Compare mid range hotel chains
 

How do the different hotels compare in your mind? I'm wondering if there's a chain I've never been to which is a safe bet. What's your favorite, with pros and cons?

This is especially for a long term business stay.

Hampton Inn
Hilton Garden Inn
Homewood Suites

Courtyard by Marriott
Residence Inn by Marriott
Springhill Suites

Candlewood Suites
Staybridge Suites
Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites

Quality Inn

Wingate

And any others that come to mind.

Assuming long-term meaning 30 days or more, Staybridge is probably best. Their breakfast is significantly better than Residence Inn.

For shorter stays, SpringHill Suites would be my pick.

Courtyard and Residence Inn. Quality has been anything but, in my experience.

Courtyard and Hilton Garden Inn to me are about the same and I like them for short term, less than 7 days. I have not been on a project longer than that recently but in the past opted for Residence Inn. I'm not a fan of RI "meals" so I usually cook for myself. (I'm in food service so I have my plans.)

Cheers,
Pogopossum

Marriott is my main program after SPG, so I prefer Spring Hill and RI for longer stays. I would rather sleep in my car than endure a "Quality" or a Wingate. My experience with the IHG long-term brands has been uneven, although Staybridge is always a better bet than Candlewood.

Long term usually means 2-3 months. :(

Thanks!

If you are going to look at Choice Hotels (Quality Inn,) I suggest moving up their property list to the Comfort Inn and Suites (not the lower range Comfort Inn which is similar to the Quality Inn.) They are a step above Quality and in the same general range as Hilton Garden Inn.

You jogged my memory - I stayed in a Comfort Inn and Suites once. It was disgusting.

Not my experience at all. You must have gotten a bad apple. IMHO, the Suites version is far better than Quality and others of their ilk.

For 2-3 months, I would want an extended stay property, something like a Residence Inn where (most) rooms have a genuine small apartment feel, including a small real kitchen.

Alternatively, you could get a decent room (or, better yet, suite) at a full service hotel where you get lounge access and ideally at least a small refrigerator or minibar that you can use in the room.

I'd compare rates for a room/suite with lounge privileges at Sheraton/Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt Regency to extended stay places like Residence Inn/element/Embassy Suites/Hyatt House/etc. I would avoid Courtyard if there's a choice and perhaps think of Hyatt Place as a compromise with their refrigerators, wet bars, and suite-like floor plans with free breakfast. Aloft rooms have tiny refrigerators but IMO wouldn't be comfortable for an extended stay.

You could ask if the hotel would permit you to use your own small microwave or toaster oven in the room, especially if it has a wet bar with refrigerator setup.

Since this is FT, think about the points and status that you can earn. Remember that SPG gives no points or night credit AT ALL for stays over 90 days/3 months while in the Marriott family, Residence Inn and a couple other brands earn points at half of the normal rate.

BTW, Marriott also has ExecuStay fully furnished apartments in some areas. There could be similar options if you don't need hotel services, including someone to prepare breakfast.

Note that some "extended stay" apartment/suite style properties attract business travelers during the week but are overrun with large families and unruly kids when weekends and holidays approach. If someone has a lot of kids, it's cheaper to book an extended stay "suite", use the sofa bed and rollaways to pack everyone into a single unit, and take advantage of the free food. Games and streaming movies can make wifi impossibly slow at such times.

No :( about it - 2-3 months means top tier elite status at whichever brand you pick. :)

I'd still recommend Staybridge Suites first, then Residence Inn. Homewood Suites (Hilton) is also an OK choice. Just check with the exact property for opening windows - almost all should have 'em.

I'd stay away from Hyatt Place only because so many of them are converted AmeriSuites, and in the conversions they kept the quite loud PTAC units in the rooms. Staybridge often has central-air AC instead of the in-wall PTAC units.

I wouldn't recommend anything from Choice or Wyndham.

I find the Choice (Quality Inn, etc) and Holiday Inn hotels very inconsistent from place to place -- unless I've seen the specific place first, I wouldn't book there. (What isn't on your list is Best Western, which I find the most consistent from location to location -- certainly not always the best in town, but in an unknown situation, it's often my first choice because of a known level of quality).

The Marriott properties have always given me good experiences; my experience with Hampton Inns have been good, but not the Hilton Garden Inns I've stayed at. I have no experience with Candlewood or Staybridge.

We could all go on at quite some length about how the various chains and families of brands compare. But there are already countless threads across multiple forums doing that. If I were planning a 2-3 month stay in a single hotel I would certainly consider various brand-level factors but it'd also be critical to have knowledge of the particular properties I'm considering. That's because even in chains that have a high degree of consistency across properties there are still variations between them. In every portfolio there are at least a few stinkers as well as the occasional gem.

What I was trying to get at is to compare the lesser known to me to what I know.

Um, they're chains. Not exactly sure what kind of a difference in "feel" you're expecting.