Foreign Perspectives

We tend to book hotels 1) a little out of season 2) not much in advance and 3) that have “family” or triple rooms which has an interesting effect on the choice that’s available to us.

Booking a short period in advance tends to increase the price of course yet because we’re aiming at times slightly out of season that increase is almost cancelled out. For example, applying all three criteria we could get into the Hotel Delgi Imperatori in Rome for all of €125 a night tomorrow which is peanuts for Rome.

It’s much the same in other cities too but you need to take account of the local holidays. If you’re looking for a hotel in Barcelona for example you could get the ApartHotel Mariano Cubi for €190 tomorrow. In fact that’s not terribly good value for the simple reason that November 1st (last Thursday) was the local equivalent of a public holiday therefore the Spaniards will have taken off the Friday too and so it’s gonna be an expensive period to aim for.

Realistically you almost certainly won’t be aware of the times of the local holidays (and you should avoid UK holidays too) but it’s usually easy to spot them simply by browing one of the hotel sites. Doing that, I can easily spot the Spanish holiday because they’ve only three places available for tomorrow and, of course, the same technique works for other holiday periods.