🌟 Top 10 best hotel chains: choosing the perfect place to stay 🏨

Choosing a hotel where to stay during a long-awaited vacation or an important business trip is always a painful task. After all, from a hotel you always expect not only cleanliness, comfort, full service, quality services and friendliness of the staff, but also home comfort. When the guest’s wishes are guessed at a glance, and everything inside is thought out to the smallest detail, you will want to return to the hotel again and again.

You can entrust the choice of a hotel for your trip to the professionals from Tiqets.com. They will make sure that the quality is supported not only by the description on the website, but also by reviews from tourists. But if you prefer to search for hotels on your own, weighing all the pros and cons, our article will help you navigate the most famous hotel chains.

Hilton

Perhaps the most famous hotel chain and a name that has become synonymous with luxury and high quality. Her fame was greatly enhanced by the extravagant behavior of the former heiress of the fortune, Paris Hilton. As they say, anti-advertising is also advertising. 

Hilton unites over 7,500 accommodation properties in 118 countries. This makes the network one of the largest in the world. However, be careful: today 98% of all Hiltons are franchises. That is, hotels are created under a single brand and try to meet the same standards. But they are still managed independently of the American founder. The Hilton in India will still differ in quality and service from a hotel with a similar name in Germany.

Even with adherence to uniform standards, each hotel in the chain will carry a national flavor. This is especially evident in the establishment’s cuisine: deep-fried bacon, popular in the USA, would clearly be out of place in Muslim Jordan.

And “Hiltons” today are a conglomerate of hotels of various levels:

• The “Luxury” category includes Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, LXR Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels.
• In the “Above High Class” category are Hilton Hotels & Resorts, DoubleTree, Embassy Suites by Hilton and some others.
• “High class” is represented by Hilton Garden Inn, Tapestry Collection, Homewood Suites and Tempo.
• “Upper Mid-Range” Home2 Suites, Hampton, Motto. 
• Tru by Hilton is considered “middle class”, while Spark by Hilton is economical. 

When you book on the chain’s website, you can make sure that the range of services provided meets your expectations. You can also take advantage of the Hilton Honors discount program.

To feel like you're in seventh heaven, you should stay at the Hilton Waldorf Astoria at least once in your life. These are hotels of the highest class, winners of world awards from critics. The most famous of them is a regular at the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal hotel in Mexico. To feel like not a guest, but a god, costs, however, over $2000 per night.

By the way, Mexico is not only beaches, but also many other entertainments. Which ones? Read here.

Marriott 

The eternal competitor of “Hilton” for possession of the palm and the title of the most famous and largest hotel chain. So far, Marriott is slightly ahead. It unites 32 brands, 8,700 accommodation facilities, 1,597,380 rooms in 139 countries – an absolute record! Just as in the case of Hilton, a significant part of the chain’s hotels (80%) are franchises. 

Marriott is known for its innovation and constant desire for development. Thus, in 1995, the network became the first to offer online reservations. In 2007, she was also the first in the world to completely eliminate trans fats from all restaurant food. Caring for guests is not limited to this. In the North American division of Marriott, hotel areas are completely smoke-free.  

Today the network includes many well-known, previously independent brands, differing in their level of comfort:

• “Premium” unites the title brand itself: Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Renaissance Hotels and others.
• The “selective” level is Four Points by Sheraton, Courtyard, Fairfield, etc.

The Marriott chain owns the second most expensive room per night in the world. The Royal Penthouse Suite is located at the President Wilson Hotel in Geneva. It will cost a tourist… $80,000! Of course, you pay that kind of money not only for beautiful views of the Alps and Lake Geneva. The living room features a Steinway grand piano, a 1930s Brunswick pool table and a 103-inch plasma TV, one of the largest in the world. In addition to a huge living room, the room includes a dining room for 26 people, a conference room for 16 people, 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms. One of them has a Jacuzzi and steam shower. And on the terrace you will find your own telescope for observing the starry sky.

