stay at or stay in?

[cherry maltezidou]

stay at a hotel or stay in ahotel?

 

[5jj]

Either

 

[TheParser]

stay at a hotel or stay in ahotel?

NOT A TEACHER


(1) I have communicated with "Professor Google" and learned a few things that I shall share with you.

(a) "Everybody" agrees with Teacher 5jj: either preposition is used by native speakers.

(b) A few people see a difference. Those "few people" feel that "at" is better if you are

thinking of the word "hotel" as referring to a kind of business; "in," they say, is better

if you are thinking of the building itself.

(c) I found a study made by two scholars, Dr. Kai A. Olsen (Molde College in Norway) and Dr. James G. Williams (University of Pittsburgh in the United States).

(i) They checked the World Wide Web for the words "stayed in/at a hotel."

Here are the "votes":

6, 820 results for "stayed in a hotel."

3, 770 results for "stayed at a hotel."

* If you wish to read their study, please google these words:

Describing products as executable programs stay in/at hotel