With twenty first century well into its second decade, tourism is developing at a pace of Korean consumer electronics and accommodation, as its basic component, follows suit. In the midst of these tumultuous transformations and mutations of supply and demand, we, the providers of so called alternative accommodation options come forth – with a strong tendency to become mainstream. Serviced apartment accommodation in Belgrade has started becoming, completely unintentionaly, a serious competition to main service providers – hotels.
Just several years ago paid accommodation in Belgrade (and a big portion of the world as well) actually meant going to a hotel or a motel. Your stay in that case was confined to a hotel room or less frequently to a hotel apartment. You could choose between the cheap’n’cheerful and the expensive, A and D (catergories), five or two stars…As Serbia started opening up to the world, curious visitors started coming in to get to know know this part of the world. . Beside hostels which grew like weed since 2005, the number of serviced apartments, or flats within tenements rented ona a daily basis has been growing exponentialy and this trend is sure to continue in years ahead. Nothing has had such rapid improvements in the field of tourist accommodation as serviced apartments have. The author of these lines has been the withness and the participant of this transition from day one.
In a flood of high quality apartments and a modest growth of the number of hotels in Belgarde, an average visitor is now more thatn ever expsoed to an ever increasing offer of good and relatively cheap accommodation options of serviced apartments. This state of affairs puts an individual, who is not conditioned to one or the other, in somewhat sweet dillema.
Should you step into a fine hotel where a kind porter will hold the door for you and an even kinder receptionist will wish you a good day, charge you a hundredish euros for a night, give you the keycard (or a proper key with a keychain) and direct you towards the impeccable and neat hotel elevator. With an appropriate elevator music in the background , you get to your floor and walk down the red carpet to a fine door of your 14 square meter room.
If you are lucky, the room will be equipped with a club table, maybe a wi-fi, really nicely arranged towels and and immaculately clean bathroom. The living room replacement is the hotel lobby, but it feels kind of reserved for those guests who stay a little bit longer – those prefer not to spend those few hours before they go to bed alone. If you like to wear a bathrobe after shower – well, it is likely that hotels in Belgrade which do provide it cost closer to two hundredish than a hundred. Your coffee will be sipped in the in the hall or the hotel restaurant which will also be your closest place for a bite. And although your entourage may be of Marvellian kind, s/he will also have to go through the registration procedure and an obligatory smirk of the courteous receptionist …not to mention the one you get once you leave the room.
The second scenario, should the honour of your choice be bestowed upon a nice serviced apartment in Belgrade, includes a far simpler procedure that has its own charms. In front of the apartment building you will be greeted by the person in charge of your accommodation – so there’s an unavoidble handshake (beware obsessive compulsive detectives translators remark). So, straight from the street you walk into the entrance hall, which is most frequently littered by print flyers and a motley crue of mailboxes. A compulsory elderly lady with a dog will join you in your wait and just as the elevator arrives a ten year old and his mate will join you in the cue. Oh, of course, they will be dragging their bicycles along so you will all enter the elevator together. Of course, walking with your luggage is out of the question as you have booked an apartment on the seventh floor, and you happen to be in a hurry.
When you reach the apartment door, while your host is rummaging through his keys, the next door neighbour will pass you by and murmur a venomous How much more can we take? Your host will smile shyly, as if he is guilty of something and leads you into the apartment. And this is where you begin to feel at home – and where you get exactly what you have seen in the pictures on the website. A commodious flat of almost 60 square meters, impeccably upkept and almost immaculately clean with a large living room, terrace, bedroom and an abundance of wardrobes. There is a fully equipped kitchen with all the cookery, crockery and utensils, a dining table and a large LCD TV screen mounted on the wall.
Internet is a must, whereas the towels and beddings could be of a higher quality. You suddenly forget about the kids, the bicycles, the sullen neighbour – you give away your 50 or so euros for the night and cannot wait to dive headfirst into the humongous bed. In a bulk of cases the number of persons is irrelevant to the price and personal data is taken usually just from the person paying the bill. When your host leaves, you can invite whomever you wish / you opwn the place till noon tomorrow.
Thus, the cost effectivness, the quality the size and the discretion are on apartments side. The surroundings and the trasfer of all housework to someone else vouch for hotels.
Ok, a hotel won’t have nosy neighbours, bicycles, party activists at your door looking for support at a weird hour, or the president of the residents council asking you for the three months worth of upkeeping. But then again, there is almost certainly no terrace, kitchen, more than 15 square meters, bed space for more than two and no dining table.
So there’s our 10 bucks on the topic and hopefully your food for thought.