Hotels for Healthcare Travelers - Traveling Nurses, Locum Tenens, Allied Professionals

As a traveling nurse, locum tenens or allied professional, your time on the job is spent on the road. During your long assignments, you want the place you stay to feel as much like home as possible.

Many top hotel chains have upped their game in quality and features over the years, thanks to a strategy of listening to customer needs and reacting accordingly.

Each of the seven chains listed below offers a variety of temporary housing options to ensure that no matter how long or intensive your stay is, they have you covered. Read below before booking your or your coworkers’ next travel nurse housing experience.

Table of Contents

1. Drury
2. Graduate
3. Choice
4. G6
5. Hilton
6. Wyndham
7. Best Western

Drury

A Drury Hotel can feel like a diamond in the rough when it comes to booking a stay.

Brands include:

• Drury Inn & Suites: Your best bet for long-term locum tenens stays
• Drury Plaza Hotels: Short-term rental comfort
• Pear Tree Inn by Drury: Lower-cost group rates while retaining Drury quality

A gift to healthcare travelers, Drury Inn & Suites offers the amenities you need to spend your stay in comfort.

For instance, many will offer free breakfasts.

That’s ideal for traveling nurses who are coming back from a stressful overnight shift and looking for more than a pre-packaged yogurt and bowl of cereal.

Drury Inn & Suites offers free hot breakfast daily. Enjoy some scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and hot coffee before a long day at the practice or hospital.

Free 5:30 Kickback

While complimentary hot breakfasts aren’t unique to Drury, the Free 5:30 Kickback is. This Happy Hour evening snacks and drinks concept, available at participating locations, is designed for you to relax a bit after a long workday — at no extra charge to you or your company credit cards.

Exact menus vary by location, but this sample menu gives you a sense of the snacks, dinner fare and drinks that are available each evening between 5:30 and 7pm.

When you’re away from home, it’s nice to have access to hot food without the inconvenience of heading back into town or ordering takeout.

Related: Are You a Traveling Nurse Looking for Extended Stay Hotel Deals?

Graduate

Graduate is perhaps the most unique hotel chain on this list. They aren’t geared toward the average traveler; instead, they are all situated in college towns near universities.

Graduate Hotels’ primary clientele includes:

• Parents visiting for the weekends or helping students move into their new dorms
• Alumni coming back for donor functions
• School sports fans in town for the big game
• Pro league recruiters

Of course, Graduate Hotels are open to all guests. Because university towns typically have medical centers, they can be a great place for traveling medical professionals to stay.

If you’re a travel coordinator, you can benefit from putting your allied professional staff in the heart of town.

Graduate Hotels are known for their quirky decor and top-notch service. Whether you’re visiting for a work assignment or a conference, this chain always delivers a memorable stay.

Graduate Homes

An interesting way to enjoy all the amenities of Graduate a little more long-term comfort than a hotel room can provide is by utilizing Graduate Homes.

These are furnished apartments, condos and houses that people in college towns list to renters on the Graduate platform.

It’s like staying in a furnished vacation rental, but with the housekeeping, service and booking convenience of a hotel.

You can book your own housing with Graduate Homes through the Engine platform. Healthcare professionals can stay in a place that feels as close to home as they can get.

Choice

You may not recall seeing a highway sign for Choice Hotels before, but this parent company has many recognizable brands within its umbrella.

The most famous ones on the list include:

• Comfort Inn
• Quality Inn
• EconoLodge
• MainStay Suites

Because Choice Hotels offers such a wide range of brands with options anywhere, sticking with them ensures that you’ll always be able to earn Choice Privileges rewards and stack up some free stays.

With Engine, you can double up on rewards. With each stay, you can earn brand-specific rewards while also receiving HE Rewards points.

G6

No, we’re not talking about spending a night in a private jet (although we’re sure you wouldn’t mind). Like Choice, G6 is an umbrella brand encompassing Motel 6 and Studio 6 (sometimes known as Studio 6 Suites) properties.

Motel 6 has invested in extensive interior remodeling recently, so travelers can expect rooms that are updated, clean and comfortable.

Motel 6 will always be known as an economical choice that offers comfort and reliability.

Studio 6

Even with the benefit of multi-night discounts, booking extended stay rooms can get a little pricey.

But there are few great alternatives. Most apartments want at least a 6-month lease, which isn’t practical for a locum tenens taking over a 4-month maternity position.

However, you can’t expect staff to stay in a basic hotel room for months and go out to eat all the time. That gets old for the traveler and costs the company a lot of money over time.

