Travellers love to argue about accommodation as if one type were simply best. Motels are cheap and soulless, goes one line; hotels are overpriced; rentals are a gamble. In reality each solves a different problem, and matching the type to the trip matters far more than any of them being better in the abstract.
A roadside motel is built for exactly one job and does it well: a clean bed, a parking spot outside the door, and an easy late arrival and early exit. On a driving trip where the room is just somewhere to sleep between miles, paying for a full hotel's amenities you will never use is simply wasting money.
A hotel earns its keep when the location is the point. In the middle of a city you are exploring on foot, the front desk, the security, the daily housekeeping and the walkable location are worth the premium, because the room is a base you actually use rather than a place you crash for six hours.
A rental changes the maths entirely once the group gets bigger or the stay gets longer. A kitchen, a living room and separate bedrooms transform a week away for a family or a group of friends, and the per-person cost usually undercuts a row of hotel rooms while giving everyone somewhere to actually gather.
So the honest answer is that there is no answer, only a fit. Ask what the accommodation needs to do on this particular trip, and the right category picks itself. The people who always default to one type are the ones most often paying for the wrong thing.
