t an expensive ship to cruise on anyway). So why not? She kept a PO box in Miami which she visited every month for her pension and Social Security checks etc., but other than that there was just no need for her ever to leave the ship.
My parents/grade-school-age brother did, for a few months. They stayed in a motel 6 room with their two dogs. They did so because my parents made a series of really bad financial decisions that culminated in trashing their credit and being unable to put up a security deposit for an actual apartment.
After years of helping them out financially from time to time (“oh, we just need to borrow $200 to make rent, we’ll pay it back”), I finally had to say “no more.” I had a long-term girlfriend (who became my wife) and I knew that I needed to save my money for my own house/family. I was willing to let them live on the street if that is what it took for them to get their life in order.
It was pretty heartbreaking.
I have heard of this also for retirees. The daily price of a cruise ship room is really not that awful when you factor in food, utilities, etc., compared to paying for a mortgage, etc. What really jacks up the cost of cruising is often the excursions.
My wife and her famility lived in two hotel rooms for two months following a pipe burst in their house back when she was in high school. This happened over a long weekend and caused enormous damage. The homeowners insurance paid for the hotel stay and she said it wasn’t too bad because she remembers the daily maid service as being pretty great.
I spend more time in hotels than home. I’m in a Holiday Inn in Detroit writing this. I visit suppliers to the big 3 car assembly plants, and when there is an issue on quality or delivery, it takes days, weeks, or even months to fix. Often times, I stay in the same hotels as similar staff from Ford, GM, Chrysler.
Rental cars, flights, hotels, meals…all paid for.
Vacation for me is being home. In fact I am taking next week off, and relatives come stay at my place deep in a forest.
Ps I give away every free hotel and flight I get. Once gave a free flight and hotel to a sweet girl in a restaurant who was in a long distance romance. He proposed to her on that trip. Still happily married with kids many years later.
I could never work in an office or factory. Give me the highway, skyway, and jacuzzi suite with room service and a nice view.
My ex was living in an extended stay hotel after he lost the house. I SO wish he could have stayed there and I’d almost be willing to pay to send him back.
I was on a 3 month assignment in Evansville in a hotel in 2005 when that dealy tornado hit KY and IN. In fact it killed the maid that lived on my floor, as well as 21 others. For the next 2 months, there were many people I met in that extended stay hotel, who lost their homes. Plus the national guard stayed there, keeping order. There were also people there, jurors I think, in a lengthy trial of an Indiana State Trooper who killed his own family.
Ps I slept right thru that F4 tornado, even had my hotel windows open. Woke up to find my room a mess.
My sister and her family spent about six weeks in a hotel after a car fire in their attached garage. It sort of sucked for the nine year old son since he had close to no toys or video games our anything but there’s worse things in life.
Personally? No. But working in a public library, I encounter them regularly.
Most of the folks I encounter staying in this kind of housing mention having moved for a job that either is short-term or at best might lead to long-term, and don’t want the risk of a year lease if they only wind up employed for 3 months.
Years ago (early 80s), there were still SRO hotels in New York City. I knew a few people who came to NY right out of school, looking for jobs. They’d get a room at an SRO, get a job, save up a few bucks for an apartment security deposit and so on, and then get the apartment.
No more SROs in New York, though. Kind of too bad. It was a workable way to get started.
Well, some cruises advertised are for the small inside rooms [no windows or balconies] 10 nights eastern Caribbean leaving from Cape Liberty, round trip at $68 a night per person, double occupancy. Add in tax, tips it is pretty reasonable, call it $750 for 2 weeks per person all inclusive as long as you don’t drink or go to specialty restaurants or paid excursions. You do have to pay to send your laundry through the ships laundry, or you could spend the turn around time back in the home port at a laundromat and simply have 2 weeks plus a few outfits worth of clothing. This specific one is on Explorer of the Seas, a ship we did a cruise on about 5 years back. It was very comfortable, and had enough little places to grab food, snacks, coffee and whatnot that were inclusive, the staff were quite nice, and tended to get to know their regulars so I would imagine even if you had to stuff yourself into one of the small inner cabins you would be comfortable. Or you could vary which ship you were on if you based out of a major port like Fort Lauterdale, where a majority of cruise lines base their Caribbean ships out of. And there are cruise lines that have self serve laundries and might be a bit cheaper. I just checked Royal Caribbean because it is one I am directly familiar with.
Residential hotels were quite common in big cities before World War II. A respectable young man with a downtown job would live in such a place—which offered housekeeping, laundry service, and perhaps even meals—for the years in between graduating from college and taking a new bride home to a suburban cottage to start a family. Lots of North Side Chicago apartment buildings were once residential hotels.
Further down the food chain were the hotels that catered to casual or modestly paid workers. Lots of railroaders, for instance, didn’t have full-time jobs with health care and pension plans; they worked on the “extra board” or otherwise got enough shifts each month to (most of the time) keep a room at a residential hotel near the station. Some of these places bordered on being middle-class, rather than the skid-row flophouses we now lump them in with.
An elderly cousin of my mom’s lived in a downtown Chicago hotel all the time I knew him. He died when I was in my teens, and I never asked him about his choice. I figure it was primarily convenience. He was not at all wealthy and lived a very modest life (retired circus advance man, Shriner, Mason - really wish I could talk with him now!)
But the one thing I wanted to add was that in his last couple of years of life he decided he was tired of doing laudry, so he just bought new underwear and socks instead of washing the ones he already had. Donated the used ones to a charity (that presumably washed them before doling them out.) Interesting guy.
When I was being relocated by my company, the movers lost all my household goods and my car. While they looked for it, I was put up at the Crown Plaza in the same office complex as my work. I was supposed to be there for three days originally (over thanksgiving) and stayed until January. 45 days total, about $13k total, including a couple thousand in food. If they got me a corporate apartment they’d have to do it for a month and rent me a car. They would have still been way ahead, but they didn’t know when my stuff would turn up.
They also paid for about two grand in clothes. It was a suit and tie culture back then.
I put on about ten pounds.
One of our executives was on a two year assignment just before his retirement. He had just lost his wife of 40 years. He stayed in a B&B for the whole two years. He was old school, didn’t cook or keep house in any way. One of those odd cases where he went from home to college housing to married and never had to look after himself.