Question for Buenchico

[vehelpfulguy]

Buenchico, I am always amazed at your travel knowledge.

You seem to take a number of stays in European cities.

I have just taken early retirment, so fancy going for a couple of days to a few European cities.

I have no problems with the flights but how do you go about choosing and booking hotels, which seems more difficult than booking the flights.

Is there a particular hotel chain you use, or a web site you use?

Any good deals on European hotels?

Any advice for booking hotels for short breaks in European cities?

[jrtv]

I also took retirement 3 years ago and have been to most Euro cities ever since, just got back from Madrid on Tues where I paid Ryanair 1p + tax return and stayed in a new Travelodge which cost 20 euro a night for a family room, doing it this way ( on the cheap ) we go away about 8 times a year. Have booked Palma in Feb and Barcelona in April all with Ryanair on there 1p+ tax offer.
I always get my flights first when they have a these deals with any airline, I have signed up to them all for email alerts.
Hotels are booked near the time I am going so as to get a late bargain, try destinia.com or bookings.com or travelsupermarket.com and when you get to a city and you see a good hotel you like then call in and get there e-mail and build up a good list. Happy Days

[Buenchico]

(2-part post):

Hi VHG,

I'm not really the best person to ask about accommodation because many of my foreign excursions are day trips! (I live less than an hour from Stansted, so I watch out for Ryanair bargains to Dublin, Genoa, Barcelona, Valencia, Rome, etc. I usually have about 10 to 12 hours to explore but I do plenty of research in advance, so I still get to see quite a lot. I rarely book accommodation).

However, there's certainly one website which is the first place I look when I'm trying to suggest budget accommodation for people. It's HostelWorld.com. Don't be put off by the word 'hostel' in the name. If you use the 'Additional Search Options' you can select 'Guesthouses' and 'Budget Hotels'. If enough people have stayed at a particular hotel, in the last 6 months, to provide a meaningful average, you'll see a percentage satisfaction score alongside each hotel. Even if no score is shown (because not enough people have submitted reports) there are often a few reviews available if you go to the hotel details and click the 'Reviews' tab:
http://www.hostelworld.com/

If you're flying with a budget airline, it's worth looking for an 'Hotels' link on their website. Ryanair link to HostelWorld (that's how I discovered it) and also here:
http://tinyurl.com/3bbdyc

easyJet's hotel site is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2hg3zr
(It's actually fed by Hotelopia)

You don't have to book flights with an airline to use their hotel booking service

[Buenchico]

As stated, HostelWorld is my preferred site when looking specifically for budget accommodation. There are several good general hotel review websites but, for me, Trip Advisor has to be the best. (It's very user-friendly and it has far more reviews than its rivals):
http://www.tripadvisor.com/

Lastly, remember that the internet isn't the only source of information. Even if I'm only going to spend a few hours in a city, I always buy a guide book. Those in the 'Rough Guides - Directions' series are inexpensive and very informative. They also include suggested accommodation, which you can look up on the internet by using the links from the CDs which come with the guides.

Enjoy your retirement!

Chris

[filthiestfis]

Buenchico: are you also retired?

[Buenchico]

(With apologies to VHG):

Filthiestfis:
No, I still try to earn a crust, when the work's there. (Last year you could have found me supervising a dozen people doing pedestrian and cyclist surveys in Leicester, organising bus user questionnaires in Hastings, leading a team of people employed on traffic census work throughout East Angliia and lots of similar work across South and East England. But it's self-employed casual work and there's not enough of it. So I also delivered phone books, Yellow Pages, Thomson Local directories and Business Pages. That's when I wasn't doing a bit of journalism and making slow progress with a novel. In between all that lot, I'm unemployed!).

Chris

[SeaJayPea]

Chaps, I bow down to your knowledge.

I suspect we are all about the same age (late 50's).

I've always had the travel bug, all my life. In my teens and 20's there were no cheap air fares, with the exception of some rather dodgy bucket shops. In the 1970's I thought it was great to pay �100 for what I thought was a cheap flight to Athens on, do you remember, DanAir?

So I have this ambitiion. I want to drive round the world.

Leave on my 60th birthday in July 2009, and return exactly a year later (or two). I'm putting the trip together now, routes and what have you. I'm looking at going in something like a Land Rover Discovery that can be slept in at a pinch.

There are going to be all manner of problems, I get that.

But what memories.

Any suggestions would be more than welcome.

Thanks

[Buenchico]

Vehelpfulguy:
Just an additional thought. If you're Googling for accommodation in a particular city, don't enter 'cityname accommodation' or 'cityname hotels' as such searches bring up thousands of 'hits', most of which are totally useless.

Instead, Google 'cityname tourism'. Somewhere among the first page of results, you'll usually find the official tourism website for the city. Look at the URLs. The one you want will often end with the national web address extension. e.g. '.es' for a city in Spain. Alternatively, the URL (or the associated text on the Google page) may well be in the national language, rather than in English. For example, if you Google 'barcelona tourism', the link you want is the one in Spanish (or Catalan).

Go to the site you've identified, as above, and (if necessary) click on the 'English' link. Then click on 'Accommodation' or 'Where to stay'. The user-friendliness of the information available varies greatly from city to city but, in many cases, you'll find a search facility which lets you specify the locality and/or price range of the accommodation available.

SeaJayPea:
I hope that you'll have a really great time on your travels. However, I couldn't help noticing a recent post of yours which indicated that Ebbsfleet is near Folkestone. I sincerely hope that your map reading skills improve before you set out on your travels ;-)

Chris

[burbie]

I dont have any experience of city breaks, but have found all your answers so interesting I want to do it as well. Thanks.