Does immersing yourself in nature mean you must pitch a tent or sleep on the icy ground? When exploring the great outdoors, I’m Crew Fancy Cabin not Team Primitive Camping. A similar preference for real mattresses over bedrolls inspired my dear friend, acclaimed travel writer Jane Wooldridge, to write “Comfort in the Wild” (Frommer’s, $35). With smart, funny prose and fab photos, she showcases 100-plus park lodges, glamping resorts, and safari camps. Here’s why Wooldridge wrote the book, and which properties she recommends.

Score a free copy of “Comfort in the Wild” by becoming the first new paid subscriber to The Souvenirist after this story publishes. Some content is free; other stories and desination maps are paywalled for $7 a month.

Why did you write “Comfort in the Wild”?

JW: I was never an outdoorsy or athletic child, so my exposure to nature was somewhat limited. But after I moved to New York City and then Miami, I gained a new appreciation for being outdoors. Breathing in fresh air, feeling the wind on my face, and gazing out at macaws and orchids helped me feel calmer.

Later, as a travel editor, I went to some super-comfortable lodgings deep in mountains and forests where the end of the day meant a great cocktail, tasty local cuisine, and a comfy bed. And after COVID, we all understood the importance of getting outdoors. I wanted to share the idea that you can indulge in nature and still feel cossetted.

How many trips did you take to write the book?

JW: Oh I have no idea! In a single year I flew to Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, and Australia. In the U.S. alone, I drove more than 5,000 miles hauling a vintage Airstream and zig-zagging around lakes and up mountains, through wildfires. My husband, dogs, and I took a trip from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, and part of the way back over two years. Some of the stories in the book were based on trips from years ago; places that really stayed with me but I had to revisit them or re-report about them

How do you know if a lodge or campground is comfortable enough?

JW: Item one: Does it the property have an ensuite bathroom? If not, how far is the bathroom or bathhouse? Sometimes it really is worth the stroll, as long as it’s not too far and your bladder isn’t doing a tango.

Two, understand the setting: Is it close to a highway? Are units so close together that I can hear my neighbors, or so far apart that the Boogey Man might get me?

And three, I have my personal check list: Am I looking for a spa or massage? Butler service? Next I look for articles in major publications, especially those written in first person, since that means the writer actually got there. After that, I look at online reviews; what have other travelers said? I discount the best and worst reviews because those are often outside the norm.

Should travelers adjust their expectations about outdoor lodgings?

JW: That depends on your expectations. If you’re expecting a bare-bones tent, then yes, you can definitely do far better. If you’re looking for an Aman resort, you can find some amazing ones in remote places: Amanjiwo near the Borobodur monument in Java was a standout. At the very least, you should expect a great mattress and soft pillows on a proper bed, a comfortable sitting area, a bit of peace, and someone to help when you need it. You may not have full electric hookup—but you should have enough power to charge your phone.

There are so many trends in wild hotel stays—geodesic domes, glamping, etc. What’s next?

JW: Glamping is the buzz phrase, but you need to read beyond the headline. Some “glamping” resorts are nearly on top of a highway; some have tents so close together you might as well be at Motel 6. Others are far more “glamp” than camp; one of the newer trends is a high quality chef-run restaurant, like the one at Green O at Montana’s Paws Up.

There are many places with pre-fabricated units like geodesic domes or mirrored cabins. I love just about anything in a bubble; it makes me feel so galactic. What’s next? I think it’s undersea safaris watching whales and other amazing marine life, but with the relative ease of a snorkel. Followed by a great martini of course!

What are your fave outdoor hotels?

JW: Top of my list may be Shinta Mani Wild in Cambodia, where designer Bill Hensley created these vast tents over a streaming brook. You get your own nature butler!

In Montana, a second-generation farmer set Clark Farm Silos across corn fields to the Rockies outside Glacier National Park. The rooms are in five repurposed grain silos; my architect husband architect loved them so much he wanted to buy one as a condo. You can never overstate the magic of a proper treehouse; one of my favorites was Iron & Vine in Washington State near Rainier National Park.

Any great stories of adventure or misadventure?

