There used to only be a few types of accommodations for travel. In fact, these lodgings usually had more to do with the type of travel that you were doing, rather than the stay itself. For example, if you were trekking or hiking, you’d probably camp. Maybe you would stay at a Chalet but this still was not considered a hotel. Likewise, if you booked a cruise, again you’d be cruising not staying in a hotel. Although the housing was very similar to a hotel, it was very specific to the type of travel you were doing.

Sometime in the last 70 years you could rent someone’s vacation home using services like VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner). The idea of paying to stay at someone’s house is not new, but it wasn’t as easy to coordinate until the internet came along. Now we have several services that offer (like VRBO or via Trip Advisor) the same experience as AirBnB. In today’s post we’ll focus mainly on AirBnB, but bear in mind that this logic is applicable to any of the other services offering similar accommodations. Also, when we refer to hotels we are not including boutique hotels, rather we are referring to hotel chains.

Why compare AirBnB to hotels?

Lately, AirBnB can be very easy to book and for this reason travelers seems to use these two interchangeably. However, it’s our opinion that both AirBnB and Hotels have distinct use cases. Let’s compare the advantages and drawbacks of each.

AirBnB Pros

• Can be cheaper than a hotel - We found this to be especially true in Europe when trying to stay in the old city centers. A new hotel would be very expensive and the existing hotels were either very expensive or very old. AirBnB was the perfect in-between for us; modern amenities within the old city centers. Not all AirBnBs are remodeled so make sure to look carefully.

• You can get discounts for extended stays - Some AirBnB hosts offer discounts for stays longer than 7 days and extended stays longer than 30 days. Always check if a discount is available. If you are staying for over a month, and the owner hasn’t listed a discount, you can always message them to find out if they’d be willing to reduce the price.

• Experience life more like a local - Depending on whether you book a room or an entire place (check our post about How to pick and AirBnB) you will have more or less interaction with the host and the locals; we felt that you’d definitely have a much greater chance of meeting locals by staying at an AirBnB and we’ve also met some amazing hosts who have really made a difference in our visit to their country.

AirBnB Cons

• Less regulated - unlike hotels, AirBnBs are not held to the same standard as a hotel. For obvious reasons, these are people’s homes and each country has different regulations as to what’s good and what isn’t. For example, we found that in Asia rooms with inside-hallway-facing no windows are considered rooms. In the US, a room has to have a window to the outside and not a minuscule one either. Not only are the living standards different but there is also less regulation of the actual property because cities don’t regulate properties listed on AirBnB. To help you decide, make sure to read our guide on How to pick and AirBnB.

• Check-in and check-out can sometimes be less flexible - If you are arriving late, or even in the event that your flight is delayed and you arrive very late, you might keep a real person who could otherwise be sleeping, waiting. A lot of AirBnBs have systems to let yourself in but there are some where the hosts will charge a late fee if they need to stay up to wait for you. If you arrive early and want to just drop off your bags, that might also not work for your AirBnB and finally, if you wanted to check-out late there might not be a lot of wiggle room either. Most hosts are very nice and accommodating but they are usually just renting one room (or place) and they won’t have the bandwidth to accommodate you like a hotel would.

• Customer service is not very fast - Thankfully we never had any problems at the properties we stayed at, but we heard from other travelers that the AirBnB customer service is not very fast. If you run into any problems, this could be a problem, no pun intended.

• Not all hosts, or owners, are equally good - This could be true of franchise hotel chains too, but in general hotels, in particular chains, hold their properties to a minimum standard. Make sure to read the AirBnB reviews carefully so you are not surprised.

• Not all hosts, or owners, are in town - Yes, you’d think they might be but sometimes you are renting someone’s vacation home and they don’t literally live in that town. This means that solving problems liked a clogged toilet or broken fixtures could take longer than at a Hotel.

Hotel Pros

• Regulated - we touched upon this earlier but hotels are more regulated than AirBnBs. This means that if you have a minimum base level you absolutely need, then hotels will almost always meet and exceed it.

• Easy check-in and check-out - Unless you are arriving to a super crowded hotel for maybe on a conference weekend check-in can be pretty easy. In fact some chains allow you to skip the check-in line altogether and go straight to your room. More importantly, if you arrive late or are delayed, you won’t ever have to worry if someone will be there to greet you.

• Extra perks - Some hotels offer amenities like concierge, room service, gyms and/or spas. If you are looking to get pampered, this is a big plus.

Hotel Cons

• Generally more expensive - Sometimes as a consequence of location or the amenities provided, it is more expensive to stay in a hotel. Also, price is not negotiable and there are rarely ever extended stay discounts (unless you stay at an extended stay type of hotel). Make sure to read our guide to How to choose a moderately priced hotel so you can get the most bang for your buck.

• Each room has more use than some AirBnBs - Because hotels have a higher turn over of guests, each room will have more use. As the AirBnB community gets older, we may find that this is not a con for hotels, especially because hotels continually renew and refresh their rooms.

• Although some hotels can be trendy, each room has no personal touch - if you are looking for quirky touches, then this would be a con for you. We actually prefer rooms that are not very cluttered so very busy AirBnBs are not attractive to us.

• You don’t get to experience life as a local - Part of living life as a local is understanding the little things we might find odd. Things like small fridges that only fit about 2 days worth of food and 4th floor walkups. Or washing machines that take forever (we never understood why European washing machines are so slow, although they are gentler on your clothes). These little differences definitely add to your experience and sadly hotels aren’t quirky enough.

How do you decide?

We’ve put together this short ask-yourself-questionnaire to hopefully help you decide based on the advantages and drawbacks that we listed above.

Here are our thoughts on the questionnaire:

• Traveling with a big group? We found AirBnBs to be better for group travel because you can have common spaces to do things like play cards or chat. Also, it’s cheaper to cook than eat out every meal.

• Do you need a kitchen, dining room and/or laundry? For us having a kitchen meant we could eat a little healthier than eating out all the time. Likewise, we could do laundry while cooking so that actually saved us some time. A dining room was more for having a place to work and eat but really any table would’ve sufficed. Some extended stay hotels sometimes offer these amenities but we found that AirBnBs were better equipped with the basics like salt and cooking; and sometimes laundry detergent.

• Don’t mind daily cleaning? We don’t mind not having a cleaning service everyday. We make the bed everyday anyway and if it saves us a few bucks to make it ourselves, that’s good for us. Also, some people find they don’t want to tidy the space just so the maid can make their space. Whatever your reasons are, this usually saves you a little bit of money, and who doesn’t like that?

• Arriving late at night? For us this one is a no brainer - we want to be good guests and we’d never ask a friend to stay up late for us; this is how we treat our hosts. If we know we are arriving late or super early, we’ll generally book a hotel to avoid the hassle of having to ask for favors from your host.

• Do you need dependable service? By dependable service we mean things like stable wifi or a maintenance person on call that can come fix whatever problem you have. Some AirBnBs are super responsive, but if we can’t risk it we’ll definitely stay at a hotel.

• Are you looking to get pampered? Pampered for us means amenities like room service or maybe an in-house spa. If that’s the case then a hotel is definitely the way to go.

Hopefully this quick questionnaire can help you decide, quickly, whether you should choose an AirBnB or a Hotel.

Skyscanner had a good article about the differences between AirBnBs and Hotels in case you want to check out a different perspective - Skyscanner article.

Do you have any questions or suggestions? Leave them in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you. Until next time, happy travels!