How to find cheap hotels

Hotels are often a big part of your travel budget. But with these tips, you can hopefully still find cheap hotels.

Just like with flights, you can also save a lot of money by being flexible with your dates. At Airbnb, for example, you can indicate that you are flexible and whether you are looking for accommodation for a weekend, week, or month.

Always opt for accommodation with free cancellation. Not only useful if your plans suddenly change, but also if you find a cheaper alternative elsewhere. This is something we always do: 1-2 weeks before departure, we check again whether the selected hotels/accommodations have not become cheaper or whether there are other cheaper accommodations.

Search for accommodation

The cheapest way is to stay in hostels. Hostels often have other advantages as well, such as making contacts easily or organizing different activities. When booking hostels, check hostelworld.

We almost always search for a hotel on Booking.com. We filter on hotels with review scores of more than 7 and then we sort by price. We never look at the popularity of the hotels.

 

When we have found one or more hotels, we search them again on Tripadvisor and Trivago. The first is mainly to look at photos of travelers to get a better idea of the hotel. On Trivago we look for a cheaper price on another website. You could also check their price on the hotel’s own website (or contact them).

On hotels.com you can save for free nights. For every overnight stay at a large number of hotels, you will receive points that you can then exchange for a free night.

In Asia, Agoda is the best choice to find the cheapest accommodation.

For cottages, apartments, and special stays you can use Airbnb or Belvilla. At Airbnb, you can indicate whether you want an entire house for yourself, a private room, or a shared room. And nowadays you can also indicate a hotel room.

Savings Tips

To save money, you can, for example, subscribe to the royalty programs of a number of hotel chains. This is free and you not only get a discount on your stay but often there are other benefits associated with it, such as late check-out. In the meantime, you save points that you can then redeem.

When booking it may also be that accommodation is cheaper when you book it via the app instead of the website. This saved us €60 for our hotel in New York.

If you want to save, take the cheapest room. You probably won’t spend much time in the room, unless of course, you book an all-inn hotel.

Try to avoid booking hotels last minute, often the prices are higher. This is in contrast to package holidays, where last minutes are often cheaper.

You can also book cheap hotels through Groupon. Always compare this with prices on other platforms or the website of the hotel itself.

With Airbnb, you get a discount if you book for a longer period. Also, new accommodations here are often cheaper because they like reviews.

Hotels outside the center are also often cheaper. In that case, also include the costs of (public) transport to explore the city. Or you can rent bicycles or book accommodation where you have bicycles for free.

If you travel with children who still sleep in a cot: do not enter your child with the travel group at Booking. Because then they often show the more expensive rooms. You can instead have a baby cot added to the room, free of charge or at a small additional cost. This is indicated in the details of the hotel or you can email the hotel.

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