JW: We had so many misadventures writing this book that you’d think my name was Calamity Jane. There were at least six emergency medical visits, including one for Ziggy, one of our two Westies. My husband slipped on ice in Sweden and fractured his pelvis, which gave me an entirely new understanding of travel medical insurance. (Don’t leave home without it.) I also thought I was having a shingles outbreak and it turned out to be chiggers. (Slather yourself in bug goop.)

The worst was our flip. The draught from an 18-wheeler pulled us into a tailspin; our beloved Airstream and SUV rolled like a sausage and we were smushed. My husband and I were luckily OK but Ziggy the dog freaked out and took off into the fields. The incredibly nice people of Tehachapi, California, got out drones and walked fields for hours to find him. Now he and his brother, The Coconut, wear air tags.

How do you pack for these adventurous trips?

Pick a base color—black is easy, but white or camel will do too. Then I throw in a selection of colorful shawls. Nobody remembers the basic trousers or dress, just the shawls. Fast-drying underwear that you can wash in the sink are a must, no matter how grumpy they look. I bring a hat and two pairs of incredibly comfy shoes—I love Skechers. The entire success of any trip rests on my feet, literally. If they hurt I can’t focus.

How has this kind of “soft adventure” travel changed?

JW: There are so many more options now, and the pampering level is far higher than it once was. I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing; I think it’s important to remember that the earth is fragile and that we need to tread lightly.

For instance, my first trip to Papua New Guinea was with a backpack; I slept on a cot left by former missionaries, and believe me that was luxury. My next trip was somewhat more comfortable, but we still slept on mats on the floor. On my third trip there I sailed on a Seabourn yacht. After hanging out with the Asmat warriors I returned to the ship for champagne. Good champagne. It wasn’t entirely authentic, but you can’t argue with bubbly.

How can travelers match their fitness levels to these somewhat adventurous trips?

JW: Most trips now indicate fitness levels, but have a conversation with the outfitter and make sure you’re on the same page. One man’s “short easy hike” is a nightmare if you have sciatica. On a cruise I took Australia’s Kimberly region, many passengers weren’t fit enough to even get into the Zodiacs, much less walk on hardscrabble land. You need to be brutally honest with yourself, and if you find yourself on a trip that’s beyond your capabilities, own up to it and be cheerful about waiting for your friends. After all, you signed up!

What’s your next trip in the wild?

JW: I’ve got a hankering for Zambia. It’s far less visited than other safari destinations, and that definitely appeals. I want to go to Ghana, where there’s an incredible contemporary art scene. And Madagascar just keeps calling me. Shinta Mani has a lodge in Mustang in the Nepalese highlands; I’ve been to Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan but never Mustang.

But we’ll see what the winds bring. Most places are good—well, except the emergency room. I’m done with that.

Is the roadside motel making a comeback? Thanks to a slew of renewed, revived properties along U.S. highways, byways, and back roads, these nostalgic stalwarts of the legendary American road trip feel fresh again. British journalist Ellie Seymour chronicles this retro renaissance in her new book, Vintage Motels. The coffee table book shows off 40 properties across the country from neon-signed adobe inns in New Mexico to woodsy cabins in New York State.

I chatted with her about the book, which summoned memories of my own childhood car trips and got me interested in other revived properties.

My motel memories

When I was a 1970s kid, the Indian Trail Motel in McAlester, Oklahoma shimmered in my memories like a road trip Shangri-La. Six hours from my family’s home in San Antonio and five hours from my grandmother’s house in Ozark, Missouri, the low-slung, mid 20th-century motel and diner often costarred in our summer driving vacations.

I’m pretty sure my parents considered Indian Trail a cheap, clean place to bunk at the half-way point of our drive. But my sister Sally and I, tangled up in the backseat of our Harvest Gold-hued station wagon, were bewitched by the motel.

“Indian Trail has the best grilled cheese I’ve ever eaten,” Sally said. “Maybe we can put a quarter in the slot to make the bed vibrate,” I said, recalling the weird sensation of lying on the motel mattress and blasting the Magic Fingers, a midcentury in-bed massage device that sounded far naughtier than it was.

Arriving mid-afternoon, my family of four would crowd into a single motel room, its two double beds covered in quilted polyester bedspreads in a muddy brown floral. My father would crack a Lowenbrau beer he’d carried in the cooler; my mother would tuck into a paperback novel.

Sally and I would gallop over to the onsite mini golf course, where guests could play for free. One hot July night, I hit my first hole-in-one there, backlit by the glow of the hotel’s neon sign.

Tracking the motel revival

As plane trips replaced road trips for the American middle class in the 1980s and 1990s, mom-and-pop motels fell out of favor or became supplanted by chains like Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson. Some “motor courts” and motels remained in business, but they were as likely to be “Psycho” creepy as “Schitt’s Creek” cute.

In recent years, many older motels have come roaring back thanks to the COVID-19-powered resurgence of road trips and the popularity of mid-century modern design. Seymour covers many of these revived properties in her Vintage Motels book. “I think many [motel] owners get a sense of satisfaction for preserving old buildings and being part of a thriving hospitality trend,” says Seymour. “The key is getting the balance right between preserving a motel’s authenticity while adding modern upgrades and staying in budget.”

Many guests seek out new spins on these retro properties due to nostalgia. Or like Seymour, they’re entranced by the way motels are depicted in pop culture, all neon signs, forbidden affairs, and fast cars. “Watching the ultimate road movie, Thelma and Louise, and later Pulp Fiction, sparked my interest in motels,” she says. “I loved these albeit seedy motel settings as pop culture symbols of freedom and escapism and gathering places for non-conformists and outcasts.”

Seymour fell in love with American hotels in real life while on budget road trip around California in Y2K, when she stayed at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. “It’s a motel like no other where no two rooms are the same,” she says, citing its “over-the-top use of Barbie pink, Swiss Alpine-style architecture, and fairytale-like, hand-carved wood details.”

Visits to the Madonna and other updated properties (the Starlite Motel in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the Silver Sands of Long Island) inspired Seymour to write her book. It showcases dozens of Motels 2.0, where high thread count sheets replace creaky, Magic Fingered beds and craft cocktail bars occupy old diners.

Check into these “new” motels

I recently Googled Indian Trail and learned that it burned down in 2012. But Seymour’s book and these revived properties—too recent to be in Vintage Motels—make me wanna hop in an old station wagon and hit the road.

• Blue Ridge Tourist Court, Boone, North Carolina. A 1950s motor court in the Blue Ridge Mountains went from condemned to chic with a sensitive 2023 rehab bringing in brightly painted rooms and vintage furnishings.

• La Vista Motel, Denver, Colorado. A circa-1956 property on Denver’s up-and-coming Colfax Avenue stars wood paneling, mountain-inspired murals, and an onsite coffee shop.

  

• Ranch Motel, San Antonio, Texas. Minimalist-cool guest rooms, a spiffed-up swimming pool, and frequent events (tarot card Sundays) brought this 1948 motor court back to life. Plus, a pickleball court!

• The Rochambeau Roadside Inn, Williamsburg, Virginia. A renewed 1948 motel riffs on mid-century Americana with plaid wallpaper, framed prints of Revolutionary War soldiers, and long, are-we-at-Mount Vernon? porch. Free bikes lets you pedal to nearby attractions like Colonial Williamsburg.

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I have definitely slept around.

As a houseguest, that is. In the name of spending time with far-flung friends and family or nabbing a stay in some desirable, often-spendy locale, I have slipped between sandy sheets on a pull-out couch in Nantucket, passed out on innumerable creaky New York City air mattresses (often alongside a cat or two), and holed up in the guest rooms of friends in bustling Barcelona and old-world Prague.

Accept an invitation—or nicely ask—to be someone’s houseguest for a night or a week, and the stay could veer toward comedy, drama or even a thriller. Will my college roommate’s guest bed be too soft? Does Uncle Alvarez’s snarling dog bite people as they sleep? For the love of Buddha, will my hosts serve coffee in the morning, preferably early?

