Cheaphotels.org, a leading provider of budget accommodations worldwide, evaluated budget hotels of the 25 biggest cities in the United States on their "overall quality," and Washington DC topped the list. This ranking was determined by hotel customers who rated 2 and 2.5 star hotels over the past year.
More than 60% of the Washington D.C. hotels received a positive rating, while only 16% did not score well. Charlotte, Indianapolis and Phoenix—all with 58% positive rankings— came in right behind Washington D.C. for best customer ratings.Hotels in Los Angeles received the worst evaluations with only 28% achieving positive rankings, while 45% came in negative. New York, San Francisco and San Diego also landed in the bottom rankings with positive ratings below 40%.
The full list of rankings are as follows, showing the percentages of hotels for each city that received positive/average/negative ratings:
Rank | Name of City | + | 0 | - |
1. | Washington DC | 61% | 23% | 16% |
2. | Charlotte | 58% | 20% | 22% |
3. | Indianapolis | 58% | 26% | 16% |
4. | Phoenix | 57% | 19% | 24% |
5. | Fort Worth | 56% | 22% | 20% |
6. | El Paso | 55% | 18% | 27% |
7. | Baltimore | 54% | 24% | 22% |
8. | Austin | 53% | 25% | 22% |
9. | Memphis | 51% | 28% | 21% |
10. | Philadelphia | 50% | 19% | 31% |
11. | Jacksonville | 49% | 26% | 25% |
12. | Dallas | 48% | 26% | 26% |
13. | San Antonio | 48% | 25% | 27% |
14. | Houston | 48% | 22% | 30% |
15. | Columbus | 47% | 31% | 22% |
16. | Nashville | 43% | 30% | 29% |
17. | Chicago | 42% | 31% | 27% |
18. | San Jose | 42% | 30% | 28% |
19. | Seattle | 41% | 30% | 29% |
20. | Boston | 40% | 35% | 25% |
21. | Detroit | 40% | 33% | 27% |
22. | New York | 39% | 27% | 34% |
23. | San Francisco | 34% | 34% | 32% |
24. | San Diego | 33% | 32% | 35% |
25. | Los Angeles | 28% | 30% | 42% |
The methodology
For the 25 cities, each 2 and 2.5 star budget hotel was assigned a rating of average, neutral or negative. This rating was established based on its average customer evaluation according to the website Priceline.com over the past 12 months. Hotels with an average of 8 or better were given a positive ranking, between 7 and 8 a neutral ranking, and below 7 a negative ranking. This system basically created three equal hotel groups. In general, the "negative" ranking means worse than the average hotel. Finally, for each city, the percentage was calculated against the positive, neutral and negative rating, leading to the results shown.