Are Reservations Necessary for Hotels in June?

There’s a lengthy thread about Back Door travel that you may want to read. I sure wouldn’t want to be anywhere in Western Europe in June without hotel reservations. Even if money is no object, in this era of dynamic pricing at even the smallest places, you’re going to be paying top Euro (or Franc) for walk up rates. I understand the appeal of being free as a bird and going with the flow, but you’re already spending a decent amount of money to get to Europe and it seems a shame to get stuck paying double or triple for the same room you could have booked in advance.

I’d not travel in Europe this time of year without hotel reservations. You state you don’t have budgetary constraints but that won’t necessarily help you. In fact, at the height of tourist season what you’ll find left for lodging are not the places you’d want to stay despite higher prices, but less desirable lodging in less desirable places. It’s easy enough with the Internet to plot your itinerary, make some refundable reservations and change them on the fly if need be. I realize it takes away part of the “fun” but less fun is pulling into a town to find nothing available for 50 miles except the local flophouse.

I think that travelling by motorcycle you will be ok. If there are towns that you want to stay in, then I would make a reservation that you can cancel without penalty if necessary

I support your preference to be flexible and find it unlikely that you'll pay "double or triple for the same room you could have booked in advance." In my experience, advance discounts are not that huge. Some search engines like booking.com can also have last-minute discounts, which you may find online before making a commitment, rather than after you've shown up and look like you're ready to take anything. How far ahead to book is always a sliding scale, so you can start looking a day or two ahead if that's when you feel confident of your plan.

I have traveled without reservations and with plenty of hotel selection available (for a double room) in a few countries over the past few years (as well as much more in the olden days). Not in June and not in any location where I knew it to be peak season, but enough to make me still willing to do it. August is peak season on the Croatian coast, while early June should be less so. Your personal flexibility and your wheels are part of what make it work.

August isn’t peak season in Croatia, as Croatian schools go back in the middle of the month - they start their holidays in mid June and the same for nearby Hungary.

Some German school holidays start the third week of June until early August and other regions take late July to mid September.

Personally, I wouldn’t risk travelling to a popular tourist area during the school holidays without reservations. You will probably be able to find something, but why spend half your time searching for accommodation or be left with what other people don’t want?

Having your own wheels will help a lot, and Europe is much more densely populate than the US, in general, so the likelihood that you'll have to ride on for an hour or more to find a room probably isn't great. However, there are situations when the risk of zero availability is unusually high:

• During local festivals or other special events (not all of which will be immediately evident as a result of Googling; I've had problems when I crossed paths with bike races).
• At beach destinations during European vacation season (all those northern Europeans looking for their annual allotment of sunshine, plus the locals)

Rovinj, on the coast of Croatian Istria, is very tight in the summer. Mountain areas are very popular in the summer, but my impression is that they aren't as bad as beach towns.

What I would do is try very hard to book something online no later than the night before arrival. I use booking.com (which has small lodgings including some individual apartments, as well as hotels), but there are other options. That should assure you will have a roof over your head, and if there's a problem in one town you'll at least find out about it (no reasonably priced rooms) before you get there, and you'll have the option of adjusting your travel path.

Booking rooms farther ahead and canceling if you change you mind sounds like a good plan, but in Europe I've run into an awful lot of places with 3-day cancelation deadlines (or longer in some cases). That's something you have to be careful about.

One thing to watch out for is lodgings in valley cities with no air conditioning. Seeing mountains in the distance is no guarantee of moderate temperatures. Places like Bolzano and Bressanone can bake in the summer, and the budget lodgings often have no a/c.

The opposite weather can happen, too. We got snowed in at a lodge high on the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse (Austria) in the 3rd week of June 2011.

There were motorcyclists there as well as some people in a serious 4WD who started to try to leave and decided it was too treacherous. Nobody moved until a woman who worked at a shop in the parking lot arrived and said the road was mostly cleared and to just go slowly.

She was driving a FWD, so we left. The motorcyclists waited. We were in the clouds for about 30 minutes with no clue what was on the down side of the road. Once we got a bit lower, we could see that there were no guard rails, just big rocks very widely spaced.

We met a couple in Florence a few days earlier who drove up to Stelvio Pass (Italy) twice because similar weather made seeing anything impossible the first time they drove up. After our Austrian experience, we chose to avoid Stelvio, but did get to drive on some challenging mountain and rural roads in northern Italy and Switzerland.

There's lots of footage featuring motorcycling on these and similar roads. Have fun looking at it.

OP,

Sorry can’t be of much help as to lodging. But I need to echo the comments above- early June in the Alps can have low temps in the 30s. Snow is possible. I believe you may find the weather to potentially be a bigger issue then hotel rooms. Last year is not a direct measurement of this year but I would take a look at June weather along your intended route from the past 2-3 yrs to give you a rough guide.

Travel safe,

One Fast Bob

Average temperatures hide extremes, so it would be prudent to check the actual, day-by-day historical weather statistics on the website timeanddate.com. They go back at least ten years. However, I confess that I don't know how small a town you'll find listed. The larger places are likely to be at fairly low altitudes; timeanddate.com probably doesn't have stats for mountain passes and the like. I've linked to the June 2019 stats for Chur (Switzerland), which isn't particularly high.

We spent three weeks (mid June - early July 2018) in Germany, Austria, Slovenia & Italy. We stayed in apartments because there are 4 of us. But I noticed rooms available everywhere we went: Rhine River, Salzburg, Hallstatt, Ljubljana, Lake Bled, Venice. This was our first time in Europe in the summer, and I was wondering how crowded it would be. I didn’t feel “crowded” anywhere except Venice and Hallstatt. But you would still have been able to find a room.

I think since it’s just the two of you, you have more options. If your not constrained by budget, and not super picky about the lodgings, you will probably be fine.

You can always look on Booking.com when you arrive in a town that interests you. If nothing is available, keep driving to the next town. There are so many lodging options that unless you arrive in a small town on a festival weekend, you’re likely to find something nearby.

I don't think you'll have a problem with rooms. My experience is a few years old but we were in the Dolomites the beginning of June and everywhere had availability. We were in Murren in the Swiss Alps in July and had no problem. Even the hotels that posted full on line had vacancy signs when we arrived. I have no recent experience with Croatia.

I have a different opinion than most on this site. I prefer to maintain as much flexibility in my plans as possible. If I booked all my lodging, I'd have exactly no flexibility.

Last minute rates can be much better than booked ahead rates. Here's how:
- Don't walk into a hotel and desperately ask if they have a room for the night. If you do, you will pay top dollar.
- I travel shoulder season (including June) and stay at smaller hotels, pensions, hostals, hostels, B&B's or Airbnb's. Over the years I've regularly called hotels in the late morning to around noon the day I'll arrive. I call the place directly, tell them what I need, see what they can offer and ask the price. Places that aren't full are sitting on rooms they won't rent and are willing to give you a good price. If the offer works and the price is good, I book and tell them when I'll arrive. If I'm running late, I'll call to let them know I'm still coming. I always pay less than prices listed in guide books, most of the time significantly less.
- Trip Advisor now has a last minute room finder that will give you great rates at hotels with lots of reviews. Friends in Europe use it regularly so I've started using it too.

The times to get a reservation, IMO, are when you really want to stay at a certain place, when you are in the middle of a busy local festival (Oktoberfest/Munich, San Fermin/Pamplona, etc.) or when your itinerary is fixed (arriving/departing flights or other transportation reservations). Other than that I'd highly encourage taking a little risk to experience not being tied to your reservations.