Most of all, will both guest and host feel comfortable and have a pleasant, or at least tolerable, visit? How can you be sure a relationship survives the vagaries of your morning breath and their nighttime “Real Housewives of Wherever” streaming habit?

“It’s about how well you know someone and how well you want to know someone,” says Hilary Robertson, a New York City stylist and author of the book Nomad at Home. She has hosted countless guests at her Connecticut country place in a converted schoolhouse. “The American way of life robs people of human interactions. So if you stay with someone, you’re talking with them, looking at them, and deepening your connection.”

The art of the mooch-cation

In my family, travel was both about visiting a place and staying with people we knew who lived in it. Long road trips from our San Antonio hometown wound up at my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Dwayne’s ranch house in the Ozarks. European vacations usually commenced in England, where my mother Carol would reconnect with—and impose upon the sometimes dusty guest rooms of—chums she met studying abroad at London’s Kings College.

“You must see friends and relatives every year or two, or you won’t remain close,” my mother preached. My parents, Hal and Carol, were both teachers, cash-poor but vacation-time rich. They spent their free summers rambling the U.S. by station wagon or tooling around Europe by train or rental Fiat. If you’d ever met them or were kin, they were probably coming to stay at your place, with two young daughters—me and little Sally—in tow.

My father jokingly called these trips “mooch-cations.” In Yorkshire, Sally and I delighted in the exotic feather beds (and tennis court) of Carol’s old roommate, who had married a lord. Amid the oil wells and pine trees of East Texas, two elderly cousins who seemed to have forgotten the Barger fam was coming stashed us on a steamy, screened-in back porch with saggy wicker sofas. “Sometimes a snake comes in,” they casually mentioned. I didn’t sleep a wink.

Being a guest was a hack and a delight for my parents, a way to show their kids more of the world for less money. My family stayed in hotels and rental houses too. But my best memories of our month-long summer vacations were giggling until dawn in my cousin Karla’s double bed or dreaming that I lived in a Sears bungalow in Chicago just like the one we stayed in with my Dad’s grad-school buddy.

How to be a good guest

Don’t overstay your welcome.

Etiquette TikTok and old-school manners books agree: The first rule of Houseguest Club is to not stay too long. “Three days is a safe bet—I’ve never felt in someone’s way during short visits like that,” says Claire Polders, a Dutch writer and nomad who pens the Substack Wander, Wonder, Write. “Hosts and guests can change their habits temporarily to accommodate one another without much stress, and small annoyances are easily overlooked.”

Set boundaries, and respect those of your host.

Don’t assume that staying with someone means you need to shadow them or do everything they do. They’ll have boundaries set for you (“I don’t wake up before 8 a.m.”), and you can do the same for them. “Be considerate and ask questions,” Polders says. “Where should I put my bags so they’re not in your way? Is it okay if I sit here during the day to work, or does that bother you? Do you hear me practice my Japanese when I keep this door closed? Do you want me to flush the toilet at night, or does the sound wake you up?”

Be sure the host actually wants you to stay.

Confirm that the host is comfortable with your briefly cohabitating with them. Usually this means you’ve been invited. When in doubt, just act like a vampire, and politely ask to come in. Don’t be shocked if you get turned down. “I recently said ‘no’ to a friend’s daughter who wanted to stay with me for an entire week,” says Robertston. “It just wasn’t a convenient time for me at work.”

Don’t stay with people you barely know.

On a college road trip, my mother (call her Carol the Moocher) facilitated me and my then-boyfriend spending the night with her long-lost third cousins in an Oregon mountain town. We showed up late in a snowstorm only to meet a grouchy middle-aged couple who seemed annoyed to see us and even more annoyed that the boyfriend and I were used to sharing a bed. It was an uncomfortable night and an awkward morning—and the last time I stayed with strangers.

Be generous.

Bring a gift, preferably something consumable from where you live. (I have brought Astronaut Ice Cream from the gift shop at the Air & Space Museum here in D.C. or cans of fancy peanuts grown in nearby Virginia. Offer to take your hosts to dinner somewhere nice.

