The State of the Long Stay: Why Travelers Are Settling for Accommodations

Travelers have changed faster than the places built to host them. Trips now stretch across work, family, relocation and leisure, and more people are away long enough that the place they book has to function as part of everyday life. The accommodation menu, for the most part, hasn’t caught up.

To understand how big that gap really is, Landing surveyed 1,000 American travelers. We wanted to know whether people change how they book once a trip runs long, where hotels and vacation rentals fall short when a stay stretches past a couple of nights, and whether travelers would take a third option if one existed at a similar price.

The short version: most travelers have learned to settle. Among long-stay travelers, 58% say no accommodation option fully meets their needs at least some of the time. But when we put a professionally managed furnished apartment on the table at a similar price, 46% chose it over a traditional hotel or a vacation rental.

The Status Quo

Travel patterns are shifting, just not in one uniform direction.

Zoom out, and the travel landscape is expanding. U.S. travel spending is forecast to reach a record $1.37 trillion this year, with domestic leisure accounting for $909 billion of it, according to the U.S. Travel Association’s Spring 2026 forecast.

Zoom back in on individual travelers, and the picture gets far more fragmented. 69% of travelers have changed how often they take trips, how long they stay, or both. Some are traveling more often or staying longer, while others are traveling less or cutting trips short. 11% have increased both their travel frequency and their trip length.

The split sharpens across age and income. 35% of travelers between 30 and 44 are taking more trips than they were three years ago, and so are 35% of those earning $100,000 or more. Among travelers over 60, that figure drops to 17%. One in five say part of what has changed is the type of place they book. For some travelers, the search for a different kind of stay is already underway.

The commercial menu still has two main options on it

Twenty years ago, there was one answer for nearly every accommodation need: a hotel. Unless the trip called for something specific, like a long project or a relocation that pushed you toward an extended-stay property, hotels were the default. Then vacation rentals arrived, and a second item was added to the menu.

That’s roughly where things still stand. 72% of travelers name hotels or motels among the accommodations they book most often. Vacation rentals are a distant second among paid options, named by about one in four travelers (24%). Extended-stay properties barely register at 6%.

Two choices might have been enough if travel habits had held still. But they’ve fragmented in half a dozen directions, and the strain shows up the moment travelers are asked a second question: do these accommodations truly meet your needs?

On the surface, most say yes. 74% agree existing options generally meet their needs. Dig one layer deeper, though, and the cracks appear. 55% say hotels are reliable but often lack comfort and space. 52% say vacation rentals offer comfort and space but often lack consistency and reliability. And 37% say both options have real strengths, but neither fully meets their needs.

Where Hotels and Rentals Fall Short

Hotels and vacation rentals handle short trips pretty well. One offers reliable service and amenities, the other a roomier, more home-like feel. For a weekend away or a two-night conference, either does the job without forcing most travelers to think much about what’s missing.

Push that same trip past five nights, and the trade-offs get harder to ignore. Travelers start asking more of the place they’re staying, and whatever made it appealing in the first place no longer makes up for what it lacks. “Good” quickly becomes “good enough.”

With long stays, frustrations emerge for both hotels and vacation rentals

Room service, housekeeping and a front desk can make a short hotel stay feel easy. Stay long enough, though, and the room itself starts to matter more. When a stay extends to five nights or more, 51% of travelers say hotels are not ideal, with space and everyday amenities driving much of the frustration.

The specific complaints are strikingly ordinary. 45% wished they had a kitchen. 26% missed having a separate living space, and 22% felt cramped or uncomfortable. 20% ran out of clean clothes with no suitable laundry option. The longer the trip, the more those small inconveniences start to look like the basic requirements of daily life.

Against that backdrop, the appeal of a spacious vacation rental is easy to understand. But rentals have weaknesses of their own. Airbnb alone counts more than 5.5 million hosts, so unlike a stay with a major hotel brand, the vacation rental experience can vary considerably from one property to the next.

The frustrations with rentals center on trust and predictability rather than square footage. 38% cite cleanliness concerns, 32% hidden or unexpected fees, and 29% inaccurate listing photos or descriptions. Another 24% point to uncertain amenities and 20% to inconsistent quality.

Space matters, but without consistency, more room doesn’t mean a better stay. The reverse is true for hotels: reliability matters less when what you actually need is space and function. Each category is strong exactly where the other is weak, and the longer the stay, the harder those blind spots are to ignore.

The Cost of Settling

Nobody books a bad stay on purpose, and it often starts out fine. But the disappointment eventually seeps in.

One in five long-stay travelers (21%) say they often or always settle because no accommodation option fully meets their needs. Another 37% say it happens sometimes. Only 11% say they never settle at all.

The biggest cost lands in the wallet, but it isn’t the only place travelers feel it

Not every traveler describes this as a meaningful trade-off. But when accommodations fall short, the effects are tangible. 41% report spending more on food, backup arrangements or upgrades. 32% say their comfort takes the hit, 23% their peace of mind, and 20% their time.

Travelers may not always call it compromise, but they’re paying for it: in added costs, reduced comfort and hours spent researching, adjusting and troubleshooting.

Bad vacation rental experiences build a stronger case for consistency

The frustrations travelers report with vacation rentals are less about how much room a property has and more about whether it delivers what was promised. Cleanliness. Unexpected fees. Photos that flattered. Uncertainty about which amenities will actually be there. Nearly four in five rental users name at least one, and the common thread is the gap between the listing and the experience waiting at the door.

