Are you tired of staying at the same old places? Do you wonder what other kinds of lodging are available? You may be surprised at all of your options. Travel lodging can range from expensive resorts to affordable hotels to cheap campsites to free hospitality services. Your options will depend on a number of factors, including your budget, your destination, your accommodation preferences and your penchant for the familiar or the new. And the best thing – like with flights, rental vehicles and travel insurance, accommodation can be booked online from the comfort of your own living room.
Traditional
Traditional lodging includes hotels, motels, inns, and bed and breakfasts. Hotels and motels, are probably the most popular type of travel lodging and provide you with beds, bathrooms and showers, and may include meals, swimming pools, television, and other amenities.
Hotels often have large rooms for conferences or meetings and are generally more comprehensive in their offerings (and thus more expensive) than motels. Many hotels have their own restaurants and bars and usually have more rooms than motels.
Motels are aimed at low budgets and short-term travelers. Motel rooms usually open right out to the parking lot. If you just need a place to sleep at night and to take a shower, motels can save you a lot of money.
Inns are often travel destinations in themselves, offering a place to stay that has been visited by travelers long ago. Inns traditionally were places that travelers could obtain lodging, food, and alcohol in one place, and some inns have a definite historical quality to them.
Beds and breakfasts are often privately-owned residences in which the owners rent out one or two rooms for short stays, offering bed and breakfast, but not much beyond that. Bed and breakfasts are a much more personal, quiet approach to lodging.
Vacation-Style
Vacation-style lodging includes vacation rentals, timeshares, and resorts. Vacation rentals are furnished apartments or houses, often available in tourist hot spots or metropolitan areas. Increasingly, vacation rentals are becoming more expensive as they offer more amenities, such as DVD libraries and private hot tubs.
Timeshares are single- or multi-room apartments that resemble a traditional apartment, with a kitchen, bathroom, dishwasher, eating utensils and so forth. Purchasing a timeshare enables you access to it for a certain period of time each year; you can also sell your time to others for a profit or trade it for a stay at another timeshare.
Resorts are similar to vacation rentals and timeshares, but go beyond them in attempting to provide most of the vacation on-site: many resorts offer lodging, restaurants, bars, golf courses or skiing, spas, entertainment, and shopping.
Adventurous
For those on a low budget or simply looking for a less conventional, more hands-on approach to travel lodging, there are campsites and hospitality services.
Campers can enjoy sleeping outside in a tent, cooking by fire, eating on a picnic table, and hiking throughout the surrounding woods. Many campgrounds offer stand-alone bathrooms and showers. You can also camp in your own Recreational Vehicle (RV), bringing many amenities with you to the campground.
A hospitality service is for people who offer their homes to fellow travelers free of charge. Many travelers stay at someone’s home for their trip and later end up hosting that family in their own home. Hospitality services are becoming increasingly popular in certain areas of the world.