Is spur-of-the-moment Backdoor travel even possible now?

Could you elaborate more on what is "spur-of-the-moment Backdoor travel"? I'm fairly new to Rick Steves type travel, only heard of him when I moved to the US, I'll admit I've seen this term a lot on this site but I'm not too sure what it means lol! Is it similar to living like a "temporary local"?

Went to Ireland in October with my best friend. We had 1st night/last night accommodations booked and a rental car. The rest of our accommodations I booked the day of using my phone and Booking.com or AirBnB with no problems at all. In fact, twice I booked and then checked into a nice and inexpensive hotel with a good restaurant within less than an hour (at Cliffs of Moher and in Cashel, so touristy areas for sure).

I wouldn't try to do this with a guidebook and just showing up at hotels and asking for a room. And, do people even use rail passes anymore?? That seems very 1990s to me, which was the last time I encountered someone who had one. Even back then, I didn't think it was worth it. If you have a smart phone with internet access and the foresight to download some key travel apps before you head out, I think you can still do backdoor travel. If you're committed to the philosophy that using a smart phone instead of a book is anathema, then maybe not.

I basically only travel shoulder seasons, I haven't had issues with last-minute transportation or lodging bookings or changes anywhere I have been (W/E Europe, US, South America, Japan).

'Twas a time when Cinque Terre, Hallstatt and Croatia were back-door destinations. I have no idea what places are mentioned in the current ETTBD, but I would say that Rick's regupar books sell so well that places figuring in his suggested itineraries are now so popular they no longer qualify as back doors.

So: Are you interested in real back doors or in the places most prominently recommended by Rick?

I travel in wing-it mode every summer, but I never arrive in a town without a hotel reservation, usually made 24 to 96 hours in advance. I plan farther ahead for major destinations like the capital cities, etc. It is very helpful that I am not looking for lodgings that are "special".

Tell us some of the places you're thinking about and you'll receive more-specific feedback.

For Rick's listed accommodations? Probably not. Once any hotel (or restaurant, etc.) gets listed in a guidebook, it pretty much by definition ceases to be an out-of-the-way undiscovered gem.

But if you're not picky about the quality of the hotels you end up in, I don't see why not. It's not terribly common, even in the high season (I think), for every single hotel in a city to be completely booked, and online booking sites make it easier than ever to find the last remaining hotels with available rooms.

And with few exceptions (like the Eurostar), most trains in most countries never sell out - you may or may not pay more for a last-minute ticket, but if you have enough money, you can always get yourself a seat (or a place to stand). Rail passes used to be a convenient money-saving tool for last-minute train trips; for the most part, they no longer are, but last-minute train trips are still entirely possible.

@Carlos, perhaps a visit to the library for Rick's 'Europe Thru the Backdoor' (or on your Christmas list) would enlighten. My recollection is it is sort of the backpacker's approach of not planning ahead except to call for a room the night before arrival in a new town.
@lorish33, I am not a 100% Rick Steve traveler, and rarely use his accommodation listings as for a solo budget traveler, they are no longer in my price range.
Personally, I look at his Backdoor concept as being one that sort of throws away the guide book and being more impulsive and seeing where the road takes you. His accommodation recommendations are rarely even 5% of the sleep opportunities there are out there. I suggest revisiting the usefulness of a rail pass. I recall Rick not supporting it, but it may depend on numbers of countries and level of ticket. The further east in Europe you go, the fewer tourists. You may need to suss out where Europeans vacation, but I expect Romania, Moldova, Kosovo, Bulgaria, even Greek islands are still going to be accessible.
Folks here have commented to some extent that Rick has sort of sold out from his initial Backdoor concept with more comfortable and expensive accommodation listings and adding cruising to his guides. I find Bradt Guides to be more independent if that is the way you want to go. Even Lonely Planet that used to be relatively a backpacker guide, is much more cautious than a few years ago. Bradt tells you how to get around African countries on your own on pretty untouristed areas, so for Europe, I would certainly take their recommendations. Check the library for alternate guide books and see what they have to add to Rick's great logistical expertise.

My usual warning is that a flexible trip plan means you being able to flex around what's available, not that you'll always find just what you want when and where you want it.

Whether or not trains require seat reservations depends a lot on the country and the speed of train; see https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/reservations and the linked pages for your countries of travel. Where required, the reservation is either built into your ticket (like a plane ticket for a specific date and time) or a separate purchase on top of the rail pass. There's no deadline to reserve trains (nor any other aspect of your trip), but some can fill up or limit the number of places for passholders.

Whether you can find accommodations as you go partly depends on your flexibility about budget, location, or style. Booking as you go can also mean a few days ahead, versus on the day of arrival. There are plenty of areas where tourism drops in shoulder season - e.g. yes in Brittany but not much in Paris.

