Private apartments or hotels/hostels - advantages and disadvantages

Apartments for longer and shorter stay became very popular form of accommodation in recent years. Although they are strong competition to classical facilities like hotels and hostels, still do not lose their role in the world of tourism. What should we expect from this kind of accommodation and what is different from hotels and hostels?

ADVANTAGES

Privacy and Anonymity

Private apartments guarantee peace, privacy and anonymity for their guests. Hotels and hostels are busy places with constant murmurs, talks and noise. Sometimes it is very hard to have peace and rest if you stay in hostels full with young people, students, or excursions looking for a good time and party. No one will restricted or legitimize guests in private apartments, as long as they respect house rules.

Services

Services that are offered in the hotel (gym, car wash, beauty treatments and restaurants) can be find cheaper and even on some cases with higher quality in the city of stay. Especially this is the case with local restaurants and bars. Owners of the apartments usually give valuable advises to their guest where to find good restaurant in the neighborhood. If the guests want to cook their own food, and that is very hard to do in hotels. Apartments usually are equipped with all kitchen appliances and visitors can prepare food tastier and cheaper. In hotels meals are served during fixed hours, but in the apartments for short stay guest have flexibility to eat when they wanted, even in 3 o’clock in the morning.

DISADVANTAGES

Reservations

The efficient reservation is one thing in the hotel we take for granted. Situation with smaller private apartments can be very tricky sometimes. Often is not possible to make early reservation weeks or months in advance. Owners avoid accepting reservations in advance for shorter stay, because they can lose some longer reservation.

Capacity

Bigger groups of visitors cannot find enough large apartments for more people. It is impossible for them to organize some business meetings or congresses in one single apartment and have to find 2, 3 or more apartments for entire group. Hotels have advantage because they have large number of identical rooms can accommodate big groups of visitors, fitness centers, swimming pools, saunas, restaurants, laundry, big congress rooms equipped with printers, scanners, copying machines and other office materials,  etc. Most of the apartments have telephone and internet connection, but rarely office space.

Services

In hotels, maids clean rooms and make beds every day, but apartments usually are cleaned once a week. Receptionists, waiters or house cleaners do not exist in the apartments. Some guests expects from their hosts to be all of this Private apartments offered Iron, hair dryer, clean sheets and towels, but shampoo, soaps, napkins are not included in offer. Also, level of hygiene is not uniform in all flats. In some is remarkable, but sometimes in others, it isn’t on high level.

Parking

Every respectable hotel has garage or parking places in their yards, often physically secured. Most of the apartments have limited capacities or do not have parking space at all. If parking space is available, the visitors have to pay extra fee. In Belgrade, it is strictly prohibited to park on public spaces, and police are very efficient in hauling out improper-parked vehicles.

On the end, everyone chooses what suits him most.

Hotels are good solution if visitors do not want to think about cooking, laundry or other everyday trifles. If they seek for quiet family atmosphere and want to experience the environment in a way that they do residents of Belgrade, private apartments can be significantly better option. And maybe most important fact is: apartments are lot cheaper.