Too soon to book a hotel?

Did you perchance mean 2018?

In 2013 (family of 5) we found the same response and it was due to the number of people permitted, per room. If you are more than 2 people, you may need to book the rooms separately?

Assuming you mean June of 2018, I would start trying to book hotels now - especially if you want to stay in the more affordable hotels recommended in the RS guidebooks. If you have only been checking the booking websites, try emailing the hotels directly. Be sure that any reservations you make are refundable.

Some places only accept reservations a few months in advance, but in my experience they are the exception rather than the rule.

I think it's way too far in advance personally. But the caveat is that I'm flexible on hotels and don't stick to the ones in the RS books or any guidebook (why limit yourself to a small inventory when a larger one exists?). You could always use a site like www.booking.com and filter by price and other criteria to get a sense of price levels and trade-offs. In the worst possible case, you can book a non-refundable room in exchange for a lower price (I wouldn't do this unless you have dates locked down and are fairly certain that you won't need to make changes). Unless you are going to some extraordinarily expensive place (or during a major festival that impacts demand), all large cities have hotels at just about any price level...of course this may not be true in small areas or really exclusive zones where demand is really high. Still, I cannot imagine that folks everywhere would be booking hotels a year out...there would be a huge wave of cancellations as plans change, etc., so I'm not sure why hotels would find this advantageous either. I would take the "not available for those dates..." to mean "it's too early". You can call them to confirm this.

Do you have your airline tickets already and your exact dates locked down? If not, I wouldn't put the cart before the horse. If all you're doing is researching hotel prices (for the sake of setting a budget), you can do this without actually booking...the numbers will be rough, but that's really all you need for budget purposes.

We leave for our trip this coming Thursday. I booked all of our hotels about a year in advance. Mainly because I spent a lot of time researching the different options and there were a couple that I settled on that we really wanted to stay in. The best places seem to book up fast and I wanted to be certain we got the place we wanted, when we wanted it!

Thank you for advice. There are a couple of hotels we are set on so as soon as the airline reservations are made and budget reviewed I'll start booking.

WE just completed 5 weeks in France and we booked 10 months in advance and still didn't get our first choice in Chamonix and we have done this for our last five trips to Europe.We try to book direct or use Booking.com and have never had a problem with them.
Mike