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Serviced apartments are for everyone: business, families and holidaymakers.

Serviced apartments were once the preserve of high-powered corporate businessmen and celebrities.

But today everyone is using them, from holidaymakers to families, from wedding parties to groups of friends out on the town who don't want the hassle or expense of staying in an hotel.

 Serviced apartments have become so popular they are now found everywhere from Cornwall to Aberdeen .

The apartments are a spin-off from the worlds of business and celebrity travel, the elegant and practical alternative to hotel living but with full maid service.

Amanda Donohue, Kate Winslett and Ray Winstone rent serviced apartments when travelling or on tour.

The sex scene from Brit-flick Tinseltown was filmed in Glasgow 's Groucho St Judes complex. And Australian Cricket teams rent serviced apartments when in Britain .

As the name suggests serviced apartments originated in the USA .

For us in Britain simply think of a modern self-contained flat. Your own fully-equipped kitchen -- fridge, washing machine/dryer, hob and oven -- plus bathroom and shower, single and double bedrooms and a living room with full home entertainment system and enough room to throw a party.

In fact serviced apartments can be smarter and more luxurious than some coffee-table designer flats: a "home from home". And you can book by the night, week or several months.

And they are frequently better value than a hotel room and far more spacious.

In Scotland , which has become fashionable international venue for weddings, Adele McGill at The Spires in Aberdeen and Glasgow says:" We're seeing the market change. Once it was businessmen or professional footballers in town looking for a temporary home. These days we get parties travelling from the south for weddings, golfers on tour who like room to dump their gear and families with children on holiday, as well as the business people and families relocating.

"The big draw is that you basically have your own flat to yourself with everything you'd find at home. We even get honeymooning couples, girls' nights out and couples going to the theatre from out of town."

The success of The Spires' 53 one and two-bedroom Aberdeen apartments at Mannofield close to the city centre, has been such that The Spires has now opened 24 luxury apartments in The Pinnacle in Glasgow City Centre a stones throw from shops and the famed Merchant City quarter of restaurants and clubs and fashionable bistros.

  The Spires, Glasgow , just like The Spires, Aberdeen is being marketed to the business and leisure travel industries as the hassle-free alternative to cramped hotel rooms.

  The move into Glasgow signals The Spires' first steps toward becoming a UK-wide chain, building on the experience it has gained with globetrotting North Sea oil executives with whom serviced-apartments were always popular.

(RGIT Montrose Ltd., the Montrose-based leaders in international offshore safety training, recently installed Chinese offshore safety trainer Jiang Junyan in one of The Spires apartments for three months." The student was keen to integrate into his new surroundings, and self-catering rather than hotel accommodation is cost-effective for us," says RGIT's Sharon Fyfe.)

"It is our ambition to operate a chain of serviced apartments across the UK ," says The Spires managing director Margaret Beattie. " Glasgow is the first logical step towards a full UK prescence." The Spires Aberdeen operations manager Liam Murray has now moved to Glasgow .

With a serviced-apartment you simply pay for the whole apartment, not per person, so you don't end up paying for all those "free" hotel facilities like gyms and saunas which you may never use.

This can work out, for a group of five friends or family in a two-bedroom apartment as little as £20.00 a night which few four star hotels can compete with.

And there's the knowledge you can come and go as you please with no annoying deadlines for hotel breakfast. Eating out in the evenings

is often part of the experience with a serviced-apartment.

The Spires provide all the basics you are likely to need and extras such as a spare bed or the fridge stocked with continental breakfast.

One area in which serviced-apartments, especially The Spires, Aberdeen have come into their own is for weddings. Trying to find accomodation for friends and families travelling from a distance is one of the brides mother's nightmares. Not everyone after all has an extended family on which to farm out relations.  

Charles McCrow managing director of independent booking agency The Apartment Service says: "Apartments are better value even on one-night stays. We're always getting converts from hotel stayers. The units are generally more spacious and offer better value for money than four or five-star hotels."

Which is why The Spires bills its apartments and service as "Much more than an Hotel"

For more info see: www.thespires.co.uk

email: info@thespires.co.uk

booking, Aberdeen and Glasgow : tel 0845 270 0090