The Hotel Chains That Have Gotten Noticeably Worse — And the Ones That Have Genuinely Improved

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Hotel brand quality doesn’t crash overnight. It erodes. A small cut here — reduced housekeeping frequency. A small cut there — cheaper linens, thinner towels, a breakfast that used to be complimentary and is now $18. A front desk staff that’s half the size it was in 2019 serving the same number of guests.

Individually, none of these changes make headlines. Collectively, they define whether a brand is going up or going down — and the guests who travel frequently enough have been noticing the trajectory long before any industry publication writes about it.

Here is an honest accounting of what’s been happening in the hotel industry, based on guest review patterns, industry staffing data, and the kind of institutional knowledge that comes from people who sleep in hotel rooms 80 nights a year.

Why Hotel Quality Shifts Happen Slowly and Quietly

Most major hotel brands are franchised — the corporation owns the flag, the loyalty program, and the brand standards, but an independent owner owns the actual building and employs the staff. This structure means that brand-level decisions about service and amenities have to flow through hundreds of individual franchise agreements, which creates enormous variation within any given brand.

When a brand “declines,” it usually means the franchisor has allowed its minimum standards to drop — or stopped enforcing the standards it theoretically has — and individual franchise owners have responded rationally by cutting costs. When a brand improves, it usually means the franchisor has either tightened standards, invested in training infrastructure, or attracted better-capitalized franchise owners who are willing to invest in the product.

This is why improvement and decline are slow and uneven. A Marriott in one city might be noticeably better than it was four years ago while a Marriott in another city is noticeably worse. The brand is the same; the owner is different.

The Brands That Have Been Quietly Declining

Among frequent travelers and in aggregated review data, a few mid-tier brands come up repeatedly in discussions about quality erosion.

Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express occupy a strange position. The Express sub-brand became genuinely excellent in the early 2010s — clean, consistent, good breakfast, reliable WiFi — and built a loyal following of road warriors. In the years since, the consistency has eroded considerably. Franchise owners vary wildly in their maintenance investment, and the breakfast quality has become almost comically variable from property to property.

DoubleTree by Hilton was for years known as the reliable business-traveler option one tier below full-service Hilton. The warm cookie at check-in became a cultural touchstone. In recent years, numerous DoubleTree properties have drawn consistent complaints about deferred maintenance, reduced service levels, and a growing gap between the brand’s reputation and the on-the-ground reality.

Wyndham’s extended-stay and economy brands — including Days Inn, Super 8, and La Quinta — have shown quality variation that frequent budget travelers find increasingly difficult to navigate. The same brand can mean a clean, functional room or a deeply unpleasant experience depending entirely on local ownership investment.

What’s Driving the Decline at Mid-Tier Chains

The hospitality industry lost a significant portion of its experienced workforce during 2020 and 2021, and many of those workers did not return to hotel jobs. The institutional knowledge that makes a hotel property run smoothly — housekeeping staff who know the building’s quirks, front desk employees who handle check-in smoothly under pressure, maintenance staff who catch small problems before they become large ones — takes years to build and was disrupted severely.

At the same time, post-pandemic travel demand returned faster than labor supply, which meant hotels were running at high occupancy with reduced staffing. Many properties quietly eliminated daily housekeeping for stays of multiple nights — presented as an environmental initiative, but primarily a cost-reduction measure. Breakfast programs were cut and then not fully restored. Fitness centers and pools that closed temporarily stayed partially closed or reduced in hours.

Franchise owners who were already operating on thin margins looked at the labor market and made rational short-term decisions that have become long-term brand problems. The brands themselves have been slow to enforce standards that would require their franchisees to spend money.

The Brands That Have Been Quietly Improving

Against this backdrop, some brands have made genuine progress that doesn’t get enough coverage.

AC Hotels by Marriott has quietly become one of the most consistent mid-upscale options in the US, particularly in urban markets. The design is clean and intentional without being try-hard, the beds are reliably good, and the properties tend to be newer and better maintained than comparable options. Frequent travelers who stay at AC Hotels regularly report a level of consistency that’s rare in the mid-tier segment.