But remember that the real present, if you aren’t a guest from hell, is your spending time with loved ones you don’t often see. “We tend to consider ourselves a burden to hosts (I do at least), but I’m learning that my presence can be a gift,” Polders says. “Others may enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs, and the best way for us to spend time together is for me to be in their home.”

I’ll be a houseguest again soon, sleeping on an airbed (beneath an Andy Warhol silkscreen!) in the Tribeca loft of my longtime friend and mentor, JLC. I look forward to museum hopping and shopping with her. But the biggest treat? The two of us gossiping over morning coffee while curled up on her sectional sofa.

Do you have a good or bad story about staying with other people? Or about your own houseguests from hell or heaven? Drop me a line in the comments; your tale might figure in a future column!

“Bathroom with shower or tub” is the most frightening sentence I can read in a hotel room description, besides maybe “slaughterhouse view.” It’s the dire possibility that my guest room will have a shower and NO TUB that panics me. When I’m traveling, having a tub to flop into ranks just below immediate access to morning coffee. Wishy-washy either/or statements hit me like a crummy cold shower.

For the privilege of a soak, I’ll check in an hour later, pay for bigger room, or plan my trip around historic hotels with large clawfoot baths. “Some people are just tubbies,” an interior designer once told me during an interview about bathroom trends. I knew she understood my weird, Mr. Bubble-loving tribe.

Humans have been splish-splashing themselves into hot water to get clean and chill out for millennia. Take the ancient Roman plunge pools in Bath, England, or onsen (communal hot springs) around Japan.

Bathtubs starting showing up inside hotels in the early 19th century, though they were still shared affairs until the turn of the 20th century. The now-defunct Statler Hotel, opened in Buffalo, New York, in 1907, claimed to have the first private ensuites with tubs, advertising “a room and a bath for a dollar and a half.”

Sightseeing from the tub

I’ve never paid a mere $1.50 for a place to steep my bod and lay my head. But careful hotel booking (read the fine print, ask for a tub when you reserve) has dipped me into memorable vessels, even as many hotels scrap tubs for showers to maximize space and profits.

A tub with a view lets you passively sightsee from under a blanket of bubbles. You can go neck-deep in the retro soakers in the Skybox Suites at Manhattan’s Ludlow Hotel, which overlook the jagged rooflines and water towers of the gritty Lower East Side. An outdoor clawfoot at La Serena Villas in Palm Springs provides vistas of swaying trees and mountain skies.

Sometimes, a tub embodies a destination (and inspires bath remodeling dreams back home). Consider the dramatic, marble-clad oval vessels at Marrakech’s El Fenn, set amid moody color schemes and Moroccan crafts. In our baño at the Casa de Sierra Nevada in San Miguel de Allende, a hammered copper slipper tub gleamed against rugged local tiles. I spent 30 minutes each morning pruning up in it, plotting to replace our 1920s bathtub back home or, at least, to consider a copper farm sink in the kitchen.

In a 19th-century mansion-turned-hotel outside of Lisbon, ablutions happened in a bathroom decked floor-to-ceiling-to-tub with Portuguese tiles. It evoked the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum) nearby, except the dreamy blue-and-white tiles weren’t behind glass, they were steamed up with use and gloriously alive.

Why I soak

A luxe tub (and ideally, some nice bath salts to go in it) is a decided hotel perk. But I’m also happy in a sparkling clean model at a conference Marriott or a midwestern motel. Running the water, pouring in the shower gel de la casa, and testing the temperature feels like prepping for a religious rite, a little DIY spa treatment. Some people—me included—like it hot, and I inch into the piping water.

These nice long dips rinse off the detritus and dirt travel, banishing the impenetrable dust of Cairo, the chill of a rainy day in Seattle, or the rental car funk from a drive across South Dakota to see my in-laws. The warm water calms my ever-buzzing mind. Whether I bring a book into the deep or just a coffee, a bath provides a few moments away from my phone and a break from my husband asking where we’ll eat lunch.

A shower? They’re useful for washing your hair, but their efficiency smacks of running-late workdays and quick rinse offs after the pool. A bath is a splurge, a soapy time out akin to lounging on the beach or taking a long nap.

