They are different...and it depends on your needs..... When in a hotel, do you shop online, make remote connections to other people's computers etc???

A VPN is a sever in some city/state/country somewhere that YOU connect to. When you then get online, everyone that in monitooring IP Addresses sees you at the VPN address. To hackers, it looks like that is where you are located. If they try to attack you, you are not really there....