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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Aren't those negatives mainly due to the transient nature of traveling? This particular hotel seems quite nice, and when I'm in an area for a long time, I don't particularly mind being in a hotel, especially if that hotel has good food.

It is my understanding, especially in New York, that it was not uncommon for people to have residency in hotels in the early 1900s. I've always found that a bit interesting. Even today, I know there are some condos you can buy in upscale hotels, where you have access to the amenities, such as the restaurant, laundry, and cleaning services.

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> Aren't those negatives mainly due to the transient nature of traveling?

Nope. It's stuff like:

Lack of space. Think how much smaller your hotel room is compared to an apartment. You want to buy your own TV, with a sound system, and do an Arduino project? No space.

Poor sound proofing: Lots of noise from neighbors.

No kitchen: It's fine if you're gone for a few days, but if you're in one for a month, you likely will need to cook something. Most people can't afford to eat out all the time (and it's not healthy to do so).

I recall once while in school, there was a new fancy apartment complex being built that students had signed a lease for. Unfortunately, there were delays so the company set them up in a hotel for 2 months till the apartment was ready. These are all the complaints those students had about the hotel experience. Nice in the beginning, but not a good long term solution.

What are you comparing to? Even chain extended stay hotels have affordable suites that are similar to a typical apartment outside of the USA. From a studio [1] to a 2bdr [2]. If you have money you can go for something flashier, like MGM Signature in LV [3]

[1] https://www.extendedstayamerica.com/hotels/il/chicago/westmo...

[2] https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/mspeihw-homewood-suites-edi...

[3] https://signaturemgmgrand.mgmresorts.com/en/hotel/one-bedroo...

I don't think I've seen hotel rooms like that before. Just one or two beds in the main room and a bathroom, with a mini fridge and maybe a microwave, but no kitchen - for example: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/chisr-renaissance-chic...

Those are extended stay places. Costs more and may not be an option for the funder. For sure the apartment complex didn't pay for that type of a suite.

Oh and of course the folks still had to pay their rent those months. It seems like a nice deal because the monthly rates for those rooms are a lot more than the rent they paid but in reality they're getting less than what they paid for.

An electric range for $60 goes a long way. Hell when I was homeless I used a portable gas stove that even works on siphoned gasoline, and packs up in a bag about the diameter of a cellphone wide, hardly ever needed to eat out.

And where are you going to store cookware and tableware and spices and other ingredients in a hotel room? Some suites or longstay rooms are better equiped for it, but regular hotel rooms just aren't designed for long-term residence.

People have lived in e.g. bedsits in the UK for years and still managed to store enough utensils and spices for their own use. There are even vandwellers and overlanders who are gourmets and pleasurably cook in the space they have.

When I visit the US I am always struck by how much stuff people own there, and a lot of that is kitchen stuff specifically. But most of the world -- including many other developed countries -- make do with less and don't necessarily even think about it.

Camping equipment is designed to be compact and fit in a backpack, all of this stuff was figured out by the 1930s traveling workers who were known as hobos.

You don't need a large variety of spices, and spices are compact as heck.

If you're going to cook, you can buy same-day or even a few days' worth of food.

>all of this stuff was figured out by the 1930s traveling workers who were known as hobos.

It may surprise you to learn that most people want a quality of life exceeding that of a hobo.

Cooking with a compact set of portable kitchen tools and economized storage for basic foodstuffs and spices is absolutely not the same as living like a literal hobo. Again, millions, possibly billions of people live like this and often very comfortably. What you say is both plain condescending and all the worse in that for also being ignorant nonsense.

Well, you could, for example, store it in a small piece of shelving furniture that you get somewhere, right next to your little portable range stove (electric or gas) problem solved for an incredibly broad amount of cooking, pretty much anything that doesn't require baking, and there are even pots that let you get around that, compact slow cookers too. No hotel room is so small that it doesn't fit such modest tools.

Do you really think it's near impossible to endure hotel room or compact apartment living living unless you can absolutely have the tools and space of a full-blown suburban kitchen in there? Comments like these truly remind me of how removed a certain subset is from how billions of people can live comfortably for years on end by improvising modestly.

Similar to another example comment I saw by someone on this site who really thought that it was just impossible to make coffee at home unless he had a full-blown espresso/capuchino machine of the kind some commercial cafe might use.

You really do want at least a kitchenette for any real length of time. I'm pretty good with just a refrigerator--assuming decent eat out and takeout options--for a few weeks but probably wouldn't want to go much longer than that. A hotel room doesn't have a lot of space but then a furnished studio apartment won't either.

It also helps if you know you'll be back in your house in a month or even two--and you're fine with just not doing some activities/hobbies while you travel.

Ha. We clearly stay in different hotels and live in different kinds of apartments. I find most hotels I've ever been in to be quieter and often nearly as spacious as any apartment I've ever lived in.

Definitely different kinds of apartments. The 1 bedrooms I've lived in are at least 600 sq ft.

I’ve traveled at least 6mo/yr for the better part of the last 10 years. These points mentioned are exactly why Airbnb has been as successful as it is.

I was a road warrior back in the day... if I were going to be in a place for an extended stay - say a month or more - I'd look into furnished corporate housing. Likely more space and better amenities, possibly even cheaper than an extended hotel stay. A step down from that, the "extended stay" hotels with a kitchenette and more space aren't terrible apart from the often frat-like atmosphere.

My trips were always the Sunday night out, Thursday night home type, where probably the biggest issue is the disorientation. One Courtyard Marriott looks just like another, even across countries. Rental cars quickly lose any excitement. Stuck in some suburban office park with your choice of Chilibees or Ruby Garden? You can see where nutrition quickly drops to zero if you aren't really cognizant. And then there's the relationship part. If I'd been single it might have been awesome, but I had little kids at home and it was a tough few years for what in hindsight was limited financial and career gain. Glad we live in an era where more of the work can be done remotely.

The pandemic did a cold turkey number on my travel. I'm back to doing some but I'm being much more selective and I'm also trying to plan things so that I spend a smaller percentage of my travel time dealing with airports and air travel.

That was not uncommon in most older American cities. Kansas City for example has a number of former residential hotels, as does New Orleans.

It's not like these were a Holiday Inn or something!

The difference with modern hotel residences is that they tend to have a full kitchen etc, and be more of a condo building with a hotel at the bottom (usually).

Yeah, this is more like living in a studio apartment and less like living in a hotel as one might generally picture it.

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