I step out of hotel tubs cleaner, calmer, and better prepared for where the day or night takes me. Thinking of ancient Romans rewrapping their togas post-caldarium and Edo-era Japanese bathers donning kimonos as they emerge from hot springs, I grab the robe embroidered with the hotel logo.

Whether I’ve just escaped the hot weather of a Botswana safari or a New York City snowstorm, the bath has been a trip all its own.

Hotel reservation sites showcase abundant guest ratings, 3-D room tours, and tools letting you sort properties by features from location to pet friendliness. So why does it feel so nightmarish now to book a pleasant stay—and why have so many hotels seen a drop in guest satisfaction?

I’m a travel writer, a semi-pro voyager. But I’m often challenged to find hotels I like. Hotel reservation sites such as Booking.com, Expedia.com, and Hotels.com have hard-to-understand star systems and reviews which sometimes seem written by bots or easily impressed dodos. Hotel websites overflow with glamor shots making 300 square foot guest rooms resemble mansions.

TikTok and Instagram hotel coverage? Influencers create pretty content—but that amazing-looking stay at Casa de Whatever might’ve been comped, and, says Annie Fitzsimmons, luxury travel expert and the author of the forthcoming book 100 Hotels of a Lifetime, “Influencers don’t want to show you the bad part of a hotel, it’s more of a ‘look where I am’ thing.”

Even tour operating giant Intrepid has noticed the struggle, which is one of the reasons it is acquiring its own hotels in Vietnam and Australia. Hotels can be “a mediocre, negative or not even a memorable experience,” Intrepid’s Matt Berna told Travel Weekly. “So how do you take something so vital to travel and make it a much more enriching, immersive experience?”

This lack of clarity or truly critical lodgings reviews online means that for every overnight success I experience—San Antonio’s plush Hotel Emma, in a converted 19th-century brewery—there’s a hotel stay from hell.

Recently, I bunked in a Maryland chain motel with a moldy bathroom and a moody elevator that worked erratically—a real annoyance for my 80something in-laws. For a girl’s weekend to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania last autumn, there weren’t many convenient nearby places to stay. My friend booked us into a B&B in a historic, small-town mansion. It was well-reviewed online, but the inn starred dusty rooms, saggy mattresses, and endless displays of glassy-eyed, worn-out toys. We now remember it as Creepy Doll Manor.

The five-star Copenhagen hotel my husband and I splashed out on this summer? Mostly a bust, despite the property’s killer location in a converted 1912 post office—and recommendations from several travel websites and PR folks. Sure, the sheets were crisp, the soap smelled nice, and the very small bathroom was filled with marble. But the closet-sized, reservations-only sauna and weensy guest room (my husband dubbed it the Tom Thumb Suite) felt stingy and unwelcoming.

So, in an era of confusing booking websites and too little honest information on hotels, is there a formula for getting a great room at a fair price? I spoke with several experts for advice. Here’s what I found.

Learn to read reviews

When sifting through reviews on Expedia, Hotels.com, and their ilk, check out both the five-star and one-star reviews. (You might even read a middling review or two for comparison’s sake.)

Watch for comments on amenities important to you and any deal breakers. If you’re a light sleeper, does anyone complain about highway noise? If a swimming pool for your kiddos is vital, do reviewers say anything about its size, cleanliness, or whether it’s even open?  Is there more than one mention of uncomfortable beds?

A red flag that you’ve found a franchise of the Bates Motel? A pattern of negative comments about the same thing (nightclub racket, hungry bed bugs, murderous owners). Positive signs include hotel management that responds constructively to critical comments and praise from returning customers (“We stay at the Greenbrier every year, and we love its colorful wallpaper and golf course.”)

“You have to dig into the reviews,” says Jeremy Wells, a strategist and partner at hospitality branding and design firm Longitude°. “Some negative comments might be for something that doesn’t matter to you, like someone who gives a bad review to a hotel because you can’t bring your dog, but you don’t even have a pet.”

