Hotels, where to look for discounts , and how to get the most for your money.
Travelling can be a minefield all those hotels to choose from, and knowing whether you’re getting the best deal is a hard call. There are a few websites however which are really laid out well and set out to help you easily find what you’re looking for.
Ebookers is a site that’s really thorought about how to help you find what you’re looking for easily. As well as helping you to find hotels it can help with all sorts of other aspects of your trip as well, but here we’ll concentrate just on searching for hotels. You start quite simply by putting in some basic information, the location you want to find a hotel in – say London or Manchester or where ever you might be looking at visiting. Then you give it some other parameters like the dates you want to stay there from/until, how many people, how many rooms, and then you can go on to choose other features such as star rating, or specific hotel chains. Click to get the search started, and you’re away. The site will bring up a list of suggested hotels for you complete with cost, location, description, photos, map and information on amenities available. You can choose to view the list by hotel name, cheapest first, or by star rating, distance, or best sellers. www.ebookers.co.uk also has a newsletter which is very worthwhile signing up to as this way you’ll be sent information on special offers that occur, so that if you say fancy a weekend away, but haven’t got anything specific in mind, you might receive the newsletter and it might help you choose a location by tempting you with an excellent deal.
Another very good site to try when hunting for the best deal is lastminute.com like with ebookers, you input a variety of information, and then conduct your search. One feature that is slightly different is that on lastminute.com you can search by location, or by proximity to an airport meaning that if you’re flying and need an airport stay, you can very easily find something that’s located close to the airport without having to search through a variety of hotels that turn out to be in the centre of town and not near the airport at all.
Both of these sites list hotel deals on the website as well, and it’s always worth keeping an eye on these even if you have a specific location in mind. Occasionally you’ll get something listed as a special offer, that’s maybe a few minutes from where you were planning on staying, but which because it is so much cheaper, might make that extra few minutes of travel worthwhile. It’s also worth noting that if you are looking at staying in London, it’s worth thinking along similar lines – for example Essex, Kent, and various other counties bound London, many of them with boundaries that are a lot further in than you might think. Greenwich for example is very close to the Kent border so if you’re needing to stay there, it’s worth looking at hotels just across the county border as well as those listed as in London. (I’d suggest having a good map to hand when you do this so you can see just how far the borders are, and where the hotel you’re looking at is too).
Other sites worth mentioning specifically are Travel Lodge and Premier Inn these are both large chains of hotels, with reasonably high standards, and reasonably cheap prices. The advantage of these hotels is that you know exactly what you’ll get before you go there as they all provide pretty much the same style of room no matter where in the country you are, a comfort if you have to travel a lot and like to know what to expect.
Don’t forget of course that as well as these sites, when you’re booking your holiday it’s also worth remembering to look for discount codes, and that if you book your holiday a long time in advance, or just before you go, you can also sometimes get a better deal. Occasionally, a good deal can be combined with a discount code to give you a fantastic deal too.
