According to a new study, hotels might actually be the less expensive option.
The U.K.-based consumer website Which? recently compared the average price of “thousands of hotel stays and 300,000 listings on Airbnb and Vrbo” over one year across 50 destinations. It found that, on average, hotels were the less expensive option in more than 75 percent of the areas analyzed.
According to the research, the most significant price difference is on the popular Greek island of Santorini, where a one-bedroom rental is £84 (about $104) more expensive than a hotel room.
The research also found that hotels were cheaper in every single capital city it reviewed, including Amsterdam, which had an $83 difference, Singapore and London with $75 differences, and Dubai with a $70 difference. It even found that in San Francisco, the city where Airbnb was founded, travelers could save $44 by booking a hotel over an apartment on Airbnb.
The one place the team found vacation rentals to be cheaper than hotels? France. The findings noted that it was less expensive to book a vacation rental over a hotel in Antibes, Avignon, Biarritz, La Rochelle, and Nice. However, it was still cheaper to get a hotel in both Bordeaux and Paris.
Of course, sometimes travelers have different needs on vacation — needing a kitchen, for example, might mean a vacation rental is a better fit for your trip. But, as the research shows, it’s a good idea to do thorough price comparisons when deciding where to stay.
