If i need a hotel, usually I first try Marriot as that’s the one I collect points on. I like their cheaper brand Aloft, each hotel has a free thing usually attached to the bar, such as billiards or in one case a retro arcade. If nothing on there works for me, or if I need an apartment/kitchen, I use booking.com as a search engine. Then I book directly, unless booking.com is more flexible.
Booking directly means you can usually call the front desk quickly and change your checkin/checkout dates and often can get early checkin and late checkout. Last month I was traveling for work and booked directly. Not only could I check in at 10am and take a nap, when plans changed I spent 5 minutes on the phone to extend one stay and shorten the next stay. My colleague used a travel agency and when he called them he got put on hold while they called booking.com! Ultimately he (well our company) paid for 2 hotel rooms that night. It’s even more important to book flights directly for the same reason.
These days, Covid can easily change your plans. I’ve not gotten Covid yet, but I’ve had flights cancelled due to it, and once had to change my flights because my pre-travel Covid test was in the wrong format to return home.
But, in our case when we are planning to live there and I’m working and we will have a car, comfortable sleeping arrangements, a separate workspace, decent WiFi [1], and a kitchen are far more important. We can drive to the city on the weekend and in the evenings.
[1] my backup plan for bad WiFi is using my phone and my iPad as hotspots. T-mobile has unlimited hot spot with 50Gb high speed hot spot for each device.
I can spin up a large Windows Workspace VM or Cloud 9 Linux environment on AWS to conserve data coming to my computer if needed.
During the intervening time, as I thought about it and did more research on prices, we landed on we would be better off looking for Homewood Suites[2] and skip Airbnb. This isn’t a marketing pitch for Hilton, I am just most familiar with the brand. The other chains may be just as good.
1. We always know what we are getting. I can just go to the Hilton app and pick a hotel. I know I’m going to have a two room suite, kitchen, a work area, a small gym downstairs, probably a pool. It’s going to be hopefully well cleaned and if not, at least we know we have someone on staff.
2. We save 15%-20% overall between the highest end Amex cobranded card when booking stays via points and accumulating points any other time we spend by charging it.
3. I also travel for work and stay in Hilton hotels. I get reimbursed and get to earn points.
4. We never have to worry about cancellations.
[1] there is no way we are selling our house and trying to buy later on with the crazy market. We are renting it out.
[2] This is not an ad or endorsement. I just happen to always book an Embassy Suites for business trips and we prefer staying there for vacations. Homewood Suites is a cheaper brand. But still better than their lowest brand Home2Suites.