Read the fine print and scrutinize photos

Need java immediately upon waking or a swim just before bed? Read the hotel’s website carefully, and scrutinize its photos before choosing the property and a specific room. Don’t assume a room has a hairdryer, coffee maker, or bathrobe unless that’s specified on the website. Look at a photo of the room class you want to book, not an image of the Presidential Suite that’s $20,000 a night.

“Don’t take everything at face value,” says Tara Busch, a travel advisor and founder of the Conscious Travel Collective. “Photos can be so misleading—is that a settee or a chair? You can’t tell if it’s taken through a fisheye lens.”

Map it out before booking

For many travelers, location is everything. Booking sites generally let you sort properties by neighborhood; some indicate how far a hotel is from the city center. “But ask yourself what you want—do you want to splurge on a hotel that’s right downtown, or stay in a neighborhood a bit further out?” says Busch.

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Plot out possible properties before reserving a room. “I put the restaurants I want to eat at and places I want to go on Google Maps,” says Fitzsimmons. “Then I’ll add hotels to see what’s convenient.”

Then check what’s near your hotel (Street View can be handy here) to avoid booking a room overlooking the Lincoln Tunnel exit in New York City or facing a creepy cemetery (unless that’s your thing, Wednesday Adams).

Brand loyalty doesn’t mean much

Hotel chains seek repeat clients with branding, a sense that you’ll get the same cushy pillows/hot chocolate chip cookies/warm welcome in Marriotts from Arizona to Zanzibar. But many “name brand” properties are franchises and differ wildly from place to place.

“The quality of chains isn’t consistent, except maybe at the high end, like the Four Seasons,” says Sarah Stodola, author of the travel Substack Flung and the book The Last Resort. “I recently had the worst experience at well-known chain hotel in Fiji. Everything was dirty, falling apart, and seemed sketchy. Then I learned people brought prostitutes there!”

Find your tribe

You might turn up a stay keyed to your taste via a special interest hotel consortium. These are essentially paid membership organizations with specific requirements—and usually, fees—for the hotels that join them.

I’ve found cool vintage lodgings via the Historic Hotels of America, a division of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where properties must be over 50 years old and meet certain standards. This summer, I stayed at Santa Fe’s La Fonda on the Plaza where I dug sleeping beneath beamed ceilings and breakfasting in the restaurant filled with painted glass panels.

Other hotel membership groups include Beyond Green, which holds properties to strict environmental and cultural standards, and Design Hotels, which includes 300-plus, high-style properties around the globe. The latter is how I turned up the Nobis Hotel Copenhagen, a place I did enjoy my stay at in the Danish capital thanks to its blend of historic details (ceiling moldings, a grand exterior) and mid-century interiors (sculptural light fixtures, low-slung lobby sofas).

Look for a true hotel critic

Be wary of glowing, overly positive TikToks, Instagram reels, and booking site reviews. Many people—even journalists—are creating content because they’ve gotten a free stay, have a marketing deal, or just want to art direct their vacation into a White Lotus episode (sans cheating spouses and dead bodies). Even some magazines and websites with good reps (Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler) primarily report on hotels that are brand new or have undergone major renovations or additions.

A few sources still do honest, critical reviews, meaning experienced journos stay overnight (anonymously) in hotels and then give their honest judgement. Look to The Telegraph, Rick Steves, or the Michelin Guide for opinionated, pro takes on where to lay your head. (Michelin just launched its one-to-three key rating system in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.) These outlets examine properties in all price ranges, a boon when some hotel rates are up as much as 79 percent since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Use a travel agent or advisor

The internet (and increasingly, AI) can help anyone book their own hotels and tours now. But if you use a travel agent/advisor to reserve (and maybe choose) your hotel, you might get a nicer room, particularly at higher-end properties.

“I never would book a five-star hotel without going through an adviser,” says Fitzsimmons. “Even if you’re in the smallest room, you’ll probably get an upgrade thanks to their relationship with the hotel.” Since agents are paid a commission by hotels, you’ll usually shell out little or nothing to use one.

Note: This kind of story takes deep research and interviews to achieve. For now there’s no paywall here, but in the future these insider looks and guides will be for paid subscribers. Thanks for reading it!