Hotels like Sheraton (HOT), Marriot (MAR), and EconoLodge (CHH) can be categorized three ways: luxury, full-service or no-service. For luxury hotels, you can expect your every need to be satisfied, but you will pay a hefty price. Full-service hotels usually provide a comfortable bed, nice décor, and a television that works most of the time, along with a morning paper. No-service means low price and you hope the sheets have been changed in the last thirty days.

But during these trying economic times, yet another category for lodging may be emerging…

Read on for more of Lee’s insights into the business and leisure lodging business...

Why is this a threat to the lodging industry?

If you try to move into the Disney Carousel of Progress, watch out
for the dog

But this economic crunch, brought to you in part by Lennar (LEN), Ryland (RYL), KB Home (KBH) and Centex (CTX), along with things like pesky bill collectors, have made it harder to squeeze the money out of your family budget for a full blown vacation like the old days -- two years ago. 

But when you do the math, you realize that a week away just might be possible if you’re creative. If you stayed home, you would be using your car anyway. If you were at home, you would still need to eat, too. The big problem is the cost of lodging.

A nice room with a view in a luxury-level hotel could cost you $500 or more a night. Sure, you would be able to select a pillow from what they call a “pillow menu” and they would leave a box of premium chocolates at night, but at $500 you could only afford the room for about thirty-two minutes each day, and that’s not even enough time for a good nap.

So here are a few ideas on alternative lodging. Unlike alternative investments that were pitched by companies like J.P. Morgan (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Merrill Lynch (MER), alternative lodging will not make you go broke. In fact, the ideal alternative lodging selection should cost you nothing. You just might be able to experience some choice vacation destinations and pay nothing for accommodations.

And most importantly, there is no club to join. That’s right… No initiation. No fees. No guy named Mr. Fowler asking you a bunch of probing personal questions you will need to avoid answering.

Free hotel accommodations - Hang
out by the pool while your kids
do all the work

Civil War re-enactment camps – another free accommodation opportunity

Find long lost relatives who didn’t know you existed
Maybe you don’t have many relatives that you are still on speaking terms with, or maybe they all live in marginal vacation destinations like Pittsburg, Detroit, or Joliet, Illinois. Not a big problem if you have a fairly common last name. Just decide where you would like to go, and then search one of those online phonebooks for a few people in the area with your same last name. When I searched Orlando, Florida for people with my last name, I found over a thousand within easy driving distance of the Magic Kingdom front gate. If you type those addresses into Google (GOOG) maps, you might even be able to use their slick street-level view to check out the house. This will help you decide if it is the kind of place you could stay in for a week.

Civil War Re-enactments
In the south, it seems like all summer long there are nostalgic get togethers called Civil War re-enactments. Each of these usually has an encampment full of people in period clothing living in tents. Run down to your closest thrift store and put together some ragged clothes that could pass for 1860’s garb. Wander into the encampment and, when the grown people dressed in gray or blue ask about why you aren’t wearing an authentic reproduction Civil War uniform, just pull them aside and tell them in a whisper that you were sent by General Lee or General Custer or General Grant or the Surgeon General and you are a spy.  In no time, they will offer you a cot for the week and loads of bar-b-qued food.

Renaissance Fairs
Many areas host festive and slightly odd renaissance fairs in the summer. Piece together some burlap into period serf clothing, polish up your “Ye oldes,” and ramble into one of these places. Before you know it, you will be offered a room in a castle, jousting with knights and eating huge turkey legs with wenches. You may never go home.

With thr right costume a Renaissance Faire could
be your home for the summer

Megan Fox – One of the only people you
should ever swap houses with

Couch surfing
This is a relatively new thing and a major threat to the entire lodging industry as we know it. www.CouchSurfing.com calls itself a “worldwide network for making connections between travelers and local communities they visit”.  Basically, it is an Internet service you can use to find a couch to sleep on about anywhere in the world. This one must have the people at Marriott and Ritz Carlton really worried. The Couch Surfing web page reservation system is easier to use than any hotel web site.