Cheapest room, $339. Internet available "for a nominal fee".

The CYC authors travel, a lot. And we’re proud to say we’ve never stayed in an expensive hotel that a client wasn’t paying for. Even then, given the opportunity we’d prefer to have traded down to a business-traveler hotel and pocketed the difference. But that damn social propriety gets in the way again, and considers that to be the height of cheapness.

Business-traveler hotels. Somewhere well south of the Ritz-Carlton, but not Americas (sic) Best Value Inn, either.* Antiseptic and uniform, they represent a piece of new Americana that we can’t help but love. In this post and the next, we rank the nation’s predominant chains and see if we can’t save you some real money.

Sure, no chain hotel has the charm of that delightful little bed-and-breakfast you stayed in that one time in Vermont; you know, the place where they served maple Anadama bread for breakfast and scheduled daily tours of the county tea-cozy-and-doily museum.

That b&b doesn’t exist, and even if it did, it wouldn’t offer privacy, superfast download speeds, freedom nor quiet. You’ll eat when the innkeepers tell you to, and you’re going to make conversation with the Austrian tourists in Room 2 whether you want to or not.

Individuality is overrated, at least in the service merchant world. That’s why when most people visit a strange town and can’t access Yelp reviews, they’ll eat and sleep at a chain rather than take a chance at some place that the locals like but that an unbiased observer would probably hate. It’s nothing personal, in at least two senses of the adjective; it’s just commerce. Most enterprises fail. The long tail is long for a reason. The successful business models proliferate. That’s why Walmart sells tens of billions of dollars of merchandise annually, and why 19^th-century dry goods stores where you gave the clerk a list of what you wanted and he went in the back and got it no longer exist.

What we love about business-traveler hotels is that they have all the important amenities to distinguish them from fleabag motels, and none of the unnecessary perks that expensive hotels attempt to justify.

(Turndown service? They brag that they peel a corner back on your bed after making it? And if you patronize a minibar, you’re not just an alcoholic, you’re a financially suicidal one. Nor should you be buying in-room movies in this, the Golden Age of Internet Porn. Again, one of our unbreakable commandments is to always look at the transaction from the other party’s perspective. What are they getting out of it? In the case of all those luxury hotel perks, nothing but titanic profit margins.)

Between us, here’s a list of the things we look for in a hotel. (And just because the category’s called “business-traveler” doesn’t mean we don’t stay at these places when vacationing or doing something else.)

-Reasonable price. Details henceforth, and obviously this is the ultimate criterion after we cull the list to its finalists (this is a personal finance site, after all.)
-Smokelessness. This one goes without saying, right? People don’t still smoke in 2011, do they? And spare us your non-smoking room on an otherwise smoking floor. We’ll take a train whistle and a rendering plant outside the window before inhaling carcinogens or even carcinogen residue.
-Internet included. Yes, online access isn’t technically “free”, but we prefer a place that includes it in the price of the room instead of chipping away at your bank account incrementally.

By the way, did you know that free internet is largely an American phenomenon? We’ve been charged rates ranging from 11¢/minute in Cape Town to $14/day in Brisbane to $100/week in Vancouver. The Vancouver hotel (the cleverly titled Hotel Vancouver) only had internet access in one little 100-ft² area in the lobby. Fortunately, that area included a couch. This was in 2007, by the way.
-Quiet. This is a tough one, and not completely under the control of the hotel itself, but…let’s just say we prefer hotels that attract the kind of guest who doesn’t need to be asked to keep the TV volume down at 1 a.m.
–Breakfast included. If you’re the kind of person who skips breakfast (see “smokers”, above), maybe this isn’t so important to you. To us, its absence is almost a dealbreaker. And none of that Continental foolishness, either; the boy needs protein or he’ll starve.

For at least one CYC author, the typical move is to get downstairs when breakfast starts, inhale some carbs and coffee, leave 20 minutes later to find a nearby gym (see below), return and then load up on something involving eggs. Best of all, the self-serve setup means you set the portion limits.

The alternative is to find a Denny’s or an IHOP, which can set a party of two back $33 or so. In some instances, that’s almost 40% of the price of the room. Nor does either stand-alone restaurant let you have seconds. Failing the included breakfast, we can be persuaded to settle for:

-Microwave/fridge. We don’t know what our stomachs are going to do, and neither do you. The idea of being arbitrarily forbidden from eating at any given time just because some 1960s technology isn’t readily available to satisfy our hunger just won’t do.
–Laundry room. Contingent on how long of a trip you’re on. After 5 days in the canyons of southern Utah, with only 4 changes of clothes in the truck, a giant washer and dryer represent the ultimate in luxury. Especially when the alternative is lugging your stuff across town and waiting patiently while it spins in a room full of current and future parolees.

Amenities we don’t care about:

–“Fitness center”. A treadmill and a couple of pairs of dumbbells? Thanks, but we’ll find a real local gym. Our chain memberships (hey, there’s that word again) usually enable us to, thus costing us nothing extra.
–Premium cable. You have ESPN and Fox News? Then we’re good. If you don’t, we’re still good. After all, the only reason for watching TV, ultimately, is football and if you want to see a particular hard-to-find game that badly (e.g. one that’s broadcast on the NFL Network, which no commercial client carries), then you can find a local bar. Besides, a business-traveler hotel will likely have the same cable package that the 5-star hotel across the street has. And is TV really that important? Read a book. Every hotel room has a Bible in it anyway.
–Business center. Shorthand for “extra fax machine that we put in a room next to the front desk.” No one needs this.
–Iron, blow dryer, coffeemaker, included newspaper. Take these out of the average hotel room, and no one would notice.

Next week, the results.

*Oh, what utter toilets. And the worst Americas Best Value Inn of all is the one in Anchorage. They recently reglossed it “Executive Suite Hotel”, and if Radio Shack called itself “Ultra-Luxurious Consumer Electronics Boutique” it wouldn’t change a thing. If you’re ever in Anchorage and counting pennies, pay the extra $10 and stay at the Motel 6 instead.