Both work. They just suit different trip lengths and different groups, and the trade offs are predictable.
Short trips favour hotels
For two or three nights, breakfast downstairs, daily cleaning and a 24 hour reception save time you do not have. Apartment check in logistics are rarely worth it for a weekend.
The exception worth knowing is a short trip built around one specific need, most often laundry on a longer multi city itinerary or a kitchen for a traveller managing a dietary restriction that makes eating out three times a day genuinely difficult. In those cases a two night apartment can still make sense even though the general rule points toward a hotel, because the deciding factor is the specific task rather than the length of stay on its own. If neither applies, defaulting to a hotel for anything under four nights removes a decision you do not need to spend time on.
Longer trips favour apartments
Past four or five nights, a kitchen and a washing machine change the economics and the comfort, especially with children. A week of restaurant breakfasts adds up quickly.
Things people forget to check
These cause most of the complaints on either side.
Groups sit somewhere in between the two rules above, and the size of the group usually decides it. Two couples sharing a large apartment often pay less per person than four separate hotel rooms, while getting a kitchen and a living space to plan the day together. A single traveller rarely sees the same saving, since apartment prices are set for the whole unit rather than per head.
It is also worth asking who is actually doing the cooking. An apartment only saves money and stress if someone in the group wants to shop and cook after a full day out. If nobody does, you end up paying for a kitchen you never use while still eating every meal in restaurants, which is the worst of both arrangements.
Noise is another item that rarely makes anyone's checklist until it becomes a problem. Apartments in converted residential buildings often sit above bars, on streets with early morning deliveries, or next to thin walled neighbours in a way that a purpose built hotel, with soundproofing designed for paying guests, usually avoids. If you are a light sleeper, it is worth reading reviews specifically for mentions of noise before booking an apartment, since this is one area where the two options are genuinely not equivalent regardless of price.
- Cleaning fees, which can be significant on short apartment stays
- Which floor, and whether there is a lift
- Air conditioning in summer and heating in winter
- Check in method and hours
Mixing the two on longer trips
On trips longer than a week, there is no rule that says you have to pick one type of stay for the whole time. A common pattern is a hotel for the first two nights while you settle in and find your bearings, followed by an apartment for the remainder once you know the area well enough to shop and cook without wasting time.
This also spreads the check in and check out logistics rather than concentrating them. Arriving to a hotel after a long flight, where someone is always at the desk, removes one variable from an already tiring day. Moving into a self check in apartment a couple of days later, once you are rested and oriented, is a far easier transition than doing it straight off the plane.
The same logic works in reverse for the end of a trip rather than just the start. Some travellers move out of an apartment and into a hotel for the final one or two nights before a flight, particularly an early one, trading the space and kitchen they no longer need for a guaranteed wake up call, a reliable breakfast and a short, predictable route to the airport. Booking this final hotel night in advance, rather than deciding on the day, also avoids scrambling for a room during what is usually the most time pressured part of the trip.
In short
Under four nights, book a hotel and keep it simple. Over four, an apartment usually gives you a better trip for the same money.