How selective are you about lodging when you go on vacation? Do you pick hotels or motels based on price alone, or do you take other things like amenities and location into account?
When I was in college, my friends and I took road trips all the time. Back then, we didn’t really care where we crashed for the night, as long as it was under $30 or $40, which was all our budget would allow for. As you can imagine, we stayed in some pretty nasty places for that kind of money!
But now that I’m older and can afford nicer accommodations, I usually choose hotels, condo hotels, villas, rental homes, or cabins based on amenities and/or proximity to attractions rather than price alone.
For example, back when we drove to St. Louis for the Supercross race in March, we booked a little late so we couldn’t find any reasonably priced hotels in the downtown area. We could have stayed out in the suburbs, about 30 minutes away from the race venue, for less than $100 per night, but we opted to go for a $250 room at the Hilton because it was within walking distance of the race. We have a four-year-old and we knew the race wouldn’t end until 10:30pm, so it seemed worthwhile to pay the extra $150 for the convenience of not having to deal with traffic or a long drive with a cranky kid in the car.
So how about you? What’s the primary factor you use when choosing travel lodgings?