Difference between guest houses and hotels

[Cees-Holland]

I am not much of world traveller and still a newby to Thailand, there for this (maybe silly) question:

What is the difference between "guest houses" and "hotels". Actually what is a guest house?

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In Thai law there is a significant difference between hotels and guest houses.
Many of those establishments that we know as hotels are, in fact, licensed as guest houses.
One of the criteria for getting an hotel license is that the establishment must have a car park.

In spite of the above piece of trivia, it basically means NOTHING.

Lots of places calling themselves "hotels" have car parks and lots calling themselves "guest houses" do.

There are similarly no rules applying to what can call itself a "resort" or a "boutique hotel" versus a regular hotel or guest house.

IN GENERAL, something calling itself a "guest house" will be relatively spartan and slim on facilities. But that is all.

[pong]

as someone above pointed out-there is a Thai tax-difference- for rong raem=Hotel and Baan phak=sleeping house. May also apply to what is on offer and what safety-measures (dont laugh-they do exist) apply.
Comparing a guesthse with a Brit-stle B+B seems not quite right to me- I think well over 80/90% of them dont serve ANY brekkie-be it Asian or Western, and if it does, it will be charged for separately. Comparing it with a continental style pension vs. Hotel would be slightly more right.
BUT: westerners looking for cheap accomm (backapckers and the like) tend to go to guesthouses. This is just a small proportion of all Thai ''baan phak''-with adverts in English and geared to helping out travellers with directions, english (or even any other) language, some familiair food etc. The further away from BKK-the more it feels like living as in a family pension with the family. A fair lot of them are run by mixed farang-Thai couples.
There is a peculiair variety of them in Pattaya-in the older sois, like soi PostOffice etc-you still see those rows of guesthosues, run by farang and having a home-based lot of ''available'' (mainly from Isan) girls. Probably also exists in Phuket. Mainly aiming at only their own countrymen and serving their own type of foods and helping their customers out in the relationsships. There were the odd 1 or 2 gay-aimed too-long ago.
In BKK the best known area for those houses is BanglamPhu, around infamous KhaoSarnroad-currently right beside the red shirts demo-grounds. There must be 100s of them-and certainly not just in the superlowcost bracket anymore. Many of these do not allow casual short-time Thai visitors, be they male or female. OTOH some of them specialise in giving rooms to mixed couples-you see, Thailand has all anyone ever cared to think about.

[Shuee]

basically a guest houses do not offer as many facilities & are not always staffed 24hrs a day

My friend recently stayed in a so called 5* Boutique Hotel in London, sounds a comfy nice place. The room was about 7' x 7' and you could hardly swing a cat, charged ┬г170, no swimming pool. They offer all the nicities like coffee in the drawing room etc which I suspect is why it is classed as 5*, a total rip off.

Apparently, the star system that is used i.e. 5* is no use or ornament. They can call themselves what they like. For instance, in Lebanon there is a hotel being built and they are going to call it a 10* hotel. How that works I don't know.

[cdnmatt]

Guest houses are generally small and shitty, but most of the times cheaper. Sometimes you get completely ripped off though. Hotels are well, hotels.

If I'm staying at a place for 1 week or more, I always look for a service apartment. Sometimes they're just the same as a hotel, but other times, you can get absolutely amazing deals. Best I ever probably found was in Prague, and it was an amazing place. Right downtown, small apartment block with maybe 20 apartments, and huge. Two bedroom, living room, full and large kitchen, entrance way room, large bathroom, etc. All that for $500 CAD every two weeks. I could have easily dropped the same amount for 3 nights at a typical Holiday Inn style hotel.

But yeah, if you're staying for a week or more, fuck hotels, guesthouses, and the like. Look into serviced apartments, as many times you'll get a much nicer place to stay for cheaper. That's been my experience at least, regardless of country.