Some questions for those of you who travel often

[JaanaRuutu]

Hi

I'm headed to Stockholm in July and figured I should start looking into booking my hotel. Funny thing about me - I'm a bit of a diva when I travel. When i was a teen I didn't mind crappy "standard" hotel rooms, but now that I'm old and arthritic, I need a comfortable bed, a decent breakfast, and a rppm that makes me feel like I'm actually on holiday and not just visiting my great aunt.

The nicer places in Stockholm seem to be about 40% more expensive than their Helsinki counterparts, so I'm thinking of trying something new. That priceline website has a "name your price" option, which lets me pick my own price for a 4 or 5-star hotel. My question is..if you put a bid in, do you actually end up in a nice room? They don't tell you anything about the hotel until after you've had a bid accepted, so there's no way to know if you're actually saving a lot or not, or what amenities the hotel has. Would it make sense for me to just bit the bullet and spend a little more, but being able to have the peace of mind that I know what I'm paying for?

 

[Jack Davenport]

I travel a lot but I am the kind of traveler that basically books on hotels.com and the only research I do is reading reviews and looking at the photos. I will cross reference the hotel with the part of town it is in to see if it is actually in a good part of town. I am interested in knowing about the name your own price thing too.

 

[Petra]

Take a look at airbnb.com. Some pretty good deals for renting a flat for the weekend and such.

 

[Harley Spencer]

I don't think I've ever done the "name your price" thing. All I do is put in the price range that I'm willing to spend and it shows me the results of hotels that are within that price range.

Something I really like is finding actual houses, not hotels, for rent. I did that in Ocean City, Maryland a couple years ago with some friends and it was fantastic. A porch all to ourselves, 2 bedrooms, a full kitchen, a living room, bathroom. The porch was my favorite, it had screens around it so bugs couldn't get in. And this year I looked up houses for rent in Virginia, which is where I'm going in July for a week. It's gonna be great. An entire house to ourselves, a porch with a grill, a big yard. It'll be great for shooting too since there's more variety in an actual house than a hotel, although I don't know how much shooting I'll be doing as I plan on making it mostly an actual vacation.

I think what you search for to look for the houses is "vacation homes", which I believe is on priceline. Let me look...

Ok nope, I couldn't figure it out on priceline, but www.homeaway.com is a good one and the one Petra mentioned, airbnb, also has them. They can be a tad pricey, but it's definitely worth it! Then again, some hotels are even more expensive than renting vacation homes.

 

[Maggie Green]

Can you use hotwire? I book hotels off of there quite often and it shows you what amenities the place has, what star category it is, general area. But if you're really particular, I'd pay the extra $ for the exact place that you want.

 

[Mr_Balls]

I usually stay in hostels myself and get smashed with strangers.

 

[Rattrap]

Ha ha. My advice probably won't be of much worth to you; I usually couch surf and sleep on funny surfaces using my backpack as a pillow. And I'll probably have hitch-hiked/rideshared my way there in the first place.

The charmed life.

 

[vodkazvictim]

I usually stay in hostels myself and get smashed with strangers.

Ha ha. My advice probably won't be of much worth to you; I usually couch surf and sleep on funny surfaces using my backpack as a pillow. And I'll probably have hitch-hiked/rideshared my way there in the first place.

The charmed life.

I like you two.

 

[Mr_Balls]

Har har!

 

[freeones_regina]

Hope you will have fun wherever you end up going Good luck!

This thread was started more than 5 years ago, I am pretty sure she is not even active on the board anymore...