This seems to exclude a lot of middle, however. “Some personal standards” can easily include Motel 6. I certainly never advocated camping out in a crack alley!
It just seems absurd to me to pay for luxury and costly resources that aren’t necessary, productive, or effective. Asking my company to scale down isn’t the same as asking them to eliminate all comfort entirely.
Well, right. But a typical city is going to have a range of hotels, with varying levels of quality. You might pick a Motel 6. Someone else may think that’s too fru-fru and go with the old Motor Inn on Rt 1, right across from the strip joint, right next to the state prison.
The difference you split with the company is going to be small compared to the deal that other guy gets. The next time the two of you come up for promotion, do you want management to say “Hmm, Trinopus is a great guy and all, but the other guy sure has saved us a lot more money just by being willing to put up with a little bed lice.”
I’m not saying your company isn’t insane. But it’s just that I can see the reason in not allowing employees to make their own accomodations for the company’s benefit. Something like that quickly becomes an expectation that everyone becomes judged against.
That’s ridiculous. I take very good care of my personal safety when traveling, and I don’t need to be at the Hilton to be able to brush my teeth and put on a fresh pair of socks. Being a cheapskate doesn’t mean you are some kind of gutter punk.
But I understand why they want me to be in a certain type of accommodation. They want me to be safe and well-rested, and they don’t want me to be tempted to cut corners for whatever reason. They also want it to make sense to others when I tell them where I am staying. That’s fine. It’s not my money.
Agreement both ways. Your first paragraph is really what my point in posting was about…but your second paragraph is also very sensible. Since it’s my safety and comfort, I’d rather they erred by paying for a little too much than for much too little.
When I’m vacationing on my own, that latter is my usual strategy. I’ve stayed in some remarkably crappy dumps! I consider it part of the adventure.
But, sure, since it’s a corporation involved, they have to look at things differently. They don’t want to piss off the guys who do a lot of business travel, and they sure don’t want to get sued if someone gets hurt.
(The only time I ever got hurt while travelling was at a fancy business-suites hotel. The coffee cup broke, and I cut my finger.)
I had to argue with my last job to stay in a (very nice) private room in an upscale boutique hostel. I was traveling solo and going to have a fair amount of time on my own, and sitting alone in a hotel room at night didn’t sound like much fun to me. I found a great hostel with a great common spaces, and had a really pleasant stay meeting travelers and finding other people to explore the city with. I think it was the first time, however, that particular hostel had someone leave every morning at eight in a suit =D. In the end, I think the company was pretty impressed that it only cost $30 a night rather than $250.
My current job requires employees to stay at approved hotels. Apparently they used to give a flat per diem for hotels and allowed people to pocket the difference. WIth the mix of cowboys we work with and shady places that we work, I can only imagine how that went. I think it’s a totally reasonable policy.
But if I stay a couple extra days to explore, the moment I’m paying for my own space, it’s off to the dorms with me.
When I’m staying in a fancy hotel in downtown Chicago, I’m not spending half my day on the subway getting to where I want to be. I walk out of my hotel and I’m there. Plus, because I’m centrally located, I can go back to my room; I don’t have to carry everything I might need with me like a homeless person. It’s like I have a great condo in the city versus being a commuter.
“Why are you there?” is an important question. If it is a stopover between a two day drive, I can forego a lot of stuff. If it is the vacation/business destination, then that changes things.
But other posters make a good point about diminishing value. The difference between a $50/night place versus $110 per night is huge. No loud drunks/air conditioners/hard beds/crack whores outside etc. I’ll spend the extra even for a stopover. Of course in my younger days when the room was solely for passing out after a night of hard drinking things were different.
Above that price point, I personally don’t see the point in paying for $200 or $300 a night. I’m not using most of those amenities. The whole reason to take a vacation was to see different areas of the world. If I wanted to swim in the indoor pool or bask in the sauna, I could do that in my hometown. I’m not going to fly 3,000 miles just to swim in the hotel pool.
I don’t need a super fancy hotel, but I can’t handle hostels. I used them many years ago when I was a poor college student, and I found it miserable. I just can’t sleep if there are strangers in the room.
It wouldn’t be right for me to stay in a hostel either…out of consideration for the others. I snore like a jet engine.
I discovered a while back that I’m a “two stars kind’a gal”. That’s because I’ve found that family-owned little places tend to have more-open rooms (the room may be the same size, but in the 4-star place it will be clogged with two stuffed armchairs and a round table that’s completely the wrong height), are less likely to have carpet (allergies totally suck), and more likely to have personnel able to reset the router.
