Shortlet or hotel? An honest comparison

We let apartments, so you would expect us to tell you an apartment is always better. It is not. For some trips a hotel is the right booking, and you will have a worse time in a shortlet. Here is the comparison as we would give it to a friend.

Where a shortlet wins

Space, for the money. The gap widens the longer you stay and the more of you there are. A family of five in two hotel rooms is paying twice for two televisions and one bathroom each. The same family in one apartment has a living room they can all sit in.

Cost over several nights. A hotel room is priced per night with everything bundled in, including a restaurant you may not use. On a week-long stay those bundled costs add up to real money.

A room you can actually live in. Somewhere to sit that is not the edge of a bed, and space to unpack properly rather than working out of a suitcase for a week.

Privacy. Nobody knocks. No trolley in the corridor at eight. No breakfast service deciding when your day starts.

Coming and going as you like. Our codes work for your whole stay, so there is no desk to pass and no explaining yourself at an odd hour.

Where a hotel wins

Said plainly, because pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

• One or two nights. For a single night the kitchen is irrelevant and the extra space barely registers. A hotel room near where you need to be is simpler.
• You want to be looked after. Daily full service, a restaurant downstairs, a concierge who books your taxi. A shortlet is somewhere you live for a few days, not somewhere you are waited on.
• Expenses and invoicing. Many companies are set up for hotel bills and awkward about anything else. Ask your finance people before booking, not after.
• You are arriving with no plan. A hotel absorbs vagueness well. An apartment rewards knowing roughly what you are doing.

A week, costed out

Numbers make this concrete in a way that adjectives do not. Take two adults and two children for seven nights.

In hotel rooms. Two rooms, because four people do not fit in one. Breakfast is usually included; lunch and dinner are not, and with no kitchen they are bought seven days running. There is nowhere for the four of you to sit together in the evening except on beds.

In an apartment. One let. Breakfast is whatever is in the fridge. Two or three of the fourteen main meals get cooked rather than bought, which is where the real saving sits, and it is also the difference between a child eating something they recognise and a nightly negotiation.

The headline rate is the smaller part of the gap. The meals, the second room and the laundry are the larger part.

What "serviced" actually means, and how to check

The word is doing a lot of work in most listings, and it ranges from daily housekeeping to a clean before you arrive and nothing afterwards. Neither is wrong, but they are very different stays, and the price often does not tell you which you are getting.

Ask three questions and you will know:

• How often is the room serviced, and on which days?
• Are fresh towels and linen included, or charged?
• Who do I ask for more of something at nine in the evening?

The things that actually go wrong with shortlets

Most complaints about serviced apartments come down to the same handful of things, and they are all worth asking about before you pay anybody:

1. Power. Ask what happens when the mains go off, and ask specifically whether there is a generator, how long it runs, and whether anything keeps working between the mains failing and the generator starting.
2. Water. Ask whether there is storage, and how it is pumped when there is no power.
3. Security. Ask who is at the gate overnight, and who else holds a key to your door.
4. Who you call at midnight. Plenty of shortlets are one person with a phone they turn off. Find out before you need them.
5. What "serviced" means here. It ranges from daily housekeeping to a clean on the day you arrive and nothing after.

A property that answers those five questions straight is usually a property that has thought about them. One that gets vague is telling you something.

How we would summarise it

One or two nights, travelling light, want to be looked after: book a hotel. Three nights or more, two or more of you, or you would rather cook than order: book an apartment.

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If an apartment sounds like the right call, see what is free on your dates or browse what we have. Our own answers to the five questions above are on the facilities page and the questions page, and if anything is missing, ask us.

Written by the team at Nobleyy Apartment.