Why it matters

Four people is the number where this stops being obvious. Most European hotel rooms sleep two, and a fair number sleep three at a squeeze — so four people usually means two rooms, in two different places in the corridor, with two of everything.

An apartment is one space with a door that closes, and on a two-week trip it brings two things a hotel does not: a kitchen and a washing machine.

The options

1. Hotels

Simpler in every operational way. Someone is at a desk when the train is late. Bags get stored before check-in and after checkout without arranging anything. The room is cleaned daily, breakfast is handled, and the location is usually central because hotels occupy the buildings that apartments do not.

The costs: two rooms means the family is split, there is nowhere to sit together that isn’t a bed, and there is no laundry short of a service.

2. Apartments

One shared space, which on a fourteen-day trip matters more than it sounds — somewhere to sit in the evening that is not a restaurant, and somewhere for four people to be awake at different times without colliding.

Laundry is the sleeper argument. A washing machine halves what everyone packs, which on a multi-city trip with trains and stairs is a substantial improvement to daily life. A week’s clothes for fourteen days is the difference between a carry-on and a checked bag each.

The costs are variable quality, self-service check-in that goes wrong at exactly the wrong moment, no bag storage on either end, and no one to ask when something breaks.

One thing to verify rather than assume: short-term rental regulation has tightened significantly in several of these cities, notably Barcelona and Amsterdam. Book only listings with a visible registration or licence number, on a platform that shows it. An unlicensed listing can be cancelled at short notice.

My recommendation

Apartments for stays of four or more nights; hotels for anything shorter.

The apartment advantages — kitchen, laundry, shared space — all compound with time, and none of them pay off in a two-night stop where you would spend the first evening finding the key box. Since the pace recommendation is three bases at four-plus nights each, that mostly means apartments throughout, which is convenient.

The one exception worth making regardless: if a stay includes an early-morning departure, a hotel near the station or airport for that last night is worth the split.

What would change my mind

• How the family actually likes to travel. Some people want the hotel experience — the desk, the breakfast, the not-thinking-about-it. That is a legitimate preference and it beats the laundry argument.
• If the pace lands on shorter stops, hotels win by default.
• If two rooms is actually preferable — with an 18- and a 17-year-old, separate rooms may be the feature rather than the bug.