What is a boardinghouse? The English lodging house and the German serviced apartment

One word, two meanings: lodging house or serviced apartment

The English meaning is the older one. Wikipedia describes a boarding house as usually a family home in which lodgers rent one or more rooms, typically by the night but sometimes for weeks, months or years. The owner looks after the common areas and may offer services such as laundry and cleaning. 'Room and board' means the room plus some meals.

The German meaning is newer and is tied to business travel and temporary housing. German Wikipedia defines a Boardinghouse as an accommodation business that rents rooms or apartments with hotel-like services, usually in cities, and notes that the English term serviced apartment is also used. A German phrase for it is 'Zuhause auf Zeit', or home for a time.

Both meanings share one idea: you are staying longer than a typical hotel guest and you want more of a base than a bedroom. They differ in what that base looks like. The English lodging house usually means shared spaces and shared meals. The German Boardinghouse usually means a private, furnished unit that you run yourself.

The English lodging house: shared tables and rooms by the week

English Wikipedia says boarding houses were common in most US cities through the nineteenth century and up to the 1950s. In 1830s Boston, it reports, landlords and boarders together made up between one third and one half of the city's population. Operators ranged from large purpose-built houses to small households renting a room or two.

Meals shaped the arrangement. The article describes meal plans of bed and breakfast, half board (bed, breakfast and dinner) or full board (bed, breakfast, lunch and dinner), and says seaside towns in the United Kingdom and college towns were typical settings. Traditionally the proprietor served family-style meals in a shared dining room, and boarders often shared washing facilities as well. More recently each room often has its own washing and toilet facilities.

The same article records why the model faded in the United States: early twentieth-century zoning and reform codes favoured single-family homes with private kitchens and bathrooms, and better public transport let residents move to the suburbs. Wikipedia calls bed and breakfast accommodation a specialised form of boarding house in which guests normally stay on a bed-and-breakfast basis only. Our guides cover what a bed and breakfast is and what a pension is.

The German Boardinghouse: a home for a time

German Wikipedia quotes the hotel and restaurant association definition, which stresses that the rooms are furnished along the lines of private flats. The same article says a longer stay is planned compared with a pension or a hotel, and that service levels vary widely, with no fixed standard beyond a bed. Offers range from rooms without breakfast to places that serve warm meals, and room cleaning and laundry can often be booked.

Equipment follows the same pattern. The article says Boardinghouses usually offer fully furnished apartments including a kitchen, as well as rooms, that some have shared washing machines, and that some provide a landline phone and internet in the room.

Who books them? The German article names companies sending staff to other cities for projects, plus engineers, fitters and construction workers. That matches the shape of the product: a clean, furnished base near the work site, booked for a project rather than a holiday. If you are arranging this for a team, corporate serviced apartments for teams covers the practical side.

Where a Boardinghouse and an aparthotel overlap

German Wikipedia says the line between a Boardinghouse and an Apartment-Hotel is almost impossible to draw. In theory, it adds, apartment hotels are designed even more for short-term and transitional stays, and they are much more common in North America than in Europe.

English Wikipedia describes an apartment hotel, or aparthotel, as a serviced apartment complex that works like a hotel. Stays range from a few days to months or years, apartments are fitted with a kitchen that usually has at least a sink, full-size refrigerator, microwave and stovetop, and there are typically self-serve laundry facilities. Guests can check out whenever they wish, subject to the minimum stay.

In practice, a German Boardinghouse and an aparthotel can be the same product under two labels. The useful differences are in the details: the length of stay the operator prefers, whether cleaning is included, and whether the kitchen is a full one. Our comparison of an aparthotel and a serviced apartment explains the same overlap in English terms.

Choosing one for a month or more

If you are comparing options in a German city, the term on the listing matters less than the inventory behind it. Cities such as Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt have a mix of apartment-style stays, and the long-stay filter for Berlin and the with-kitchen filter for Munich are a quicker way to narrow the list than searching on a single label.

For stays measured in months, monthly serviced apartments explains how longer bookings usually work. Our hub for Germany lists the cities we cover.

A final point on classification. The Hotelstars Union describes itself as the organisation for standardised hotel classifications in Europe, and German hotels use its star scheme. The pages used for this guide do not say how a Boardinghouse is treated in that scheme, so ask the operator whether a property is classified and what that covers.

• Is the unit a private room or a self-contained apartment, and is there a kitchen of your own?
• Are cleaning, linen changes and laundry included, bookable or absent?
• Is breakfast or any meal offered, and is it optional?
• What is the minimum stay, and what happens if you leave early?
• Is there a reception, and what hours does it keep?
• Is the property star-classified, and by which scheme?