Finding a Hotel with a Good Balance between Price and Comfort
It's a common misconception among people who are planning their vacations that price is directly related to quality in hotels and other forms of accommodation. While it's true that in most parts of the world you can't expect luxury treatment for $10 a night, it's not that hard to find a good place to stay without going broke just from the price of the accommodation alone. You just have to be smart, and know how to use the Internet to research your upcoming vacations.
One of the most important things is that you know exactly what features you're looking for, and focus on those in your search. You'll find that you can easily make a compromise on fronts that aren't in your main list – for example, if you're not bringing any electronics beside your phone with you, you probably won't be interested in having WiFi in your room. Similarly, if you're not a swimmer then you won't care about a swimming pool (which would often play into the price, regardless whether you use it or not).
With the help of the Internet, narrowing down your search to a few places that offer the exact set of features you're after will be a piece of cake. And here comes the better part – you can just as easily compare the prices of all those hotels and find out which of them are in your range, and which would make your vacation too costly!
There are actually entire websites that specialize in collecting and organizing information about hotels in an easily accessible manner, but for the most part, you should stick to the websites of actual hotels for information on their service availability. Often, those "aggregator" websites would not be 100% up to date on every hotel that you're checking out, and you might miss out on a good deal.
That's not to say that you should completely trust what hotels have to say about themselves though! Make sure that you still cross reference the information on their websites with external resources, at least as far as quality is concerned. Read reviews about the hotel, both from customers as well as professionals (if there are any such reviews available), and if there are any discrepancies with what the hotel's website says, it might be best to avoid it altogether.
You can also contribute to this and make someone's vacation easier afterwards, by just leaving a comment on a review site if you're satisfied with the hotel after your stay there (or if you're not, accordingly). Remember that the main reason you were able to get a good hotel in the first place, is that you've got all this useful information in the form of user reviews available at your disposal, so you should do your part and contribute as much as you can. In the end, this will keep making such services better, benefitting both you as a customer as well as the hotels you're visiting, making it a win-win situation in the long run!
One of the most important things is that you know exactly what features you're looking for, and focus on those in your search. You'll find that you can easily make a compromise on fronts that aren't in your main list – for example, if you're not bringing any electronics beside your phone with you, you probably won't be interested in having WiFi in your room. Similarly, if you're not a swimmer then you won't care about a swimming pool (which would often play into the price, regardless whether you use it or not).
With the help of the Internet, narrowing down your search to a few places that offer the exact set of features you're after will be a piece of cake. And here comes the better part – you can just as easily compare the prices of all those hotels and find out which of them are in your range, and which would make your vacation too costly!
There are actually entire websites that specialize in collecting and organizing information about hotels in an easily accessible manner, but for the most part, you should stick to the websites of actual hotels for information on their service availability. Often, those "aggregator" websites would not be 100% up to date on every hotel that you're checking out, and you might miss out on a good deal.
That's not to say that you should completely trust what hotels have to say about themselves though! Make sure that you still cross reference the information on their websites with external resources, at least as far as quality is concerned. Read reviews about the hotel, both from customers as well as professionals (if there are any such reviews available), and if there are any discrepancies with what the hotel's website says, it might be best to avoid it altogether.
You can also contribute to this and make someone's vacation easier afterwards, by just leaving a comment on a review site if you're satisfied with the hotel after your stay there (or if you're not, accordingly). Remember that the main reason you were able to get a good hotel in the first place, is that you've got all this useful information in the form of user reviews available at your disposal, so you should do your part and contribute as much as you can. In the end, this will keep making such services better, benefitting both you as a customer as well as the hotels you're visiting, making it a win-win situation in the long run!
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