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Where to stay in Kiev, Ukraine: Kiev Apartments or Kiev Hotels?
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Are you planning a trip to Kiev, Ukraine? If so, you may be wondering whether it is better to stay in a Kiev hotel or rent an apartment in Kiev. The purpose of this brief article is to list here some of the factors that will hopefully help you take the decision right for you.

Staying in Kiev hotels

Kiev hotels vary in quality and prices. Daily rates for some of them start from around USD50 per night, but usually hotels within this price category are located outside Kiev downtown and have pretty Soviet-like style. The average hotel rooms cost about USD100 per night and provide major amenities that you may need while in Kiev - room with a bathroom and hot water, telephone line, satellite or cable TV. More expensive hotels can provide high speed Internet and other nice amenities like hotel gym or nice swimming pool. Charge for some Kiev hotels includes breakfasts that may be pretty convenient way to start your day. The daily rates for some of the most expensive Kiev hotels are around USD500 per night.

Advantage of staying in a Kiev hotel is the ability to check-out any day you wish or extend your stay for as long as you want. Also, every-day cleaning, room service, some in-house restaurants, cafés, gyms, swimming pools can be a nice thing to have around. Disadvantages include relatively high price for a small space you are getting, and low privacy.

Staying in Kiev apartments

Renting an apartment in Kiev is becoming increasingly popular among foreign guests to Kiev. Kiev apartments provide a lot of space (one-bedroom, two-bedroom or even three-bedroom apartments), excellent western-standard renovation, variety of amenities. All of Kiev apartments have telephone lines, cable TV, fridge, oven, kitchen with everything you may need to avoid expensive Kiev restaurants. Many apartments have satellite TV with numerous international channels, air-conditioning, CD-players, DVD-players. Some apartments have high-speed Internet or Jacuzzi.

Prices for Kiev apartments vary depending on the amenities and the exact location of any specific apartment. In particular, apartments in the very center of Kiev near Khreshatik St. and Independence Square are much more expensive than those further from Khreshatik or in other areas of Kiev. Accordingly, rates for the apartments vary considerably depending on those factors. The least expensive one-room apartments outside Kiev center can be available at the rates starting around USD30 per night, the most expensive luxury apartments can cost up to USD300 per night. The average rates are around USD60 for a studio, USD80-100 for a one-bedroom apartment, USD120-130 for a two-bedroom apartment. The above rates tend to change and may be different at the time you are reading this article.

There are no two Kiev apartments alike. It is not a hotel where you book one of the rooms which are all nearly the same. All of Kiev apartments are unique. Though, it is obviously an asset of apartments, it has also some downsides. In particular, it may be hard (if not impossible at all) to change the dates of your stay. For example, if you want to extend your stay in the apartment for a few days more, the apartment may already be booked by someone else. On the other hand, if you want to leave the apartment earlier, you will be required to cover for the whole period of your booking anyway, since the apartment was kept for you, and all other clients interested in the same dates were refused. The above disadvantages can be easily eliminated by more careful and thorough planning of the exact dates of stay.

The same uniqueness of the apartments causes another inconvenience. Landlords of good apartments are reluctant to commit to bookings shorter than five nights. If someone agrees to book an apartment for a shorter period, it often means that they will accommodate you in any apartment available at the date of your arrival. One-three night stays are not attractive for apartment landlords and agencies at all, so they will hardly be able to book anything specific. Exception is the situation when there is a few day opening between other bookings that fits the dates you are interested in. Four-night stays are somewhere on the edge. The agencies may book a specific apartment, but there is always a chance that its landlord will let the agency down and do not keep the apartment for such a short period.

In order to book a Kiev apartment, you will be required to provide a booking deposit in the amount equal to a one-night stay or a higher amount depending on each particular apartment and the length of your stay.

Availability of specific apartments is changing very fast, and some agencies have availability calendar with bookings a few months in advance. So, it is always good idea to book an apartment well in advance, at least three or four weeks before your trip.

Those are basically the major things to keep in mind when choosing between a stay in Kiev apartments or Kiev hotels. Regardless of what kind of accommodation you choose, you will enjoy your stay in this beautiful European city with so many things to offer to its visitors.