Whether you are in a place for 3 days, 3 weeks, or 3 months, there are different requirements you will have being a long term traveller. Determine what is important to you before you fall in love with the pretty pictures in the advertising and you will avoid getting a place that you will hate and are locked in for 3 months. Here are some of the things that are important to us that may help you as well.

1. We tend to stay at apartments for stays longer than 3-4 days and aparthotels/hotels/B&Bs for stays shorter than that. The reason for it is that if we are only going to a place for a few days, we don’t necessarily need a full kitchen, we don’t have time for coordinating a meeting or check in and would prefer the support of a 24 hour check in desk and the ease of finding an established hotel.
   
2. Choose a location with which you are familiar, or one that is centrally located if you have never been to the place before. We have found that our appreciation and understanding of a place is greatly affected by it’s proximity to the things that are important to us – whether that is close to the sea, the farmers market, a gym (in Mark’s case), and walking distance to restaurants and bars. Sometimes the idea of being in a remote cottage that looks gorgeous in the pictures and is a great price can be enticing, but if this is the first time you have stayed in a town, you may be missing all the serendipitous encounters and relationships you would build from the daily visit to the café down the block and the walk through the neighbourhood to find that little bistro that is not in the guidebooks or websites. Inevitably your trips to town become destination oriented when it takes you 15 minutes to get there even if it is on foot. After you are familiar with a place and if this is the third or fourth time to a place and you know you prefer a certain suburb or countryside then you can choose the more remote location. This is a very different decision process if you are were just on a 2 week vacation and you want to be left alone in your villa in Tuscany. We are travelers learning about the world, not weary workers on vacation. It is hard to experience and meet people when you are tucked into your cosy remote place for 3 days.
   
3. Really hone in on what you need and do not compromise if you are going to be there for a while. Since Mark and I have multiple phones and laptops and run all of them at the same time when we work, we need wifi speed of 50mbps at least to be able to function without slowing down. This is our lives. We are not on vacation. We need air conditioning in the countries where we tend to travel. We need a bright space and a minimum of a kitchenette if we are there longer than a week. It goes without saying we want our own private bathroom. We don’t necessarily care about elevators or washer dryers. These are nice to haves for us but we would trade a washer for a view or a terrace. Determine your own priorities.