Hey I'm Adam Jusko from ProudMoney.com and as I make this video we
are heading into the summer travel season so we're gonna look at the
experience of staying at hotels versus Airbnbs and other vacation rentals like
VRBO kind of stuff and especially if you have not stayed in vacation
rentals or done Airbnb in the past we'll talk about sort of what the upsides and
downsides are to each one and you can decide if you want to have that
experience for yourself. And I'd love to hear from people that have done both,
which you prefer. Before I talk about any of that, though, let's please have you
subscribe to our YouTube channel if you have not already and if you have already
I thank you for doing so. So we're gonna look at about nine or ten different
aspects of the travel experience here with hotels versus Airbnb and other
types of vacation rentals. Number One is price. Now you might think, price, one
would have it over the other, but really that's not necessarily so. Obviously there's
hotels all the way from the super expensive to the super cheap and that is
true on the other side as well. Many vacation rentals, if they're in
prime locations and you're in a place where a lot of people are
coming, obviously it's a vacation and those can be just as expensive or more
expensive than hotels. On the other end, if you're going to a city that
is not as well traveled, you might get a really super deal through
Airbnb or through another vacation rental place. So neither one necessarily
has the upper hand there, even though maybe on the surface you might have the
idea that staying in someone's apartment or whatever is going to get you a much
cheaper price than if you're staying in a hotel. So you have to do that research
for yourself and figure out how the prices stack up in whatever area you're
going to. So the second aspect is what I call reliability or confidence in the
experience. When you go to hotels, you obviously know, especially if you're
dealing with a major hotel chain, you kind of know that you're gonna
get that "brand" experience and you know what you're getting. So it's sort of the
same as if you were choosing a new little restaurant versus going to
McDonald's. You know what you're gonna get at McDonald's, you don't necessarily
know what you're gonna get any other place. Same thing with hotels versus a
vacation rental --- you pretty much know what you're gonna get with the hotel,
especially major brands, but with a vacation rental, an Airbnb apartment,
whatever it is, you don't necessarily know exactly what you're gonna get. You
can do as much research as possible on the Internet
and look at other people's reviews but you don't know exactly what
your experience is going to be. You have a pretty good idea when you stay in a
hotel what your experience is going to be. Now the third aspect and this is kind
of where the vacation rentals and the Airbnbs really shine is character.
Basically if you are going after a vacation rental or an Airbnb
experience, a lot of times you are doing it because you are going to get sort of
an interesting place to stay hopefully in an interesting place as well. So
you might... if you want to stay in a certain neighborhood, you want to feel
like a local, Airbnbs and vacation rental
places are really good for that. They are there they are their own things,
so it's sort of the flip side of the reliability/confidence thing --- you may not
be as confident in the experience you're gonna get but you might have a more
interesting experience and maybe more character to the place you stay. There
may be, you know, a different type of neighborhood that you stay... may be either
closer or further away from the main attractions... but that's really kind of
you know the upside for a lot of people in staying in Airbnb and VRBO and other
vacation rental type places. The hotel, you know, hotels are hotels no matter
what they do. Some of them are nicer than others but it's still sort of the hotel
experience. You can kind of clamp on some luxury things to the
hotel experience but it is still essentially the same. And oftentimes
depending on the city you're in, especially if you're looking at major
chains, oftentimes they're going to be situated in a place where there's a lot
of other major hotel chains around or whatever and if you want to be in
somewhere a little funky or whatever... in a neighborhood... you're not
necessarily going to get that with your major hotel chains. The next aspect is
the amenities. Now obviously in the hotels you sort of have an experience
where they are there to serve you. So you've got swimming pools, you've got
restaurants on site, you can go to the front desk and ask questions,
you just have someone sort of on call for you and you have a lot of
things at your disposal right there in the hotel. You do an Airbnb, you do a
vacation rental type of situation, you're kind of on your own ---
you get a place to stay. Now that can be good or bad, but you know you've got to go
and you've got to get your own food if you don't want to eat out all the time. You
have.. you're not gonna have anyone
to sort of help you if there's questions. You might have a phone number somewhere
of someone to call but you don't have anyone on site to help you and
especially if it's, you know, you think about the 24 hour a day aspect...
if there's any issue overnight or whatever, you're kind of on your
own... you're staying in a place that is more like home versus staying at a hotel
where you've got service. The next aspect I'll talk about is
the living space itself. Now while a hotel may have a lot of amenities, what
it often has in addition is a fairly small, cramped room. So if you are someone
that likes to be able to spread out, you're on a vacation and you don't
want to be in this little space, then a lot of times a vacation rental and
Airbnb is going to give you that aspect of living in a home more than
just living in a little cramped room with a couple beds shoved together and
the TV four inches away from your knees when you sit on the edge of the bed.
