Contractor Accommodation vs Hotels: What Project Managers Actually Prefer

I've booked both. For a team of one or two staying for a few nights, hotels are often fine. For a team of ten staying for ten weeks, hotels are a genuine problem — and most project managers who've tried both come to the same conclusion eventually.

The Cost Argument

The economics shift significantly once you move beyond 1–2 people or beyond a couple of weeks.

A decent business hotel in a regional UK city runs £90–£140 per night per room. Add breakfast (£12–£18 if not included), evening meals when there's no kitchen (£15–£25 per person), and laundry (£15–£25 per week per person), and the true daily cost per contractor is £120–£180.

A serviced apartment in the same city typically runs £70–£120 per night for a 1-bed, or £100–£160 for a 2-bed that can house two contractors. With kitchen access, your meal costs drop significantly — most contractors use the kitchen for at least some meals. Laundry is in-unit. The effective cost per person, per night, for a two-person apartment, is often £50–£80.

For a team of ten people over six weeks: hotel costs at £150/person/night = £63,000. Serviced apartment costs at £75/person/night (sharing, with kitchen use) = £31,500. The gap is real and material.

The Practical Argument

After a 10-hour day on site, contractors don't want to navigate a hotel corridor, queue at a restaurant, and sleep in a room the size of a cupboard. These aren't luxuries — they're basics that affect performance, morale, and retention.

Kitchen access matters for wellbeing and cost. Contractors on long assignments who can cook their own meals eat better, spend less, and don't feel institutionalised. A shared evening meal in an apartment is a social space. A hotel corridor is not.

Storage is a practical issue that hotels handle poorly. Work clothing, tools, PPE, and personal equipment all need somewhere to live. Hotel rooms have wardrobes and nothing else. Serviced apartments have proper storage.

The Admin Argument

Hotels often generate one invoice per room per night — or worse, one invoice per person per booking. For a project manager managing thirty contractors across six weeks, that can be hundreds of individual invoices needing to be reconciled and submitted to accounts.

Specialist contractor accommodation providers — particularly those with consolidated monthly invoicing like Overnightly — generate a single invoice per month for all accommodation across all locations. The time saving for accounts teams is substantial, and the reduction in error and chase-up is even more significant.

When Hotels Still Make Sense

Hotels aren't always the wrong answer. Short stays of 1–2 nights where the admin overhead isn't an issue and the person needs to be in a specific location quickly: hotel. Solo contractors in major cities with strong corporate hotel rates and a preference for hotel services: reasonable. Last-minute bookings where serviced apartments aren't available with enough notice: sometimes necessary.

The hotel default is usually a historical habit rather than an active decision. Once project managers run the numbers for their actual team sizes and stay lengths, most switch and don't go back.

What Project Managers Actually Say

The consistent finding across contractor forums and direct conversations with project managers is this: for stays over one week and teams of more than two people, serviced apartments are the preferred option. The main barrier to switching is inertia — the hotel booking process is familiar, and serviced apartment providers vary in how easy they are to use. For providers like Overnightly, where the booking and billing process is specifically designed for multi-contractor B2B programmes, that barrier is lower.