Hyatt

Many people consider the following hotel chain to be Arabic. With all that follows from this conclusion, brilliant service. But no, the Americans again. The name really gives off the scent of Persian petrodollars. And you won’t be disappointed with the service. But the world-famous hotel group began with a hotel near Los Angeles. And for a long time it specialized in providing services to business travelers. Therefore, Hyatt hotels were most often located near major airports.

Today the situation has changed somewhat. Chic and posh Hyatts can be found in the most expensive neighborhoods around the world; there are 1,350 of them in 69 countries.

To be fair, we note that indeed the most expensive and exclusive hotels of the chain are located in the Arab states. Therefore, a traveler traveling to the UAE or Qatar should definitely consider this type of accommodation option; it will not disappoint.

Similar to Marriott and Hilton, this chain has a large number of sub-brands. Most of which include the Hyatt prefix in their name. Economy class is practically not represented in the group of hotels.

The Hyatt chain has a highly developed loyalty program, World of Hyatt. It allows you to receive “compliments” from hotels in the form of free breakfasts, room upgrades and spa services. With this network it is worth looking into trips to the sea.

Accor 

If with previous networks everything was more or less clear, look for the corresponding prefix to the name and you are unlikely to make a mistake, then with the Accor group it is more difficult. It unites a number of large and fairly independent brands. And, what is important for our latitudes, affordable. 

Finally, someone other than Americans appeared on our list. Accor is a French business with 5,500 locations in 110 countries (sixth in the list of largest hotel chains). If Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt are regulars at resorts in the USA (we talked about our experience of organizing a trip there here), then Accor hotels are loyal to their European homeland. You will find their representatives in almost every country in Europe. Whose tourist eye did not catch the brilliant signs of Savoy, Rixos and Sofitel, five-star representatives of the luxury segment of the group?

The most common and accessible for business travelers are the “mid-segment” hotels (and this is about first-class four-star hotels!): Novotel and Mercure. These are the historical brands with which Accor's march into the hearts of its guests began. Based on the experience of many travelers, we note: if the budget per night varies from $70 to $150, pay attention to these hotels.

But where are the promised more affordable options? For those who want to save on price, but not on quality. A win-win option in such a case is Ibis hotels. More than 1,200 properties operate under this Accor brand in 70 countries. Don't let the only three stars fool you. The rooms will always be clean and tidy, and the breakfast plate will never be empty. Ibis cares about its status.

You can find a suitable hotel and book a room on the hotel group’s website. Accor also provides excellent restaurant service. The company owns more than 10,000 restaurants around the world, some of which can claim Michelin stars. We revealed the most stellar restaurants in the world here.

InterContinental (IHG) 

Another European on the list, this time a British company, occupying fifth place in the ranking of the largest networks. Many people know this name thanks to the corresponding hotel in Moscow, one of the most luxurious in the Russian capital. 

Don’t rush to scroll through, thinking that the chain’s hotels are beyond your means—the group has a Holiday Inn division, an excellent solution for budget travelers who do not forget about either comfort or their wallet. It is developing very dynamically and includes more than 1,100 hotels. The chain positions itself as the best in the segment, paying close attention not only to the quality of services, but also to the positive perception of guests: all guests are provided with branded bathroom sets and bedding.

As for the top hotels, these include, first of all, the InterContinental itself, Hotel Indigo and Crowne Plaza. InterContinental Venetian hotels, which resemble Renaissance palaces rather than hotels, often house luxury casinos. If this is your uv treatment, check out our post about the gamblers' paradise – the Principality of Monaco.

Where to book hotels

Almost all hotels on our list are connected to the world's leading aggregators of accommodation facilities: Trip.com, Booking, Expedia, Travelocity.

If you are a business traveler and often stay at the same hotel chain, you can book a room directly on its website. This way you can qualify for exclusive discounts and an internal loyalty program. This includes accumulating points for future free nights.