The Hotel is one of those early side routes that starts falling apart the moment the run turns messy. Most of the wasted time comes from the same three habits: going in before the save feels steady enough to move around comfortably, checking random rooms before reaching the important floor, or splitting the route up and repeating the same climb later. The Hotel usually feels much cleaner when the whole visit stays focused on one thing: finishing the escape line while picking up the pieces that also matter for later secrets and gem progress.
The upper-floor room that leads into Frozen Magma is the real early checkpoint. It sits on the Hotel's upper left side, and the route usually feels better when that room comes before any lava detour or random exploration. That matters even if Escapist is the only thing you care about, because the Hotel overlaps with the escape path, the level sequence, and later hidden-route cleanup. Doing it in order saves a lot of pointless backtracking.
Once that room is locked in, the Hotel gets easier to read. The route tends to work best when you enter, climb with purpose, find the left-side room, and keep the way back to the main path clear in your head. If your save still needs the Hotel levels, the smoothest version is Level 1 to Level 2 to Level 3 instead of bouncing between side objectives. The key reward at the end of that line is part of why this area feels better as one connected trip.
The escape route itself usually plays better as a clean completion pass than as a speedrun. Finish the Hotel line while the visit is already paying off, clear the level-based path if your save still needs it, and leave once the side route is actually finished. That matters because the Hotel feeds into later tasks such as the Yellow Gem route and secret cleanup. Leaving halfway through usually means doing the whole climb again later.
A good Hotel run has a simple rhythm: reach the Hotel, push to the key floor, secure the useful room, return to the main level sequence or escape line, and finish the route before moving back out into the wider map. If Escapist is the only thing you want, it still feels better to finish the route cleanly now than to leave it half-solved and come back later.