long-term residents in hotels

I am just curious, are there any facilities (hotels, apartment buildings, condos) where one can establish a semi-permanent residence where the actual room/apartment floats but one’s possessions are held in storage when one is not there?
I am thinking about people who (if this happens at all) establish a residence at say a hotel and travel a lot. They leave the hotel for a long trip and the hotel takes all their personal belongings, or provides a locker for the person to pack, and moves them to storage and rents out the room. When the individual wishes to return, the hotel moves the belongings back into any available room and the person resumes his/her residence. Seems like a viable business model for people who travel a lot-has anyone heard of this arrangement anywhere?
Just curious.

I have seen condos with a ‘owner’s closet’ which is ‘in unit’ and locked, where the owner would have the key. But have never heard of what you said in terms of it floating with a lockable storage room.

I’m sure I’ve read articles about people who have done this. It may be cheaper for an older person than a stay in a retirement community. And I vaguely remember reading about one woman who did this on a cruise ship, where she was essentially a full-time resident among a shipful of vacationers.

As for your idea about moving one’s stuff around, that would need to be negotiated with the individual property. What happens if they lose one of your precious possessions in the process of packing them for storage? I think in the cases I’ve heard, the room taken by the long-term guests is unavailable for rental by others.

And some of the big chains now have luxury residences available for sale in various resorts. When you’re not living there, they can rent them out for you.

I certainly have heard of buying a condo and having it rented out when you are not using it. I am curious about the the opposite or almost the opposite. Where the long-term resident does not own any property but does own a right to stay in the complex. It seems to me that such a thing could be priced if there is a market. So I am wondering if anyone has done so.

I spent from mid October to Christmas last year (what’s that? 9 - 10 weeks?) living in a hotel mainly during the week and then staying with family on weekends. Each time I left the hotel I would pack my suitcase and leave it in the hotel’s luggage storage room. My car also stayed in the hotel car park. They didn’t have a problem with it. When I got back I’d be in a different room.

I believe that residence hotels used to be the downtown equivalent of a boarding house. I had a bachelor uncle who moved into one after returning from the Korean War. He lived there for 40+ years until he died.

You might be thinking of this columnby Cecil Adams.

Actually, I think I was thinking of this article. “In total he spends almost all 52 weeks of the year at sea, at a cost of about $70,000 per year.”

Yes; I’ve been part of teams where the whole team did it. We’d travel with our hand baggage only but leave a suitcase back at the hotel over the weekend. These were normal hotels and we’re talking about stays of “M-Th through a lot of months”. One of my coworkers had that arrangement for two years. Many of those would give us the same rooms whenever possible; for one of them this generally included an upgrade to the bigger rooms under the roof.

Both Spain and France have the legal figure of the “residential hotel”, which offer monthly rates.

I know the current management team of our local branch of a national extended stay hotel. I don’t know if this is company wide or not, but they do that for certain customers, since they hire the company I work for to do the moving(which seems silly but hey ‘free money’)

Yeah, pretty common here, too, although, gratefully, my current company tells us simply not to check out. When you do check out and they know you’re coming back, the concierge desk will happily check your luggage for you and keep it in their luggage room. In most cases, they have no problems with your leaving your car there, either.

(Sometimes in large cities where charging for parking in addition to the room is common, you might still have to pay for parking.)

All you kids will never know the joys of the old fashioned Residence Inns, where your suite was part of a semi-detached building, and you could walk the grounds, and there was a complimentary fake log for your fireplace every week. At least these days, they still have free booze from 5 to 7, so that’s something.

An owner of a bed and breakfast had just such an arrangement with a guest that lasted about 2 years. He was setting up a new corporate headquarters in Kansas City. He basically had a key to the place and would come and go as he pleased. Difference is he had the same room. He would also let the woman know if he needed another room for his own guests or if he needed a space to host a meeting or a party. Some days he would stay all day and she would serve him 3 meals. Other times just breakfast. All alone in his room or in the kitchen unless he had a guest over.

So I’m guessing a bnb or even an airbnb would work out even better.

Thanks for the comments!
Interesting to realize that a random idea of mine turns out to be fairly common in some circles. Nava’s experience sounds the closest, but now I wonder if there is more to Residence Inns than I realized. To me, they are just another motel chain.

The original definition of the Spanish pensiones* (nowadays usually translated as “BnBs”) was in fact that kind of arrangement: most of the people living in a pensión used to be long term guests.

  • Pensión also refers to the alimentary regime in a hotel or other guesting facility. Sin pensión: no food. Media pensión: breakfast and dinner included (in schools it’s the opposite: students on media pensión are those who eat lunch at the school). Pensión completa: all meals included. The name of the establishment originates from offering meals and housing in a single package.

These days, they pretty much are the same as any other motel chain – see my lament, above. However you do typically get a kitchenette, fridge, and sometimes a separate sitting room. But lots of other chains have moved into this space, resulting in the typical race to the bottom that makes them all worse off.

I think the only real issue with the setup described in the OP is the ‘going away for long stays’ combined with the ‘right to stay’. While keeping a room available for someone Mon-Fri with all weekends free to rent it out to other guests gives a nice regular income, guaranteeing a room to someone when they’re only there for a few weeks then away for months might wind up as something of a liability.

It might be viable to have one or two guests on this sort of setup, but allowing it as a general thing could be a bit of a scheduling nightmare. What happens when the hotel’s fully booked with other guests, then one of the ‘residents’ has a trip cancelled and doesn’t go or comes back early? Keeping a room empty for them just in case would cost bookings. Would the ‘resident’ have to book in advance? That would work for the hotel, but not so much for the guest.

When I was doing it the hotel room was booked for the specific times I’d be there well in advance. If something changed and the hotel couldn’t accommodate me, I’d have to get my stuff and go to another hotel. This never happened. I didn’t lose any sleep over it as I wasn’t the one booking or paying for it.

Do you mean a timeshare?

Certainly a timeshare is close. But there I believe one is a fractional owner of a specific unit.
The Spanish pensiones seems close. Though not exactly. There the resident does not own any property, not even a fraction, but also is not free to come and go. That is, I gather a pensione resident is there for a specific time period-usually a long time at a stretch. However, Nava describes what I imagine is exactly my hypothetical situation with her work colleagues.

My idea, and certainly there would be scheduling problems, is a large building where one can leave your personal belongings in storage and come and go without renting any specific room/apartment. The resident does not own any of the property, simply a renter, but pays something continuously to have a guaranteed room to stay in when the renter returns. While staying I assume the payment would increase. It sounds like Richard Pearse experience comes closest. The scheduling problems might be manageable for a large complex.

I’ve done my share of living out of suitcases / hotels, and what you’re describing posits more formality and payment than is empirically necessary most of the time.

In practice, when you’re a regular guest of a hotel for a long period of time, you don’t need the “continuous smaller payment” part there, because the manager and everyone knows you and will go to some trouble to make sure you have a room.

In theory, they could be totally booked and could ask you to find a room in a different hotel, but in many years of practice that never happened to me (or Richard Pearse), and they were always able to wrangle something even if it wasn’t scheduled explicitly.

It sounds like you just want a level of guarantee above that empirical reality that you’re willing to pay for, but I’d agree I haven’t seen anything with that level of formality / guarantee here or abroad.

Far better to rely on personal relationships and high reward status, in my opinion - it’s not only cheaper, but is probably more effective than a purely financial and contractual arrangement (that would presumably have some way to not give you a room with penalties on the hotel’s end if they couldn’t accommodate you).