Booking a hotel for your holiday abroad (or even if traveling within the country) can sometimes be an overwhelming experience. There are so many websites and tools to find accommodation now, all of them offering different discounts, features, options, and filters to help you book. It can be really confusing and frustrating when you see one and the same hotel on several different websites and the pictures, prices, and features do not match! Luckily, there is a way to narrow down the options and make the experience of booking hotels a little less daunting.
Below are some of the most important hotel features that you may come across when booking your holiday abroad. You might find it helpful to make up your mind about some of these, and use the various filters on the booking sites to exclude the options you are not interested in.
Hotels or private hosts?
Quite often you may come across accommodation which says that it is offered by a “private hosts”. This means that, just like on Airbnb, someone has listed their apartment or house on a booking site and is accepting visitors. That could be absolutely fine for some travellers, but others may not like it. If this is the case, check if you are getting the entire place to yourself, or just a room, and if you are sharing any facilities, such as a bathroom or a kitchen, with the host.
Even if you have the entire place to yourself, this might come with conditions, such as certain actions that you might need to take when you stay there. Some of the requests can make sense even if they are inconvenient – i.e. dry the bathroom with a towel after showering to prevent mould. Others might be a bit more out there – i.e. feeding the hosts two cats who would share the accommodation with you. Searching for Airbnb stories where the hosts had odd requests can be quite entertaining, but, at the end of the day, only you can decide what you will be comfortable with in terms of host requests and accommodation conditions.
On the other hand, if you select from the filters that you only want to see hotels, that should exclude all private hosts. This is the best option for someone who wants a traditional experience with no strings attached and no requirements (other than the common sense one of non-smoking, no pets, no damage etc.)
Private vs shared facilities
This next option can have a big impact on your budget depending on your preferences. Are you looking to have your own bathroom in the room / accommodation, or are you happy to share? If you are in a private accommodation. Do you want to have a self-contained apartment with a kitchen and an en suite bathroom or are you prepared to have the host use them too? With hotels, bathrooms are usually private, however it is common for rooms in hostels to share bathrooms and other facilities. If you want to have your own bathroom, which is the most convenient option, you can click the “private bathroom” filter on most sites, and that should narrow down the options significantly.
Naturally, having your own facilities is pricier than sharing. You can go even further if you are more adventurous, and stay in a dorm room in a hostel. This means that you will be in one big room with 6, 8, or 12 beds and you will share the room and the facilities with strangers. This is a very cheap way of travelling abroad but it is definitely not for everyone.
Location and view
How important is a good view for you? Often, you would see a massive difference in price between two identical rooms, one of which has a premium view of the sea, the mountains, a valley, or a popular attraction. In some cases, you might even get a balcony where you could sit and enjoy the view with a cup of coffee or a beer. If you are not bothered with the view, you can save a lot of cash by going for a randomly allocated room and then going and seeing said feature or attraction directly rather than through your room.
Hotels that offer such views are often in the vicinity of popular locations, which is another feature that can affect your budget. Using the filters on most websites, you can choose if you want your hotel to be within walking distance of a beach, a transport link, the city centre, or a famous sightseeing attraction. It would be great if you can have this convenience for not much added cost, but it is worth remembering that you could make your money go further by choosing a hotel near a transport link that would take you to your preferred location in the space of 20-30 minutes. There is a fine balance between distance and price, and finding it comes with practice, experience, and playing with the various options on accommodation booking sites.
Other features worth mentioning
- WiFi – these days, the majority of hotels and accommodation abroad come with free WiFi included as standard, however it is worth checking this, especially if you are going to rely on your connection for keeping in touch with family and friends back home, researching your activities while travelling abroad, or streaming / playing games in your downtime.
- Parking – if you are planning to rent a car abroad and your hotel does not offer parking (free or paid), it would be a good idea to research the parking situation in the area. It might be the case that the hotel is in a No Parking zone, in which case you might have a bit of a trek between the nearest car park and the hotel. In other cases, parking around the hotel might be extortionate and have a maximum allowed period of stay, so it would be good to know exactly how things stand. Ideally, free parking would be included with your hotel room.
- Gym – if you are planning to exercise and keep fit while abroad, check if the hotel offers a gym and if there is a fee associated with it.
- Airport shuttle – some hotels offer a shuttle service from the airport, either free or for an extra fee. Just keep in mind that these shuttles may stop at several different hotels along the way to yours, and they might be crammed with people. Before agreeing to pay a shuttle fee, Google how much the taxi fare is between the airport and the hotel – sometimes it might be cheaper, or the difference might be insignificant for the level of comfort a taxi would provide. Also, have a look at transport links around the hotel, because some places such as Copenhagen, Berlin, London, Paris, Sofia, Alicante etc. have metro / bus / train facilities from the terminal straight into the city centre, which is a cheap and convenient way to get to your hotel.
- Air conditioning – if you are travelling to a country with a different climate from what you are used to, and you know that you are not good with a change in temperature, you might want to consider air conditioning. Especially with hot countries such as Spain, Greece, or Indonesia, not having an air con at night might mean that you won’t be able to sleep from the heat. Double-check if that is relevant to you.
- Laundry service – lots of hotel these days offer a laundry service, however keep in mind that they might take your laundry and send it elsewhere. You can either take advantage of the laundry service at your hotel, or you could Google “laundry service near me”. Often you would find that a laundry service would come and collect your laundry from the hotel for you, do it, and then return it, for a fraction of the cost of doing it at the hotel.
There are many other options and features that you would come across when choosing a hotel abroad. The best thing to do before looking through particular hotels and their photos would be to use the filter options on your preferred booking site and narrow the list down based on your preferences. For example, searching for a hotel in Paris between 7th and 11th August 2024 returns 5,506 available properties on one of the popular booking sites. Clicking the “private bathroom” filter narrows these down to 4,314. Choosing “hotels” only from the list of property types (which also has “entire homes and apartments”, “apartments”, and other options) further narrows it down to 1137. If you want parking, that brings the number down to 354. If you then select “Airport Shuttle”, that would bring the available options down to 100. Making these four simple decisions will take you a couple of minutes, but it narrows down the list from 5,506 to 100, which is a lot more manageable to go through. Good luck!