Budget Hotel Chains
 

We are comming to the US in July for a few weeks vacation. Can anyone recommend a budget chain of hotel/motels that i can look at on the net.........we are two aduldts and two young children 9 + 12......does anyone know a website which offers hotels at budget prices or is there anywhere i can look at special offers for budget chain hotels.....thanks in anticipation

If you want basic and cheap, and usually clean, Motel6.com is your best bet. Their rooms for 4 are usually under $50 a night, and they have locations all over the country.

I have found Red Roof Inn to be a decent chain, as well as Days Inn. Which area of the country are you visiting? Some chains are regional.

try these chains:

For Best Western:
www.bestwestern.com

Holiday Inn:
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/hi/home

Comfort Inn and Choice Hotels:

http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/htm...romo=advtripci

Some others you might want to try are:

SpringHill Suites
Farfield Inn

check for their internet specials.

Days Inn is also a budget chain, but I am not a huge fan of their properties.

Where in U.S. are you going? It would help to know and maybe someone can recommend a local place. Enjoy your trip to the U.S.

Super8 Motels is a budget chain, clean and basic rooms, motels often have pools too.
Motel6 and Travelodge are others. Best Westerns can get pricey, it really all depends on the area you will be traveling in. If you can give us an idea of what you consider budget (i.e. amount you want to spend) you can get better answers. No matter what hotel chain it is if it is near a beach or famous site it will cost more then some out of the way place and that goes for the budget chains too.

If you want a site where you can look up multiple chains for an area you are staying, try Yahoo travel or expedia. You can type in the city or town and specify preferences like a pool and you will get a list of motels in the area.

i usually stick to super 8 when travelling in areas i don't know. i have NEVER been disappointed.
for families, i've heard that the marriott chain is sometimes a good deal. motel 6 is budget but i've stayed at some that were not very clean or the walls were so thin you could hear everything your neighbors did nor said.

A newer chain that has small but very clean rooms is Microtel. They also provide a continental breakfast.
http://www.microtelinn.com/

Motel 6 is now part of the big Accor group of France - usually good, basic accommodations, about on a par with or a shade below their Ibis properties in Europe.

With 2 kids of that age, one thing to consider is the Residence Inns, part of the Marriott group. While they're not necessarily the cheapest places in any market, they're great for families - fully equipped kitchens, always a nice pool and/or recreation areas, SEPARATE BEDROOMS in some properties, and a hot breakfast in the morning, snacks in the afternoon. Many US motels offer "continental breakfast" meaning blah coffee and cereal or donuts in the lobby; the Residence Inns have eggs and all that. It can make a difference of $20 or more per day for a family of 4.

If you are certain of your plans, you can also do well on Priceline. Check http://www.cleverbidding.co.uk or www.biddingfortravel.com for pointers and guidelines on Priceline bids - you can achieve major savings at nicer places than you would otherwise consider.

I would highly recommend trying Hotwire.com if you can as I've gotten some great bargains on nicer hotels.

I've had good luck with Best Westerns, but yes, they do vary greatly in price and plushness from location to location. I've never had a bad one though. The thing I like the best is that I've always gotten the best rates through their own website, always beating out the discount hotel sites.

love
roxy

generally for clean, nice rooms on a budget Red Roof Inns offer quite a bit. They are a subsidiary of accor Hotels and on their internet site they have "Big Red" who offers reduced prices at selected inns. In travelling I've never stayed at a unsatisfactory Red Roof.

Look for their site on google.com

Oh, and have a great trip - where are you coming from?

enter the name of the town or city and state where you plan to stay overnight in your search engine. The hotels will be there to choose from and you can get the rates also. Also take into consideration which hotels offer free continental breakfasts or free meals for kids under a certain age.

Certain chains, most notably Travelodge, Econolodge, Best Western and Holiday Inn (among many), are franchise properties in that they are often individually owned rather than being owned by a single parent company. As such, they must adhere to the standards of the "flag" that they fly (e.g. Holiday has some minimum standards one must meet in order to be paret of their reservation system and use their name). The problem is that the standards aren't always strictly adhered to and compliance is not always well monitored. Motel 6 is corporate owned and sinc eAccor bought them, I'm told that standards have been upgraded and they tend to be much better than in the past. My favorite budget chain is Microtel but they generally have one queen size bed per room and thus are not suitable for two adults and two kids unless you get two rooms.

