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I'm working on this app and right now it has a common taxonomy called "hotel". However, this app can work with hotels, chains of hotels, apartments, rooms, cabins, guesthouses and anything you could think of, so "Hotel" is a very inaccurate taxonomy name, something proven with the first small test we ran, all subjects gave different answers.

However, can't find a proper taxonomy name that covers all these instances yet is easy to understand by anyone using the app. I thought of "Rooms" but then we face the opposite problem: what happens with owners of hotel chains that have hotels or apartments as secondary level taxonomies?

So far, the closest I can get is "Accommodations", but again, testing shown it's too ambiguous.

Any ideas on the proper wording for this?

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  • Hello Devin. You might like to try this question on another Stack Exchange site call "English Language and Usage" link.
    – Tai Paul
    Feb 11, 2016 at 20:50

4 Answers 4

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Sure, "Accommodation" or "Accommodation Type" is best for the user.

However, depending on your situation you may just be able to say "Category:" as the label there. That's the best bet if it works.

(Naturally, your internal label ... accommodationParadigm or whatever ... is irrelevant to the user reading experience.)

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When I have a problem like that I go to thesaurus.com and start searching there. I try different words, meanings, synonyms, antonyms, adjacent words. In 90% of the cases, if there is a word, I find it there. For your case, I found Quarters, though, I cannot judge how much it is a fit.

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English SE suggested "Sites" and it's a very good word that surely deserves additional testing. However, we thought about "properties" yesterday and gave it a fast test with a small user pool (around 20 users so far, in progress, all US and Canada) and results were amazing with 0 amount of friction they all knew what the affordance for the taxonomy was.

While the sample is really small, its results are really encouraging so far, so barring additional testing, guess it will be either properties or sites.

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Lodging

a place where a person (such as a traveler) can stay for usually a short period of time : a place to sleep

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lodging

This seems to be broad enough to cover all the types of places a guest can stay yet concisely defined enough to not cover every other amenity a guest might expect to find in an "Accomodations" section.

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  • yes, we thought about that, but it has a very short term connotation and the owner of the app itself ditched it because of that. Think that some of these places (specially apartments) are rented for long period of times, even months or years
    – Devin
    Feb 11, 2016 at 18:32
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    Ah I see, I think it would be relatively well understood but that is an understandable consideration. I recommend cross posting to English SE they're very good at challenging wording problems.
    – DasBeasto
    Feb 11, 2016 at 18:39
  • That's a great idea, didn't think of that :)
    – Devin
    Feb 11, 2016 at 18:41
  • Residence / habitation are synonyms of lodging. Interestingly in French logement is a generic term like residence. Still, would vote to migrate the question to English.SE so I won't submit an answer.
    – Steve Dodier-Lazaro
    Feb 11, 2016 at 21:51

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