If you’re looking for a place to stay in your travels there are two ways to go. One is to get nice and comfy with a local B&B style facility that offers very “local” flavor. You may be pleasantly surprised by this influx of down home flavor to your trip; the info you get may be top notch, the hospitality unsurpassed, and the value for your dollar surprising. Or it may not. Your other option on your worldly travels is to stay in one of the conglomerate hotel groups; Marriott, Best Western, Four Seasons, Hilton, Westin, Holiday Inn or any of the other reams of hotel groups that operate all over the world. While you may pay a little more at one of these hotel groups, it does have its benefits: uniform service, online assistance, world wide reach, and quality of product that has a trusted name standing behind it. And of course, the things all American’s are brooding about currently, there’s accountability; a level of reciprocity that people who get bad product desire.

ICHG:

Intercontinental Hotels Group is a group of hotels, all of which operate under different guises, but all answer back to an ultimate master. These hotels include Intercontinental Hotel, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites. ICHG has hotels from Andorra to Zimbabwe and just about all points in between. You should check out their online resource to find out more about ICHG.

MARRIOTT:

If you’re looking for a step up in quality and a step up in price, you should check out the Marriott hotels group. Marriott is a similarly trusted name which operates many different brand levels of the same hotel group. These include Marriott Hotels & Resorts, JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Renaissance Hotels, Courtyard by Marriott, Residence Inn, Fairfield Inn, Conference Centers, Towne Plaza Suites, Spring Hill Suites, and Marriott Vacation Club. Marriott is similarly well branded across continents from Argentina to Vietnam and the US Virgin Islands, Marriott is a proven name you can trust.

STARWOOD:

Starwood Hotels are a much more upscale brand and are popping up everywhere; from exotic destinations to big cities, if there isn’t a Starwood hotel in your neighborhood, there will be! Starwood also offers a number of name brand hotels you’ll probably be familiar with including Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, Aloft, The Luxury Collection - Le Meridian, Element, and The W Hotels. All of these are premiere name brands and all carry the Starwood level of quality. Starwood hotels group has properties from Albania to Yemen and is one of these properties you should definitely check out for your next trip.

If you’re traveling anywhere, you should at first consider what’s most important to you: locations, amenities, service, proximity to other guests, overall experience. Then you should look into any of these various hotel groups. All offer a different level of excellence and all are available wherever it is you happen to be traveling.