Guide

How to keep track of your hotel stays

If you travel often, hotels blur together within a year. A few facts and a quick rating, written down soon after checkout, are enough to make your next booking in that city an easy decision.

What to write down after every stay

• Hotel and city. Include the brand and the neighborhood or address, since chains often have several hotels in one city.
• Room type and number. If the room was great, you can ask for it again. If it was next to the elevator, you will know to avoid it.
• Dates. Even just the month helps you judge whether a place has changed.
• Ratings. Value, noise, safety, service and cleanliness cover most of what makes a stay good or bad.
• The details that decided it. Parking cost, breakfast, gym, thin walls, how long check-in took.
• Would you stay again? Yes, no, or only if the price is right.
• A photo or two. The room, the view or the parking sign you will otherwise forget.

When to write it down

Right after checkout, while it is still fresh. Two minutes in the lobby, the taxi or the departure lounge beats trying to remember three weeks later. If you wait until the end of a long trip, every hotel starts to merge into the last one.

Notes app, spreadsheet or hotel journal app?

A notes app

Fast and free, and nothing to set up. The weak point is search: after thirty entries, finding "that hotel in Denver with the quiet floor" means scrolling. Consistent headings help a lot.

A spreadsheet

The best option if you like sorting and filtering, and good for working out how many nights you spend in each city. It is awkward on a phone, though, and logging tends to slip once you are tired and traveling.

A hotel journal app

Built for entering a stay on your phone and searching by city or brand later. StayBook is one for Android. It stores everything on your device with no account. See how it compares with other hotel tracker apps.

The best system is the one you will actually keep using. If a notes app gets you to write every stay down, use it.

A simple rating system

Rate each stay from 1 to 5 in a few categories rather than giving one overall score. A hotel can be spotless and still too noisy to sleep in. Separate scores tell you why you liked or disliked a place, which is what you need when you are choosing again.

Noise is the category people most often forget to track, and it is often the one that matters most.

Make your notes searchable

• Always record the city the same way, so a search finds every stay there.
• Use the same short phrases, such as "quiet floor", "avoid street side" or "great gym".
• Write the reason, not just the verdict. "Noisy" is less useful than "ice machine outside room 214".

Keep it private

A hotel history is a record of where you were and when. Before you pick a tracker, check whether it needs an account or uploads your data. StayBook keeps everything on your phone, and backups or shared stays only happen when you choose to create them.