Anyone who has spent more than a week in a standard hotel room knows the problem. The bed is fine and the shower is good, but by day six you are eating takeout over a desk and rinsing a coffee mug in the bathroom sink. Extended-stay hotels exist to fix that, and the category has become one of the most competitive corners of the lodging business. Marriott's answer is Residence Inn, with TownePlace Suites underneath it. Hilton fields Homewood Suites and Home2 Suites. Hyatt has Hyatt House. IHG has Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites.
This is a comparison of those brands, built on what the companies publish about their own hotels and on the one independent measure that covers all of them: J.D. Power's 2025 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study. I will say up front that the result surprised me. The biggest Marriott brand in the segment is not the one guests rate highest, and the guest-rating leader in the upscale tier is a brand with a fraction of Residence Inn's footprint.
The scoreboard first
J.D. Power surveyed 39,219 guests across 102 hotel brands for the 2025 study, scoring each brand on a 1,000-point scale. The study was redesigned this year, so I am only comparing brands within the 2025 results and not against earlier years. Extended-stay brands are split into two tiers. Here is how the upscale tier finished, as reported by Forbes from the J.D. Power release.
| Rank | Brand | Parent | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hyatt House | Hyatt | 705 |
| 2 | Staybridge Suites | IHG | 680 |
| 3 | Residence Inn | Marriott | 679 |
| 4 | Homewood Suites by Hilton | Hilton | 673 |
Hyatt House has now led this tier for four years in a row. The gap to second place is 25 points, which is large by the standards of this survey. The gap between second and fourth is only seven points, and I would not read much into the order of Staybridge, Residence Inn and Homewood Suites. If you picked blindly among those three you would not be making a mistake the data can detect. The lower tier looks like this.
| Rank | Brand | Parent | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Home2 Suites by Hilton | Hilton | 711 |
| 2 | Candlewood Suites | IHG | 673 |
| 3 | TownePlace Suites | Marriott | 665 |
| 4 | Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham | Wyndham | 653 |
| 5 | MainStay Suites | Choice | 620 |
Home2 Suites took first for the third year in a row, and its 711 is higher than the score of every brand in the upscale tier, Hyatt House's 705 included, even though these brands are priced a level below. That is a reminder that a lower price tier does not automatically mean a worse experience in this segment. It also shows where Marriott is most exposed: TownePlace Suites is 46 points behind Home2 Suites.
Residence Inn: the giant
Residence Inn is the largest brand in the segment by a wide margin. According to Hotel.Report, which tallies Marriott's portfolio from the company's year-end 2024 numbers, it has 920 hotels and 113,228 rooms, an average of about 123 rooms per hotel. Marriott calls it the global leader in longer-stay lodging and says guests get spacious suites with separate living, working and sleeping areas. The brand's own page lists full kitchens, a free hot breakfast, free grocery delivery in many locations, and pet-friendly hotels at more than 700 locations.
Skift's commentary in the Hotel.Report piece is useful here. It says Residence Inn has a large growth opportunity but needs to shake a reputation for loneliness and airport office parks if it wants to reach a new generation of business travelers. It also notes the brand added about 220 properties since the Starwood merger in 2015. I find that a fair description of what Residence Inn is: a dependable product that you can find in almost every mid-size American city, but one that does not usually feel like a destination.
The 679 it scored is in the middle of the pack, and the likely reason is the one that makes the brand attractive. With 920 hotels, quality varies. A Residence Inn that was renovated two years ago and a Residence Inn that was not are the same brand on paper. If you are booking one, check the hotel's most recent renovation date and read recent reviews for the specific property, because the brand average will not tell you what you are getting.
Hyatt House: small, consistent, and ahead
Hyatt's press materials list more than 130 Hyatt House locations, which is about one-seventh of Residence Inn's hotel count. The brand promises a complimentary breakfast and a social space called the H Bar. A smaller network is part of the explanation for the score: there are fewer weak hotels to drag the average down, and each opening is easier for the company to control. It is not the whole explanation, because Hyatt House has led the category four years in a row.
The tradeoff is availability. If you need to stay near a specific client office in a mid-size city, there may simply not be a Hyatt House within reach. In that case the better question is whether the extra planning is worth it. If your destination does have one, the survey results say it is the most likely to leave you satisfied. The World of Hyatt program also has the highest published point value of the big four, which I cover in the loyalty section below.
Homewood Suites and Staybridge Suites: the close rivals
Homewood Suites by Hilton, with more than 560 hotels and over 64,000 rooms in Hilton's own 2024 fact sheet, is the closest direct competitor to Residence Inn in size and concept. Rooms have full kitchens with a dishwasher, the breakfast is free and hot, and there is a Wednesday evening reception. The 673 puts it last in its tier, but only by six points behind Residence Inn.
Staybridge Suites, from IHG, is smaller. IHG's development site, with data as of the end of September 2026, lists 359 hotels and 39,330 rooms. The brand offers a kitchen in each suite, free on-site laundry and a program called The Social, which hosts gatherings in the lobby. Its 680 is one point better than Residence Inn, which is statistical noise. What it does show is that Staybridge competes credibly at a much smaller scale than Marriott.
The midscale tier: where price pressure shows up
TownePlace Suites is Marriott's lower-priced extended-stay brand. Hotel.Report counts 525 hotels and 53,208 rooms, which is about 101 rooms per hotel, and Skift calls it a brand that does not get as much attention as it should and describes the approach as no-frills and easy. The 665 score puts it third in its tier, behind Home2 Suites at 711 and Candlewood Suites at 673.