Many of my coworkers totally love being surrounded by people half their age bowing and scrapping while saying “oh I’m sorry, we’re not authorized to do anything to the network” and intend to use the pool and exercise room (they never do, but they sincerely intend to), so they prefer the 4-star places.
I had a job where we’d travel often from Seville to Bilbao. The first time I stayed with my coworkers in the NH Villa de Bilbao - for other trips, I obtained permission to stay in the much-cheaper Bilbao Jardines. The opinion of the locals was “ooooooh now YOU know how to pick a hotel!”, because the location was infinitely better (just the food store across the street from the hotel is worth a visit to town ;)).
Sometimes the amenity that drives the price up to $200 or $300 a night is location.
Cleanliness too-the cheap hotels in Manhattan often are dirty, with old matresses on the bed, and (sometimes) bedbugs.
Hotels are so variable. I had a fabulous experience in the hostel I stayed at the last time I visited San Francisco. Four to a room with our own bathroom. But the hostel in Austin, TX was just “meh”. There were so many bunks in that cinderblock room that I felt like I was in “Orange is the New Black”. It was okay for a spontaneous adventure, but I would not voluntarily choose that kind of accomodation for work-related business.
Not to mention that sleeping with your passport, credit cards, etc taped up in a little plastic bag on your abdomen loses its appeal as an adventure pretty quickly. I did this for awhile traveling around Europe as a student, then graduated to B&Bs to get a room to myself.
My taste for good hotels grows as I get older–bigger and more comfy beds, cleaner and more spacious bathrooms, quieter neighbors, and convenient locations. And sometimes the hotel is the point of the visit. I was just in Portmeirion last week. Two days in The Village was worth what I paid for my room.
Hostels have changed a lot in the past decade. Most have private rooms available, and I haven’t been to one since I was a teen that didn’t provide a locker- some even have fancy keycards. The party hostels are still there, but there are more and more aimed at an older and more sedate crowd.
Agreed that they vary a lot though. Some are full-on fleapits, and some are more like boutique hotels with more common space and slightly more basic amenities. The one I stayed at in Buenos Aires most recently was amazing- modern design, a gorgeous deck, friendly staff and clean-but-basic private rooms.
Anyway, not for everyone for sure. But it’s good for a cheapskate who is a deep sleeper!
Like New York, period. I am going in October for a weekend, and just about anything in Manhattan that doesn’t involve a shared bathroom in the hallway is over $200. Even the non-scary places in the boroughs or within commuting distance in NJ are well over $100. Hostel beds seem to be in the $50 - 60 range. And walking distance from the subway is a must, because I’m certainly not going to drive there!
This reminds me of Motel 6-when the chain was formed, the owners set out to offer the lowest possible price for a room-this lead to things like concrete block walls, TV sets (that you had to pay extra to view), and disposable towels. I’ve noticed that they had gone mildly upscale-evidently people do not want absolute rock-bottom accommodations. But on the other end, it does seem that above $300/night, you are getting a lot of stuff that most people (who stay a few nights) will not use.
Very true. In those instances, simply adjust my figures upward to reflect that. My overall point is that there is a certain price that normally guarantees a clean, quiet, and comfortable room, ample parking, with free-Wifi, continental breakfast, kids stay free, and HBO. That is usually all I am looking for.
When you get significantly above that price point, the law of diminishing returns kick in. I don’t care if the place has a conservatory, a palatial lobby, valet parking, saunas and whirpools, an on site bar and restaurant (which only adds to the tab anyways), or free shuttle service to the airport. Chances are I won’t be spending much time at the hotel to enjoy those amenities.
I have stayed in both, and both are fine (but in different ways), but probably if I was a millionaire, I would stay mostly at the expensive hotels. Although sometimes at the expensive hotels, I find it very annoying that shortly after I have checked into my room, the hotel room phone will ring, and it is either a recorded message from the Manager of the hotel, or someone from the hotel staff saying that if I need anything to call them. I find this annoying and alarming as usually I am not expecting any calls, and I have told my family to call me in an emergency, and I am worried when I hear the phone ring, that it is a family emergency. Also, I do tend to leave a large tip for the housekeepers, as they have a hard job, cleaning many rooms a day.
Yeah, and then there goes any savings since getting rid of those suckers is expensive. The two cheapest motels within walking distance of Disneyland have both had bedbugs reported. Eden Roc & Alamo.
So, yeah, stay out of really cheap places.
I would include hostels with that.