Booking hotels can be one of the most difficult things while traveling... but it doesn't really have to be. Here we give you some advices on how to find the best deals and avoid disappointments in the best time of the year, vacation time.
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| Impressions of the old town in Bremen. |
Personally, our favorite site to book hotels for the best fares is Bookings.com. It’s a safe site, most of the hotels can be filtered by stars, rates, breakfast included or not, and many other options such as distance and main attractions. The reason why we prefer this site, is because most of the hotels have the “pay at the hotel” option, which is a great feature in case you want to cancel or find a better offer. This website is secure, very friendly and gives you a free travel guide based on your hotel. Anyway! Let’s get to the main deal, how to book it?
If you are new at this, it could take you forever to find your perfect hotel at the best price. But first of all, what I did with Steffen, was setting the range of money we were able to pay per night. This way you stay within the budget and have money for the other activities. Secondly, if you want to have or are planning on moving trough public transportation, is very important that you check the location of the hotel. One very important thing for us is that the hotel that we are going to book has a metro station or U-Bahn (in the case of Germany) near to us. Then it is going to be much easier to move around the cities like we do. Thirdly, are you going to pay everything with credit card or cash? We recommend the pay at the hotel option, but be aware that the hotel accepts this form of payment. Usually, if you have no problem paying with a credit/debit card, you can even find better offers for paying right away.
Finally, when booking a hotel room, other things that you have to check are:
- Does it include breakfast? Usually we spend 5 euros or more per day at breakfast, so if you find a nice hotel fare with breakfast included TAKE IT. Especially if they have buffets, you can always take an apple or two to eat while its lunch time again.
- Single bed or double bed? In our case, this is an important feature, and if you are travelling as couple you can find that some rooms are cheaper with two beds…but it depends on what you prefer.
- Don’t stress over it but if you find a good fare (again) TAKE IT! We realized good rooms go by fast and are harder to find when your travel dates approach (and can even be more expensive, cheaper too, but it depends on your good luck).
- What about the neighbourhood of the hotel? Often customers reviews help a great deal to determine if a place is the perfect one for you.
- Hostels or hotels? we have tried both and we decided to stick up with hotels for commodity and better environment, BUT if your budget is short hostels are always a great option.
One last advice: if you know the dates of your flight and have that information already, we recommend you to plan and book everything before. Being an early bird for this case is very useful, and can give you a wider view of all the offers and hotels there are in the market.
We hope this is helpful for you, if you have any question please send us a message as we can give you some further advice.
