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.