You can have a full kitchen and, you know, you can kind of make yourself at
home a lot of times in a vacation rental in a
way that you can't in a lot of hotels. Obviously hotels have different aspects
and some of them are more like suites but, still, overall I tend to think of the
Airbnb vacation rental experience as being a place where the space feels more
like your own and more that you can sort of spread out and not have your
suitcase shoved up against the wall and you can barely walk through and all that
sort of stuff. The next is, and this is sort of a large
aspect --- or many aspects to this aspect --- it's sort of the type of traveler
or what your personal situation is. Some people when they are
going on a trip, they are going to... maybe they want to have an
adventure --- that would sort of make you think more the Airbnb... you want to go to
a neighborhood, you want to do something really interesting, an adventure. Maybe
you just want to relax --- that means you may be more likely to want to have a
hotel where you don't have to think about what you're doing every day. You
can just go down to the pool, you can go down to the beach or whatever and
you're good to just sort of enjoy yourself without having to
think about too many aspects of things. Now on these same lines, in terms of
types of travelers, you may be someone that has physical limitations.
So that may be something that you have to take into account as well.
Hotels obviously do a much better job of dealing with people that have
physical limitations, whether that means you're in a wheelchair or you just, you
know, can't walk up flights of stairs or whatever the situation is.
Last summer I with my family stayed in Portugal and we stayed in two
different Airbnb locations, which were awesome, but they were on the fourth
floor and the sixth floor I believe with no elevator and very
narrow stairs that were very steep and we had to haul our luggage up all there.
There was a lot of work to get to those apartments, even though the apartments
themselves were nice and we were staying in interesting locations. If
we'd had physical limitations, we could not have stayed in the places that we
were. So the next thing is: are you alone? Are you with others? If you're alone a
lot of times you're probably more likely to want to choose a hotel, right? Because
you're sort of, you don't need a big space and to have the
amenities around and whatever is... it's just as good for you as
staying at an Airbnb type situation. The next aspect is something that will
come into play for some people and that's rewards. Obviously some people
that travel often for work will get rewards through hotel rewards programs
or other rewards programs they might have. And that may make you more
predisposed to staying at a hotel, where if you were thinking about staying at a
vacation rental, that type of thing, most of them are not connected in any
way to any of these reward programs so you are just going to be paying that
money out of pocket. And so that is going to affect your decision in many cases.
The next aspect is privacy. In a hotel you obviously have a lot of people
around and while your room itself may be private, when you go into your common
areas, there gonna be a lot of people around. If they're serving breakfast in
the morning there's going to be, you know, a hundred people trying to get to the
oatmeal. And so you're just gonna have to deal with the fact that it is a
little more of a bustling place. A lot of times if you do an Airbnb or you are
doing some sort of vacation rental, because you're on your own, you
pretty much wake up on your own and you're
in your own space, it's a little more like being at home, and you don't have
other people that you're sort of dealing with during the day and
especially at times when, you know, you don't feel like dealing with other
people --- like the early morning, for example. The next aspect to talk about is
safety. We talked about traveling alone. If you are someone who's traveling
alone obviously safety comes into play. You don't want to
necessarily put yourself in an Airbnb apartment in a neighborhood that
maybe you're not real familiar with in a city that you don't know very well.
Because you're alone you don't have anyone else to kind of work with you and
it's more likely that you might have... might have an
issue if there's crime in the area.
Obviously if you have more people, then maybe you have
obviously more people to sort of deal with any potential criminals, you're less
of a target if you have more people in your group in most cases. So, obviously, if
you're alone, the hotel is going to look a little more attractive than an Airbnb
type situation. The last thing I will talk about is: how long will you be there?
The longer your trip is going to be, the more it makes sense to go
after an Airbnb or other vacation rental. If you're only going to be around
for a day or two, it makes sense to just stay in a hotel.
The other ones are really more for... vacation rentals are really more for an
experience where you're gonna be there a while, where you can kind of stretch out,
you can open that suitcase and pull your stuff out and kind of make
yourself at home for a while. If you have just a short trip, it doesn't make as much
sense to go after a vacation rental or an Airbnb
because you're just... you're just not looking for that longer-term
experience. All that said, there are many times there are hotels and
vacation rentals that are sort of you merging or... that experience
is changing as well. So you may come across many other things that are
sort of a a fusion of the two. I was just in Austin not too long ago, ended up
staying in a "hotel" that really was an apartment building where they
had to give me the codes to get in and everyone I dealt with was by
phone, by text, by email. I never saw anyone, there was no
front desk. There were people who lived in this building while we were
considered to be hotel guests. But in essence it was almost the same as having
a vacation rental. It was a nice spacious apartment that we were staying
in versus really being what you would think of as the traditional hotel room.
So there obviously are, you know, blurring lines between those things. But those are
the many aspects to think about when you are planning your vacation travel or maybe
even your business travel. I would love to know what your preference is,
especially if you have tried both... when you stay at a hotel versus
when you stay at a vacation rental... and what your reasons are for that.
Thanks for watching. Please go to ProudMoney.com where we talk about
other personal finance topics and do product reviews and all sorts of other
stuff too. Thanks for watching. Bye.
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