Of the predictable chains.... Spring Hll Suites is good for a low price, Summerfield Suites is very ncee but pricier. Fairfield Inns are nice - a step up from Motel 6 but IMHO but quite as nice as a Hampton Inn. Extended Stay America is hit or miss - the newer ones are really nice and some of the older ones are getting threadbare. I used to have great success with Suoer 8 but have stayed in a few in more recent years that were past their prime and not in good repair. Sidestep is a search engine that scans a wide variety of hotel websites and does a pretty good job of finding the lowest web rates.

I would try choicehotels.com. I have found good prices at their website for Quality, Choice, and Sleep Inns. The rooms we have stayed in have been clean and spacious. Our last room had a queen bed and king bed.

Owen
We have stayed in Microtel's with two queen beds. Here is the portion of their web site giving info:
Accommodations include:
Single Queen - one queen bed; sleeps up to two adults
Double Queen-two queen beds; sleeps up to four adults
Suite - one queen bed, one sleeper sofa, table and chairs, kitchenette with mini refrigerator, microwave, sink and coffee maker; sleeps up to four adults

Best Westerns seem to have good consistent quality standards, but in larger cities the locations are often in less-than-desirable areas.

You can print coupons at www.roomsavers.com

Holiday Inns offer special weekend discounts at many hotels @ www.weekendwebsavers.com...bookable only for the coming weekend.

Choicehotels.com offer senior discounts at the low age of 50.

Hampton Inn is another chain that is usually pretty consistent. Red Roof has been aggressive in building new hotels and revamping older properties. Another thought is Courtyard by Marriott, they cater to business travelers but have some good deals on weekends for leisure travelers.

Adrian-We have NEVER had a bad experience with Hotwire-you can choose your * rating of hotel. Every time I've booked the hotel has exceeded our expectations. Never a check-in problem and they always honor the hotwire deals.

OMT-the cheapest hotel we've visited lately was Microtel in Gatlinburg(only because they welcome dogs). It was very clean and cheap-but no pool. Give them a try online maybe.

thanks one and all for all the advise...were over in the US on the 21st of July for 6 weeks vacation...youve certainly given us lots to research.......by the way HAPPY 4TH JULY FROM ALL OF US IN THE U.K

We usually stay in Super8. www.supe8.com. Clean but no frills. Continental breakfast included. Join the VIP club and get an additional 10% off. For good hotel web sites, try www.travelweb.com and www.lodging.com. I have had good luck with both in getting cheap rates.

As a long-time resident of D.C. I can tell you that it is very important, for safety reasons, to carefully consider what part of D.C. to stay in. The budget hotels are sometimes located in unsafe areas - for example, Chinatown at night is questionable (lots of muggings). Also, I would stay away from hotels in N.E. or S.E. and certain parts of N.W. Once you are narrowing down your choices, I would suggest you ask about the safety issues of the particular neighborhoods on this forum.

Generally I would not recommend Super 8, I stayed with them twice, and promised never ever to stay there again. If you are going to a big city try using sites like Travelocity, or expedia to find a luxury hotel really cheap, (I found a Sheraton in D.C. for $60), but if you find something cheap via expedia check the hotel website to see if they have the same rate as Expedia charges a service charge, while hotels dirctly dont. Also Best Westerns are usually preety good, though they can be quite different, Econolodge isnt bad either, the Choice Hotels properties are also ok. Also for the same price u can try Amerisuites, though I never stayed with them, they prmose more room then other hotels.

I have recently gotten some really good deals on hotels from Oribitz. I always check all the travel websites, but orbitz has had the best deals for my past couple of business trips.

With regard to Best Westerns, my experience has been that BW's in the eastern U.S. (say east of the Mississippi) are far less desirable than those in the western U.S. I realize that is a blanket statement, but I would suggest other lodging if your travels bring you to the east. Any of the budget Marriott properties like Fairfield Inn or TownPlace Suites would be better.