The solution is typically an extended stay studio with some basic kitchen appliances like:

• Microwave
• Small stove
• Home-size refrigerator

Studio 6 caters to the needs of healthcare professionals on long travel nursing assignments.

They aim to deliver on both affordability and high-quality accommodations.

Or, as they put it:

“Studio 6 is strategically positioned between the upper end of the economy extended stay and lower end of the mid-price extended stay segments.”

Hilton

You probably know Hilton as a hotel chain with a higher-end vacation rental feel but with affordable rates.

You may not know how many different brands exist under the Hilton parent company. In addition to Hilton-branded properties, they include:

• Hampton
• Homewood Suites
• Embassy Suites
• DoubleTree
• Canopy
• Conrad
• Waldorf Astoria

Within this family of brands — which includes suites that are geared toward longer stays — you’re likely to find something that works well for your travel needs.

Pet-Friendly

Being away from home can be difficult, especially as a healthcare traveler.

After a tough day at a hospital in an unfamiliar city, wouldn’t it be nice to come back to your home-away-from-home and have your best bud waiting for you?

Hilton can make that happen with their pet-friendly rooms.

There is often a small fee, so check with the specific property manager for details. Still, for many healthcare professionals, having their pets with them at their hotel is priceless.

Wyndham

Like many other companies on this list, Wyndham also owns a variety of familiar brands, the most recognizable ones including:

• Wyndham Garden
• Ramada
• Super 8
• Days Inn
• Howard Johnson
• Travelodge

Between all of these brands (each of which has an impressive geographic footprint on its own), you can find a Wyndham property just about anywhere. According to Wyndham, you’re rarely more than 10 minutes away from one of their hotels.

Group Reservations

If you’re coordinating stays for dozens of traveling nurses from your agency for long periods, Wyndham’s group rates will really come in handy.

Special savings are offered for group hotels when booking at least five rooms for a minimum of seven nights, or at least ten rooms for any number of nights.

Looking for more than 8 rooms, or a long-term stay? Engine’s Groups team can coordinate your entire booking for you. Sign up here now.

Best Western

Best Western is already the most ubiquitous hotel name in America, but they also offer quite a variety of properties, each with slightly different types of accommodation. Their brands include:

• Best Western Plus
• Best Western Premier
• Best Western Signature
• Sadie
• Aiden
• Executive Residency

Best Western’s reliable reputation means that travel coordinators and traveling healthcare professionals can count on booking a quality stay every time without any hassle.

Best Western’s Premier, Plus and Signature properties offer additional amenities (at a slightly higher price).

Sadie and Aiden

A new concept for Best Western, Sadie is an attempt to break the mold while retaining the quality you know and love.

In addition to the clean linens and free WiFi, these properties offer a unique twist. They look the part of their surrounding areas, embodying local architecture.

Nurses work long hours and don’t always get a chance to take in the sites. With Sadie, you can get a taste of the local vibe even on days when you don’t have the energy to go out exploring after work.

Aiden is like Sadie in its pursuit of the eccentric, but with a few unique features that come standard:

• Rooftop gym and lounge
• Self-serve beer on tap in the lobby
• Outdoor cornhole

After a long day of caring for patients, what better way is there to unwind than with an ice-cold beer in your room?

Even home living doesn’t offer draft beer on demand (unless you’ve got a kegerator, of course)!

Executive Residency

If you’re looking for an extended stay hotel with the consistency of Best Western, look no further than Executive Residency.

These suites are set up with the spaces you’ll need throughout your day, making them perfect as temporary professional housing.

No one wants to eat takeout on their beds for every meal.

Executive Residency suites have a kitchenette with a dining table so you can keep your meal time separate from sleep time. Additionally, you’ll have a cooktop and sink so you can prepare some decent meals on your own.

All the while, you can keep doubling up on Best Western and Engine rewards, earning valuable free nights in the future.

See also: How to Find and Book the Best Executive Rentals

Conclusion

Being away from home no longer means you need to leave conveniences and comforts behind.

Traveling nurses, locum tenens, allied professionals and other valuable healthcare industry members deserve nothing less than the best. But budgets and housing stipends aren’t unlimited.

With Engine’s Lodging Performance Network, you can book travel nurse housing with one of our incredible partners listed above with just the click of a button. It’s free to sign up, there are no booking fees, and you’ll get access to great rates with exclusive discounts up to 60% off of consumer sites.

Medical agencies that coordinate travel should always be getting the best hotel rates available. Learn more about how to get corporate rates and discounts on hotels.

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