Still, few give up on rentals altogether. Most compensate. The largest group, 43%, spends significantly more time researching before booking next time. More than a quarter retreat to hotels because “at least they knew what they were getting.”

Who Feels It Most

A parent needs a kitchen. A business traveler needs a desk. What any given stay requires depends entirely on why you’re there and who you are. Across the groups we looked at, the more a stay has to support everyday life, the easier it is to notice what’s missing.

Families

Trips with children have more moving parts and far less room to absorb problems. 79% of parents change how they choose accommodations for a stay of five or more nights, compared with 68% of long-stay travelers without children. Parents are also more likely than non-parents to experience a bad booking, and they weigh comfort and livability considerably higher when deciding where to stay.

Professionals

Frequent business travelers offer the sharpest signal of where discomfort builds over time. They spend the most time away from home of any group, and they have the most specific complaint to show for it. 87% say they settle at least sometimes on longer trips. A quarter say they have struggled to find a decent place to work during a longer hotel stay, compared with 9% of everyone else. For a group traveling specifically to work away from home, that gap is hard to dismiss as a minor inconvenience.

Higher-income travelers

Higher earners are among the most likely to be traveling more. 35% of travelers earning $100,000 or more are taking more trips than they were three years ago, compared with 13% of those earning under $50,000. They also place noticeably more weight on comfort and livability when they book. That raises the bar for accommodations among a group whose travel is expanding.

When the Mix of Options Expands

After seeing where the trade-offs show up and who feels them most, the next question is simple: what do travelers choose when a third option is available on similar footing? The answer isn’t particularly close.

We asked travelers to choose between the traditional incumbents and a professionally managed, furnished apartment, with all offered at a similar price, for a stay of five or more nights. 46% chose the furnished apartment, compared with 31% for a traditional hotel and 21% for a vacation rental. That puts the apartment 15 points ahead of the hotel.

Even the most loyal hotel guests are open to something different. Among travelers who book hotels exclusively, 42% chose the furnished apartment in the similar-price scenario.

What travelers actually want cuts across both incumbents

When asked what they look for on a longer trip, two answers account for two-thirds of long-stay travelers. 34% want a reliable, hotel-quality experience with more space. 33% want a place that feels like home: familiar, comfortable and functional. Far fewer prioritize affordability even with trade-offs (19%) or something unique or local, even if less predictable (11%).

Those answers are revealing because neither fits neatly within the traditional category lines. Travelers are describing the strongest qualities of hotels and homes. In fact, 60% of all respondents say they would often or always choose an option that combines hotel-level consistency and support with the space, kitchen, laundry and comfort of a furnished home, at a comparable price.

The Third Option

Hotels, vacation rentals, extended-stay properties. The accommodation market is largely organized around what a property is. Long-stay travelers appear to be organizing their choices around something different: what the stay needs.

For a trip of five or more nights, 73% of long-stay travelers book differently than they would for a shorter stay. The shifts are substantial: 31% apply a completely different set of criteria, and 31% spend significantly more time researching where to stay.

That’s an important distinction. A longer trip isn’t simply a short trip with more nights added. The accommodation takes on a bigger role in the experience. It may need to work as a kitchen in the morning, an office during the day and a place to actually unwind at night.

We see this in our own data, too. 70% of Landing bookings are for five nights or longer, and those stays account for 97% of nights sold. And 23% of Landing stays initially booked for five nights or more are extended beyond their original length.

Longer stays are judged against a broader set of needs

Price and location still come first, cited by 67% and 55% of long-stay travelers. But 49% put comfort and livability among their top booking factors, and 41% prioritize amenities such as a kitchen, laundry and a workspace. Consistency and reliability (22%) and booking flexibility (20%) round out the list.

That helps explain why the space between hotels and vacation rentals is getting more interesting. Hotels have the consistency travelers trust. Vacation rentals tend to offer more of the space and everyday functionality they want. For a longer trip, many travelers would rather not have to choose.

An industry moving toward middle ground

Recent investments by both hotel companies and vacation rental platforms suggest the industry increasingly recognizes the gap between what existing accommodations provide and what travelers need.

Hotel companies are investing in apartment-style stays with more residential features. At the start of 2026, Wyndham and Reside opened a 96-unit Philadelphia property with full kitchens and in-suite laundry, while Marriott and Hilton have expanded their extended-stay and apartment-style offerings.

Vacation rental platforms are working on their shortcomings, too. Airbnb’s Global Quality Report says the company removed more than 400,000 listings that failed to meet its quality standards and expanded tools to help guests identify more reliable stays.

These efforts address some of the weaknesses travelers identify, but only partially. Apartment-style hotel options remain limited, and stronger quality controls don’t eliminate the variability of the vacation rental experience.

That gap matters more as a stay gets longer. Meals, work, laundry and changing plans all become part of the trip. Longer stays are creating room for an accommodation experience that brings residential comfort and professional hospitality together, instead of asking travelers to decide which matters more.

Travelers shouldn’t have to accept more trade-offs simply because a trip lasts longer than a few nights. The companies that build for how people actually stay, rather than how the category was drawn up decades ago, will define hospitality over the next ten years. Landing intends to be one of them.

Landing Travel Survey 2026
Fielded by Censuswide among 1,000 U.S. travelers. Download the full report.