Which is better, to book the cheapest room in a 5-star hotel, or the best suite in a 3-star hotel?

It depends. Would you like to stay in a 5-star a 3-star hotel?

Most of my experience is in mid-market hotels. Even in those we get the occasional bargain hunter you see lots more of at an economy tier property. Hotel room rates can be negotiable, although not nearly as much as some people seem to have the impression. But a lot of people do walk around with that impression, so we end up dealing with quite a few people who want the best room in the house at a 10% discount off what the guy in the cheapest room is paying.

(I let it drive me a little more nuts than I should, but it's a personal pet peeve of mine. When I’m having a bad day, I get onto YouTube and bring up that video of Priceline Negotiator heading off a cliff in that bus, and it makes me feel better. Nonetheless, it does happen.)

So, it is kind of awkward for to have too many 'levels' of quality, amenities, service level, or price within a single hotel, or that much of a spread between them. I might set aside a specific room or suite, that's a little extra nice or that has a nicer view, for someone special if I know ahead of time that they're coming, and put a few extra amenities, maybe a freebie or two, in there. But generally, what you call the “best suite in (the) hotel” isn't that much better than the average suites of the same type. It may be a suite instead of a room, and it may rent for a little more, but neither the price nor the quality will vary by much.

Are hotel reviews more relevant in the buying process than the categorization by hotel stars?

Think of it as the difference between the Emmys and the People's Choice Awards.

The 'stars' are ratings based upon the hotel's service and amenity level - you have to have a free continental breakfast to get this many stars, you have to have a restaurant and lounge to get that many stars, you have to have room service to get one more. Michelin, AAA, and anyone else who awards 'stars' each has their own criteria re how many 'stars' to award for which set of amenities: they're their stars to give, and they make the rules and give them out as they please (Hotel rating ). If I want to develop a new 'four-star hotel', I'm going to make sure I plan ahead for my new hotel to have everything on those lists of requirements for a four-star rating.

The reviews by guests on TripAdvisor are submitted by guests (hopefully real guests, not sales staff - Michael Forrest Jones' answer to What's the best site for getting hotel reviews? ), and based on their experience staying at the hotel.



One surprising example of divergence that we noted in developing our new economy brand (Calico Inns - Beechmont Hotels Corporation ): Red Roof Inn is an existing 'economy' brand. The last one at which I stayed, in Bethlehem, Pa., was a 'two-star' hotel - but it had a TripAdvisor bubble score of 4.0 out of 5.0. (Okay, I helped - Every town needs a 'good, $65.00 motel' . . . - but it still had four bubbles before I posted my own review. If anything, I penalized them: I gave them fives in every relevant category, but took one away on the final score for going "100% non-smoking" and not having a smoking room for me on my last trip.) 

Why is paid internet access in hotels so shoddy?

Free internet access in a hotel is often shoddy.  Internet access is nearly always outsourced, and in many hotels, outsourced as on the cheap as possible.

And it's often outsourced to someone whose ability and enthusiasm for marketing exceeds their ability and enthusiasm for delivering a decent product that works, providing adequate bandwidth to keep up with demand, etc. 



For example, Ethostream, Choice Hotels' provider for internet, is a disease. Bandwidth is kind of thin (you get what you pay for), and every time you log in, you get that 'terms of service' screen which, once you approve the TOS, only gives you 24 hours of use before it cuts you off unexpectedly, and you have to go approve the TOS again (often having to close your browser and reopen it in the process). The TOS screen redirects you to the hotel's webpage - and provides its own address bar (like anyone's going to use that rather than the one on their own browser): apparently, this provider has a captive audience and plans to milk it for all it's worth, to the extent that it can. There's also a countdown clock on that address bar telling you how much time you have left, but most people are not going to use that address bar or even leave that screen open. And at least three or four times a week in some hotels, the switchboard lights up like a Christmas tree, with unhappy guests complaining that there's no internet, and the clerk usually has to leave the desk on autopilot (often at an inopportune time) and go reset the router.

Why are there phones in the bathrooms of some hotel rooms?

Because of some starry-eyed dreamer's silly idea of "what guests expect". 

Why doesn't every hotel have a phone in the bath? We (at the mid-market and economy tier, anyway) have never had anyone ask for one nor complain because they didn't have one. 

Maybe our hotels aren't as "nice", but we deal with a nicer class of people, so it all evens out.



Not to sound crude, but frankly, the utility value of such an amenity is something I don't regard as particularly healthy or intelligent. The scary part is that every such phone I've seen is a traditionally-styled phone with a handheld receiver. It's never a speakerphone that you can use while shaving or taking a shower (or, if a woman, applying makeup). That would seem to somewhat limit its potential use in a bath - and (other  than, just maybe, if several people are in a room and one of them needs  a place to talk on the phone privately, out of earshot of the others), I just don't find the one likely remaining use for it particularly appetizing (see Is it impolite to talk to somebody on the phone while defecating? ).

What you usually choose travel do you prefer classic hotel or budget hotel?

I like classic hotels as an occasional treat, but for trip-to-trip use, I’m not fussy.

What I’ll do is bring up a city on TripAdvisor, rank all the hotels by lowest cost, scroll down past the voodoo hellholes, and go with the least expensive hotel that has a bubble score of 3.5 or higher that’s located in a part of town that will work for me . . .

Example: let’s go to Nashville, Tennessee; and unless my reason for going to Nashville is in another part of town, I’d want to be near Lipscomb University.

Rank them by lowest price. Scroll past the 2.0-bubble-score Quality Inn and Suites Downtown . . . past the 2.5 Fiddler’s Inn (which Anthony Melchiorri ‘fixed’ — for a day — in an episode of Hotel Impossible a few seasons back) . . . looks like it’s going to be one of those America’s Best Value Inns at 3.5 bubble score, $60. But unless I want to low-budget this trip as much as possible, I’d probably want to pop the extra seventeen bucks and go with the Best Western-Sunrise Inn (4.0 bubble score), because it’s a lot closer to where I want to be . . . although taking the traffic and traffic patterns into account (which I don’t always check Google Maps and do ahead of time), the ABVI Airport South would work just as well.

Originally appeared on Quora