I liked hotels a lot more as a child when I didn’t have to deal with the anxiety over spending so much money on what is often a gamble with quality.
My parents regularly dealt with the headache alone, leaving our siblings and I to simply amuse ourselves and stave off the boredom.
Nowadays I get anxiety at the mere mention of stopping at a hotel for the night, regardless of the context or situation. The last few instances were marred with absolute disaster. I stopped off the interstate in the middle of the night at this place that seemed like a random more than two-star hotel, but it ended up being a motel instead. There was mold in the washroom around the backsplash for the sink, in the floor brick grout, and all over the inside of the shower. There was no way I was going to take a shower that night, but things only got worse when I climbed into bed. I saw hair and what looked like dry skin. I couldn’t recognize that the sheets were dirty and hadn’t been changed! I said no to hotels and decided to rent an AirBnb on our most recent trip and ran into a odd sort of problem. I didn’t realize that the air handler for the air conditioning would be in a closet right outside the master home office. Whenever the central air conditioning turned on throughout the night, I could hear it easily. That noisy cooling system ended up keeping myself and others awake throughout the night during our stay at that trip rental. I can’t seem to get any advantage with trip accommodations no matter what I try.