How to Find the Best Accommodations Abroad at the Lowest Price

Concierge or Culture?

How to Choose Where to Spend the Night

I love luxury hotels, at least the ones that are oases of art and paragons of pampering, and I’ve stayed at quite a few. But much more often, I just visit them for high tea or an evening cocktail.

A much larger number of travelers routinely choose international chain hotels. I understand that too: easy to reserve and very predictable. In fact, many chains are at their best overseas.

On balance though, many luxury hotels and virtually all chain hotels are uninspiring clones that rob travelers of the essence of the experience they’ve come so far to enjoy. These places appeal to English-speaking guests who, oddly, don’t tend to talk much with one another. Dining room meals consist of “international cuisine,” meaning you’ll recognize everything.

Break Out of the Cocoon

To avoid that cocoon, select from among the zillion smaller, more personal, locally-owned lodging choices. The 10-room guesthouse in Ubud, Bali looks like it was designed by the family-owners instead of from plans emailed from London or Atlanta.

The people you meet are likely to be travelers keenly interested in local culture. Since there may be no dining room you’ll be going out for meals of local specialties and serendipitous conversations. You can stay for a month on what you’d spend in three days at the luxury palace. And what you spend will stay in the community rather than being shipped back to corporate headquarters.

Not all locally-owned lodging is wonderful. Some accommodations are so awful they make great stories. But the good ones earn a warm place in your memory bank.

To Reserve or to Freelance

Many travelers assume they should make hotel reservations for every night of the trip before leaving home. That’s a quest to reduce concern about the unknown, a security blanket to ensure there will be a room available at a known price.

There are a few circumstances in which even an experienced traveler might make advance reservations:

• After a long flight, certainly if arriving late at night, and sometimes for the night before departure to ensure you’ll be near transport to the airport.
• A woman arriving solo at some destinations may prefer to have a booking rather than take an immediate walkabout.
• During high season at very popular destinations.
• When a public event, such as Carnival in Rio or Octoberfest in Munich, is likely to jam the city.
• If the destination is a resort.
• When a certain hotel is so splendid (not necessarily meaning expensive) that you’re determined to stay there.

Wing It!

Other than those exceptions, I detest being committed to a string of reservations.

Here’s why:

• A reservation is a tether that requires you to be at a certain place on a specified date. It can drag like an anchor on your independence once you’re underway. Finding a place each night is a cheap price to pay for the freedom to take spontaneous side trips.
• If you reserve and don’t show up or cancel well ahead, you’ll probably lose your deposit and maybe more. Similarly, if you check out early, you may have to pay for the entire period reserved.
• Generally, when a hotel abroad has invested in advertising in print and/or on a Web site, its rates reflect that expense. Further, according to The Wall Street Journal, rates at “name” international hotels are hitting all-time highs — just at a time U.S. economic policies have sent the dollar into the tank.
• You can’t assume that reasonably priced domestic hotel chains are equally reasonable overseas. Fact is, Holiday Inn, Best Western, even Quality Inn, can be very expensive internationally. By the way, if you’re quoted a room rate in U.S. dollars rather than in local currency, you will pay more than you need to. And, finally, except in the situations I mentioned above, a reservation is seldom necessary.

How to Find A Great Place

If you choose freedom over certainty-in-advance, how do you find a great place to spend the night? No problem.

• When you arrive at an airport, train, or bus station, lots of smiling people spring forward to solicit your business, flashing photographs of low- and mid-priced lodging (known as a guest house, inn, losman, ryokan, hospadaje, pension, residencial, bungalow, and many other names). They may offer free transportation into town in return for your agreement to “just take a look” at their lodging — no obligation. Ask questions. If a place sounds attractive and is located near where you want to stay, it’s a good way to get into town and may result in a great choice. If not, catch a local cab and move on. Never a hassle.
  
  
• Guidebooks sometimes suggest real treasures and keep you from looking at dogs. Of course favorites raise their rates as soon as mentioned in the guidebook and fill up early.
  
  
• Ask other travelers. A strong positive recommendation usually leads to a memorable stay. (Although on the remote clove island of Ternate, Indonesia, I reached a hotel someone raved about that was so bad I wondered if the guy had been taking hallucinogenic drugs.)
  
  
• Tourist information booths in or near airports, train stations, and bus depots often offer a reliable room-finding service. You may pay something, either as a fee or in a slightly higher room rate, but it can be very helpful. Note that the least expensive lodgings in town are seldom on lists provided by these services. However, the clerk may know about good places that have yet to appear in any guidebook.
  
  
• Ask a hotel clerk. If you’ve stopped into a place that has no vacancy or the price isn’t right, tell the clerk what you’re looking for. It’s common to get directions to someplace that has the amenities and price you seek.
  
  
• Call ahead to check for availability and prices. Crisscrossing town after a long day on the road is no one’s idea of fun. Find your night’s lodging early, before you’re tired, then go have a good dinner.

The bottom line is that, even without help, it’s no big deal to find that special place all by yourself. As you reminisce years later you won’t remember androgynous international chains, but you’ll smile when you think of some architectural gem in a far away place gently supervised by an elderly couple whose mission was your daily happiness.