Affordable Hotels in Washington DC | Where our Family Stayed

Searching for a family-friendly hotel that’s conveniently located and budget-friendly? See how our entire family did in Washington, DC! We planned our trip to Washington, DC just two weeks prior due to scheduling challenges, so we anticipated higher costs. To keep expenses down, we’re on the lookout for deals and affordable Hotels in Washington DC.

The Greater Washington Metropolitan Area is home to 772 hotels with 112,999 rooms (including those located within DC proper). The average hotel price in Washington for a couple is $181. We were traveling as a family of six needing two rooms for 4 nights, so our goal was to stay in a comfortable but affordable place. Surprisingly, there are cheap hotels around Washington DC, with great rates and no booking fees.
 

Points for Travel. 

To get some returns on this rather overall expensive trip, I aimed to get as many points as possible. I just got a new Chase Ink Business Preferred, CIBP, credit card with a decent sign up bonus, so I charged mostly everything on it for this trip. The bonus at time of sign up was 100,000 bonus points with the Ink Business Preferred® card. I get a referral bonus at no cost to you if you apply here and are approved for the CIBP card, which gives you 3x points on travel, among other benefits.

Searching for Hotels in DC. 

Since my parents and family are on this trip, it’s important that the hotel offers ‘free’ breakfast. And since we would be staying for 5 days, we would bring food, instead of eating out or ordering food for lunch and dinner, like in our past trips, so a kitchen would be really great! I found the first affordable Hotels in Washington DC that’s very cheap and booked the rooms. After reading hotel reviews, checking the maps for distances to places we planned on going, and looking at 3d street views on Goggle Maps, I decided to cancel this hotel without penalty. I then searched for “Suites”. After filtering my price range, I saw the Clarion Hotel Suites Collection in Arlington, VA.

Clarion Collection Arlington Court Suites Hotel

Drive time to DC: Their description says 3 minutes. 
Breakfast: Free, with a view. 
Fridge: Full size. 
Kitchen: Complete with dishwasher. 
Shuttle service: No Hotel Shuttle service to/from the airport. 
Cost: Average $171/night. 
Cleanliness: Pretty clean.
Rooms: Spacious and with furniture. 

While it would have been nice if their shuttle runs to the airport, it was fine since my CIBP card offers 5x points with Lyft. 

We stayed for five days and they did have menu variation every day. No complaints on the food. It was decent and satisfactory. The breakfast room is located in the 8th floor and it afforded us a great view of the outside of the building. Breakfast was not busy and runs from 6am to 9am.

The rooms are spacious and it was very welcoming. We slept really good in the hotel which is a treat after long days of sightseeing. We did hear a guest dog barking a few times, but that was it. Our four year old daughter was having fun and very happy with the place.

How our family saved during our trips.

We did buy some groceries on our first day (using Instacart which gives 3x points on my Chase Sapphire Preferred, CSP Card), a little too much since we have left-overs. But what saved us the most were: