How to book the best accommodation ⋆ Say Yes To New Adventures

After 15 years of traveling independently and having slept in countless different places, from hostel dorm beds to 5-star hotels and from an airbed in a tent to charming B&Bs, I feel that I have become somewhat of an expert in securing lovely places to stay. I have become known among my family and friends for being the expert in selecting the nicest places to sleep when traveling. Here are some of the methods I use to ensure that my accommodation will add value to my trip, rather than ruin it (in the worst case scenario). These are my tips for booking the best accommodation.

Finding that hidden gem

Sometimes when traveling you stumble upon a hidden gem by accident – or by luck, depending on how you prefer to call it. When I am on a longer backpacking trip, I prefer not to book all my accommodation ahead. Instead, I arrange them on the go because it allows for more flexibility.

On one such trip, traveling around Indonesia with my sister, we sat in a small boat. It was stuffed with local people and their market wares. Sacks full of fruit and vegetables and coconuts surrounded us. We were on our way from Lombok to Gili Air, one of three small islands not far off Bali. We were planning to relax for a bit after spending an intense couple of weeks exploring Java. An old man on the boat carefully looked us and our backpacks over. “Have you got a place to stay?” he inquired. “We don’t know yet, we’ll have to look around when we arrive on the island,” we replied. “You can come with me if you like. I just finished building a couple of bungalows. You can check them out and if you like them you can stay there.”

We ended up having a few glorious days in a beautiful bungalow with wooden floor, a four poster bed and a secluded outdoor shower that completed the sense of tropical paradise. It was situated just a few steps from a quiet beach in a grassy garden surrounded by coconut trees. We were surprised that this heavenly place to stay was so dirt cheap. We considered ourselves very lucky to have met the man on the boat by chance.

Booking the best accommodation - Gili Air — Our super cheap but amazing bungalow on Gili Air

When we got less lucky with our accommodation

On that same trip, on a different night, we weren’t so lucky. We had arrived on the island of Lombok quite late after sunset. The bus had dropped us on a remote and dark spot with no residential area in sight, let alone a decent place to stay.

There were two shady dudes though. They offered us a motorbike ride to a hotel that they knew of and that they would surely receive commission from if they’d deliver us there. We had little choice, so we hopped on the back of their bikes. They dropped us at a small scale hotel where the owner tried to rip us off by saying we had paid with a 10.000 rupiah bill instead of a 100.000, before showing us our room.

Well, there wasn’t much to show. There was a power blackout and this place had no generator to provide electricity to light up the room. We meekly accepted this as we were too worn out from our long trip to go back onto the streets to look for an alternative. Our plan was just to fall asleep here as soon as possible anyway.

When you don’t book the best accommodation

But that proved to be no easy feat. The blackout also prevented the ventilators in the room from keeping us cool. As we lay sweating profusely on our thin mattresses, one of us (I won’t disclose who, to be fair to my sister :p) developed a severe case of traveller’s diarrhoea. She went on the first of many nocturnal trips to the bathroom… only to find out that there was not only no light, but also no toilet paper and no running water. There was ,however, one giant flying cockroach that was angrily bouncing around in the small bathroom.

We awoke the next morning after a very long, very hot and very cockroachy night. With the aid of daylight we saw that the room we had been sleeping in was really grubby. We were grateful that it had been that dark the night before.

Why you should know how to book the best accommodation on your trip

These anecdotes go to show that traveling without making prior accommodation arrangements is a hit-and-miss adventure. There are situations when it is probably better to book your sleeping spot in advance. I’ll share some tips with you on how to find that hidden gem instead of that grubby grotto.

Booking the best hotels - Lake Mburo — Simple, but so very special… Our experience staying at Lake Mburo national park was definitely enhanced by the wonderful accommodation we stayed at.

Arriving late at your accommodation

I always try to book a room when I know I will be arriving late at night. Few things are more disheartening than wandering around a dark and deserted town looking for a room. Or looking for any place where the lights are still on and not everybody is sound asleep. My rule of thumb is any arrival time after around 6 PM. This way, even when you face a delay, you can be sure to sleep in a bed that night rather than a park bench. I once arrived in Tokyo far past midnight due to a flight delay. I was grateful to be able to make my way to my pre-booked hostel bed, rather than having to add more trouble to the trip by having to search for an affordable place to sleep in the middle of the night in a huge and crazy city.

Accommodation in expensive locations

This leads me to my next piece of advice: when you will be staying in a city or area that is known to be pricey, it is also better to book ahead. Hence the other reason why I booked my bed in Tokyo in advance. I paid only € 13 per night. Admittedly, this was for a bunk bed in a dorm room, but this is still a bargain for Tokyo). Cheaper places fill up quickly. If you are late or you don’t book in advance at all, you may be facing expensive four-star hotels as your only remaining option. Either that, or that park bench.

Accommodation scarcity

It is wise to check if the city you are visiting is not the scene of a festival or holiday on the particular days of your visit. You also want to check if there is not a huge conference taking place during your stay which can lead to all beds in mid-range and higher-end accommodations being fully booked. If it is: book in advance. Also check if room occupation in your destination is not affected by the local or international holiday season. My sister and I spent the better part of our morning after arriving in Sanur, Bali, looking for any place that still had a room available, rather than relaxing on the beach as we had envisioned. That’s because holidaying Europeans had already occupied all rooms.

When I book accommodation in advance

When I go on a short city trip I tend to always book in advance. Sometimes you simply don’t have a lot of time to spend in your destination. You’re going to want to make the most of your precious time. And that means you don’t want to spend it looking for a decent place to stay if you could be doing a lot of other fun things instead. It also helps to ensure that the place I will be staying is actually nice. This is of pivotal importance when you are on a romantic city trip (bed bugs can really ruin your experience), or on a getaway with any other special purpose.

How to find a nice and reasonably priced place to sleep?

Of course your selection criteria when booking a bed depend on your priorities. Tha could be price, location, style or type of accommodation.

Read reviews

A hotel’s website can be deceiving. The place may look beautiful in the pictures but in reality the bathroom may be covered in mould, the bed could be infested with bed bugs and that lovely looking swimming pool could have been drained three years ago. Nowadays you can read extensively what other traveler’s have to say about the place. On booking websites like booking.com and hostelworld.com, travelers have left short reviews of their accommodation. The reviews include an indication about the place’s cleanliness and location. My favourite place for reading reviews is TripAdvisor. This is probably the largest review site where you can find reviews of almost any accommodation.

When checking reviews, look at the review date. Tthe more recent reviews, the better. Sometimes the quality of a hotel can change completely after a change of management or a refurbishment for example. Older reviews won’t capture this. Read more than 10 reviews to get a decent idea of what people have to say. There will always be that one person who has to complain about everything and anything; in my experience, a ratio of 8 favorable reviews to 2 unfavorable reviews is a solid indication that the place is good.

On TripAdvisor you can sort and filter the ranking of accommodation in any location. By looking at the top-10 accommodations in your destination you can get a good idea of which places people are raving about. Try not only sorting the hotels, but also take a look a the category called ‘specialty lodging’ and ‘B&Bs and inns’. These categories often list the more charming, smaller-scale places as opposed to hotels.

how to book the best accommodation in Fez Morocco — Enjoying a spectacular breakfast in our riad in Fes, Morocco. We had found this place after reading online reviews about it, and we were amazed by the beauty of the traditional home, its roof top terrace with panoramic views, the scrumptious breakfast prepared fresh daily, and the kindness and hospitality of the host, Ahmed. It made our stay so very memorable.

Look for small scale accommodation

And this is immediately my next tip. For a more unique experience, try to book at a small scale accommodation. This could be a bed and breakfast, a guest house or a small scale hostel.

Large hotels are often comfortable and provide good service. At the same time, they can also be a little bit boring. Most large hotels, and especially those of hotel chains, look alike and do not provide you with a unique local sense or experience. Many large and more expensive hotels also charge for services that are free in many guesthouses and hostels. For example, they make you pay for wifi or breakfast. And a home-cooked breakfast at a guesthouse is almost always better than the typical hotel buffet fare, anyway!.

Small scale accommodation allows you for a much better chance at getting in touch with the locals. Especially if you book at a family-run place. By staying there you support the local community rather than the CEO of a large business.

Some of my most precious travel experiences originate from staying at small scale guesthouses that provide excellent, personalized service. I have made friends for life with the amazing people who run these places. Like the time when I fell sick in Ho Chi Minh City while staying in a room that an elderly couple was renting out. The lady brought me a platter of fresh fruit and cooked me a special soup that quickly calmed down my stomach. Or the time when the owners of a guest house in Sarajevo invited us for a free breakfast. They wanted to celebrate their Eid-al-Adha holiday with us. Such memories and interpersonal connections are irreplaceable. You will be hard-pressed to find them when staying at a large scale hotel.

Hostels come in all shapes and sizes

If the thought of sleeping in a hostel scares you off: it is good to note that not all hostels are party-places with bunk beds in dorms. Many hostels offer private accommodations like ensuite double rooms. These are often just as nice (or nicer) as a hotel room but often a lot cheaper and with a much more personal touch. It is definitely worth to give this a try – on sites like hostelworld you can filter by room type to see which hostels offer such private accommodation. How to distinguish such charming places from the loud and bustling (and sometimes dirty) party hostels (because admittedly, these also exist)? Again, read the reviews!

Booking the best hostel in Berlin — Our really cool and quiet hostel in Berlin

Cheap isn’t always cheap

Price isn’t everything. Your experience will also largely depend on your accommodation’s location. Take into account for example the time and expenses it may take to get to the city center from a cheaper hotel. Then compare this to a slightly higher priced accommodation that may be situated more centrally. Also good to check is whether or not your accommodation of choice is close to public transport links, if it is in a safe neighbourhood where you’ll still feel comfortable to walk around at night, and if it is not situated close to a construction site that will wake you up at 6 AM.

Booking the best accommodation in Zanzibar — This is where we stayed on the island of Zanzibar: only a couple of rooms so very small scale, with fantastic service and location. We payed only a fragment of the price that people paid who stayed in the more upscale resorts just a little bit further away, and I am convinced that our experience was more special and memorable due to the small scale of our accommodation and the friendships we made and the fun we had with the people working there.

Zanzibar Accommodation — The view from our cheap and small scale accommodation on Zanzibar. No five star resort can beat this! Plus, we had it pretty much all to ourselves.

Word of mouth

Write reviews, spread the word. I get the best tips from online reviews and from the recommendations of other travelers I meet when on the road. Do others a favour and report back. Write positive reviews to support the local owners of small scale accommodations that have gone out of their way to make your stay a memorable one. And warn fellow travelers in case you happen to have stumbled upon a particularly dirty or unfriendly place.

Let others benefit from your experience, and let the locals benefit from your positive reviews. I have a nice anecdote of how your review can change people’s lives. The elderly couple of the small guesthouse in Ho Chi Minh City that I mentioned earlier lived in a tiny house in the Pham Ngu Lao backpacking district. This area is a maze of small alleys. Their humble home was hidden in a back street, with no signposting and no one without a purpose passing by.

They rented out two rooms, one of which I stayed in for some weeks while conducting my Master research in Vietnam. They made me feel so much at home. It was almost as if I was staying with my granny and grandpa. Their warm smiles and hospitality stole my heart. After my stay I wanted to contribute to their business by writing a positive review on TripAdvisor.

To my surprise, I found that their property was not listed on the site at all. I contacted TripAdvisor with the request to list their business, which they did after some time. After that I was able to leave my raving review. My review helped other travelers find the small place. Within no time, it became one of the highest listed accommodations on the site’s ‘specialty lodging’ section. Before long they were awarded with a Certificate of Excellence by the TripAdvisor website, and fully booked on most days of the year. Reviews really do go a long way.

Hopefully these tips and tricks help you to select lodging that will add that little extra to your trip. Do you have tips of your own? Leave them in the comment section below! Want to read more practial travel tips? We’ve got you covered!