If you are about to reserve a hotel for holiday travel, we can recommend the Extended Stay America chain of hotels. For us, this company offers special amenities that make them our place to stay when we visit family, friends, or need a home base for business or vacation travel.
Our room in the East Providence, Rhode Island location looked exactly like this one. The chair in the corner is a recliner and faces a flat sceen TV.
Yes, that is a tiny kitchen you see in the upper left. Each room is a studio apartment with a small but efficient kitchen. They give you a full size refrigerator, two burners, a microwave, toaster, coffee maker, and a tiny but usable supply of tableware, pots, and pans.
We were in Rhode Island because a family member was in the hospital and checking in locally put us on the scene when needed.
The kitchen made grabbing meals, as we could, a lot easier. Even when we did take-out from a nearby restaurant, we were able to eat just as much as we wanted and save the rest for later.
When you're stressed, dining out for every meal is not always the best alternative.
Pet Friendly
We were also traveling with our Westie Poppy who's on a homemade raw food diet. This makes a refrigerator and freezer manditory when we travel. The hard surface kitchen floor also made feeding her easier. We often have to put down a drop cloth to feed her in carpeted hotel rooms.
Extended Stay does charge a hefty $25 per day, per dog pet fee that tops out at $150 for those who stay for awhile.
They have a designated "Pet Exercise Area" with pick up bags and a trash can. We found this helpful because the scents in that area encouraged Poppy to do her business more quickly than she might have without it.
One suggestion we might have on that pet fee is to quietly return some or all of it as a gift certificate towards a future visit when a family has left no sign that a pet was ever present and caused absolutely no concern for the hotel guests or staff. It would encourage the best possible behavior from guests with pets.
Service & Cleanliness
The chain seems to pride itself on cleanliness and excellent service. For us, they hit the mark on both goals. From check-in to check-out and each time we walked by the front desk, we were treated like VIPs.
And, no, they did not know we were travel writers. We had not planned on writing about this chain when we reserved there. It was in looking back on the great experience and recommending the chain to friends that brought about his post.
You can sign up for a discount before you reserve by joining their travel club. And, you can check the ratings of individual properites on Trip Advisor.
We have already explored the Extended Stay America locations map to see if they have hotels where we plan to travel. While an oceanfront apartment is our usual choice for downtime, we love what these hotels offer when we're exploring an area for travel writing or visiting family or friends.
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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2013 Penny Cherubino with room photo and screengrab courtesy of Extended Stay America
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