Cambria Hotels, Choice Hotels’ upscale independent-feeling brand, has been gaining genuine respect from business travelers. The properties are typically newer, the design skews contemporary and local, and the brand has invested in making the lobbies functional for people who need to work rather than purely decorative.

Graduate Hotels, which positions itself around college towns and leans heavily into local cultural identity, has developed a genuinely devoted following. The experience is differentiated in a way that’s increasingly rare in a market dominated by homogeneous mid-tier boxes.

Marriott’s Autograph Collection, which bundles independent properties under a loose Marriott umbrella, has produced a consistently high hit rate for travelers who want something other than a standard branded room but want the loyalty program backstop.

Where Boutique Hotels Are Winning — and Where They’re Not

The boutique hotel sector — independent, design-forward, often locally owned — has been the primary beneficiary of guest disillusionment with mid-tier chains. When a traveler decides that they’re done tolerating a DoubleTree that doesn’t live up to its reputation, they often shift toward boutique options.

Boutique hotels genuinely excel at design, local character, food and beverage, and the sense that someone cared about the specific experience of this specific building. They tend to struggle with consistency — the same property can be exceptional one stay and mediocre the next, depending on staffing. And they typically lack the infrastructure for business travelers: reliable WiFi, efficient check-in, workable desks.

The sweet spot that boutique hotels have found is with leisure travelers who prioritize experience over reliability. For business travelers doing back-to-back-to-back trips, the reliability of a known brand — even a slightly eroded one — often wins out over the higher ceiling but inconsistent boutique option.

What Frequent Travelers Are Actually Noticing

The complaints that come up most consistently in frequent traveler communities center on a few themes that transcend individual brands.

Housekeeping frequency has become the primary flashpoint. Travelers who pay full-service hotel prices expect daily housekeeping; in 2024, a significant portion of full-service properties still offer it only on request or every other day by default. The environmental framing has worn thin with guests who see it primarily as cost reduction.

Breakfast has become a sorting mechanism. Hotels that include a genuinely good breakfast — not a waffle iron and individual yogurt cups, but actual hot food — are getting disproportionate positive reviews. Hotels that cut their breakfast program and replaced it with a 30 percent discount at the in-house restaurant are not.

WiFi reliability, which was already a source of frustration, has become worse as more guests connect more devices. Properties that have invested in modern WiFi infrastructure get loyalty from remote workers. Properties that haven’t get complaints that increasingly mention switching brands.

The Staffing Crisis That Nobody Fixed

Five years after the most severe labor disruptions in the industry’s recent history, the hotel sector still has not solved its staffing problem. Turnover rates in housekeeping, front desk, and food and beverage remain significantly above pre-pandemic levels. The institutional knowledge problem — experienced staff who know how a property runs — is ongoing.

The brands that are doing best are the ones that have responded not just with higher wages but with structural changes: simplified operations, better scheduling technology, more autonomy for on-property managers to solve guest problems without corporate-level approval. The brands that are doing worst are the ones that responded to the staffing crisis primarily by reducing service scope and hoping guests wouldn’t notice.

How to Use This Information When You Book

Brand reputation is a starting point, not a conclusion. The most reliable way to evaluate a specific property is still to read recent reviews — from the last 60 days — on multiple platforms and look for patterns. Ignore the outliers in both directions; look for consistent themes across multiple recent reviewers.

Pay attention to management responses. Properties whose management engages thoughtfully with negative feedback, acknowledges specific problems, and describes concrete changes tend to be better managed than properties whose management offers generic apologies.

For loyalty program members: check whether the property has new ownership. Franchise ownership changes happen regularly and often precede either a significant improvement or a significant decline, depending on the new owner’s investment philosophy. A quick search for the property’s name plus “new ownership” or “sold” can tell you whether you’re booking into a period of transition.

The gap between hotel brand reputation and individual property reality has never been wider. The travelers who navigate it best are the ones who treat the brand as a prior and the specific property reviews as the actual evidence.