I think TownePlace has a branding problem as much as a product problem. It sits just below Residence Inn in price, but the guest-score gap with its direct rival is bigger than the gap Residence Inn has to Hyatt House. Home2 Suites has a modern, simple identity that guests apparently like. TownePlace does not yet have a comparable identity. For a traveler, the practical advice is to compare the two brands in the exact town you are visiting. In some markets the Marriott will be the newer hotel.
Points and status while you stay
Extended stays are where hotel loyalty programs can pay off most, because a 30-night booking is a lot of nights. There is one thing to know before you commit to a brand for that reason. Marriott's published earn rate is 10 points per dollar at most brands, but only 5 points per dollar at Residence Inn and TownePlace Suites, along with Element. Hilton's earn rate is also reduced: its published base is 10 points per dollar, and five per dollar at Home2 Suites and Homewood Suites, among others. So both big programs pay the same lower rate on their extended-stay brands.
That matters less than the nights count. Marriott's elite tiers start at 10 nights for Silver, with 25 for Gold, 50 for Platinum and 75 for Titanium. Hilton's Silver status needs 10 nights, four stays or $2,500 in spend, and Gold needs 25 nights, 15 stays or $6,000. Hyatt's Discoverist level begins at 10 nights or 25,000 base points. A long stay at any of these brands can put you on the path to the first tier or two very fast. Marriott's Gold level needs 25 nights, so a four-week assignment can get you there with nights to spare. It is worth a quick calculation before you decide which brand to book.
The point values also differ. The Points Guy's November 2026 monthly valuations, published November 2, put Marriott points at 0.75 cents each, Hilton at 0.4 cents, Hyatt at 1.65 cents and IHG at 0.6 cents. If you are planning to redeem points rather than collect elite perks, Hyatt points are worth the most on those numbers. These are subjective estimates from one publication, not cash and not a guaranteed redemption value, so use them as a rough guide.
Not every difference shows up in a score. Staying somewhere for a month also means living with the neighborhood, so the location of the hotel matters more than it does on a weekend trip. A grocery store within walking distance is worth more than a nicer lobby, and Residence Inn's grocery delivery partly solves that. A direct comparison of two hotels in the same city, down to the distance to your office, will beat any national brand ranking.
Which one should you book?
My rule of thumb after reading the data is this. If you are choosing within the upscale tier and a Hyatt House is available, it is the evidence-backed pick. If there is not one, choose among Staybridge, Residence Inn and Homewood Suites based on the specific hotel: which one was renovated most recently, which one is closest to where you need to be, and which has the best recent reviews. Marriott loyalists should not feel they are giving up much by staying at Residence Inn, because the brand's 679 is within a few points of two rivals. In the lower tier, Home2 Suites has a clear lead over TownePlace Suites, and Marriott guests should check both.
The more interesting conclusion is about Marriott's strategy. The company has a huge pipeline, around 4,100 properties and nearly 610,000 rooms, according to its full-year 2025 results, and it has launched new concepts, among them Apartments by Marriott Bonvoy, a 2024 brand with two hotels so far that skips traditional hotel services like food and beverage and meeting space. Scale is a real advantage for loyalty-program members who want to find a hotel everywhere they go. It does not guarantee the best individual stay.
A worked example: a 28-night stay
Suppose you take a four-week project assignment and the room rate is $150 a night. That is $4,200 before tax. At Marriott's published 5 points per dollar at Residence Inn, you would earn 21,000 base points, which is worth about $157 at TPG's November 2026 estimate of 0.75 cents per point. At Hilton's 5 points per dollar at Homewood Suites, the same spend earns 21,000 base points, worth about $84 at 0.4 cents. Neither number includes elite bonuses or credit card earnings, and both are estimates rather than cash. What counts more is the 28 nights: that clears Marriott's Gold threshold of 25 nights and Hilton's Gold threshold of 25 nights, and it covers more than half of the nights Hyatt asks for Explorist. A single long stay can therefore decide which program you hold status in for the following year.
One last point on price. Extended-stay brands usually discount long bookings, so the nightly rate for 28 nights is often lower than the rate for three. Ask the hotel directly what its weekly and monthly rates are, because those are not always shown in a brand's online search. The savings can be larger than anything a loyalty program gives you back in points, which makes the phone call one of the best uses of five minutes in the whole process.
What to check before you book
Do three things before you commit to a month-long booking. First, ask whether the kitchen has a full-size refrigerator and a stove, not just a kitchenette, because the term is used loosely across brands. Second, confirm the housekeeping schedule for long stays, since many extended-stay hotels clean weekly rather than daily. Third, find out whether the breakfast is actually served every day at that hotel, and whether pet fees apply if you are traveling with an animal. Brand pages describe the standard. The hotel's front desk tells you the practice.
Sources: J.D. Power 2025 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study; Forbes, "The Best Hotel Chains For 2025, According To A New Report"; Hotel.Report, "Every One of Marriott's Hotel Brands, Explained"; marriott.com Residence Inn brand page; Hilton's Homewood Suites fact sheet; IHG development site for Staybridge Suites; Hyatt newsroom press kit; hilton.com Honors benefits; world.hyatt.com tiers and benefits; Marriott International full-year 2025 results; The Points Guy monthly valuations, November 2026.
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