In the big cities, the most popular museums now often require reservations, or at least strongly recommend them to avoid long ticket lines.

It takes a lot of planning and considerably more money to be spontaneous these days.

With that said, if you are not going to "Tourist Central" in June, it is fairly easy to travel "hopefully" across Europe. By planning, I mean that you will have to be judicious about where you are going, where you plan to stay, and what you want to see. The beauty of the RS guides (and also the Lonely Planet series) is that they lay out the nuts and bolts of independent travel. You will be warned away from places that are swamped by tourists and offered alternatives as to time and place. Collioure is swamped in the Summer; in the fall it is a pleasant seaside village with access to the French and Spanish coastal towns. Paris is deservedly popular, but it is fairly accessible in the Winter provided you have done your research and know how to layer clothing to keep warm in all that drizzle.

Restaurants are money suckers if you don't do your homework. Eating lunch at a good, local place recommended by RS will almost always be easier and less expensive than going out to the same restaurant for dinner. Reservations are a good idea at night, but not all that necessary for lunch. Same or similar meal, but a completely different experience.

Rail passes are usually a sucker bet, especially in Italy, where point to point tickets purchased in advance are often much cheaper. France, too, makes the rail pass problematical, often requiring expensive reservations on TGV trains. Local tickets are always cheaper than the high speed trains, and if you can afford to spend more time on the train, the savings can be significant.

BTW, a carryon bag is all you need for travel these days.

If you are willing to stay in a suburb of a city, there are usually inexpensive options which are often less than 1/2 hour from the city center. Can you wing these? Absolutely. Realize that public transportation is usually efficient and inexpensive, and purchasing a ticket is easy when you purchase online using your smart phone.

Think of out of the way places, like Puglia, Marche, and Umbria, rather than Rome, Tuscany, and Venice. There is much to be explored.

Realize that you are competing for rooms, sights, and meals with millions of other tourists. Don't even think about showing up at the Vatican museum at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday believing you will be able to enjoy the experience--you won't. Splurge on a pre-opening tour with a reputable tour company and you might have a really good time. Watching the cats at Largo Argentina is a hoot, and the crowds are minimal. Trying to even SEE the Mona Lisa anytime during the day is a lesson in anger management.

Use your common sense. The guidebooks have changed to reflect the reality on the ground, so they are still great investments.

@Carlos, perhaps a visit to the library for Rick's 'Europe Thru the Backdoor' (or on your Christmas list) would enlighten. My recollection is it is sort of the backpacker's approach of not planning ahead except to call for a room the night before arrival in a new town.

Thanks Maria! Yeah I'm actually leaving in a few hours for New Zealand/Australia for 3 weeks where I plan to have many a "backdoor" experience ;-) On my way back I'll definitely look out for the book your recommend.

PS: I think that technology has made it easier than ever to have a backdoor experience, no matter where you go in the world!

Something I've found to be true but don't always think to mention is that it is typically a lot easier to find a room for 1 or 2 nights starting tomorrow than a room for 3 or more nights. In that situation you may be depending on other people to have canceled recently, and if you're staying very long, you may need for two people to have canceled the same type of room at the same hotel. The odds are not so good.

And I very often have to choose to pay more money for a convenient location or settle for a place considerably farther from the center. Since I'm very likely to be rolling my suitcase to my lodgings, I prefer to stay between the train/bus station and the historic center, not on the far side of the latter.

lorish,

In my experience, the "shoulder seasons of April-mid May, and Late September-early November" can still be busy and crowded (although mid-October and onwards, probably not as much). One of my relatives was in Rome and Sorrento in early March, and it apparently wasn't too crowded.

The concept of flying all over Europe and boarding trains at will with a Rail pass is an antiquated relic of the past. In some countres, the per-day cost of a railpass is higher than P-P tickets, so passes may not be as cost effective. Rail passes have become somewhat expensive and these days some trains (especially in Italy but also in France and other countries) require compulsory seat reservations. Even with a Rail pass, if you're found without valid reservations for express trains in Italy, you'll face hefty fines which are collected on the spot! Last time I checked, the fines range in the vicinity of €50 PP. You may find it helpful to have a look at this website - https://www.seat61.com/Railpass-and-Eurail-pass-guide.htm#railpass-or-point-to-point-tickets (the section on "read this before buying a railpass" has some good information).

It's probably possible to get accommodations on short notice, but you may have to compromise on location, comfort level and price.

My gut feeling is no. Spend a few minutes on YouTube watching videos of college students planning their budget trips and you’ll learn the days of a rail pass and finding cheap accommodations wherever you end up are over, just like the travelers cheques they’ve never seen.

Variable rate pricing is pretty much the norm everywhere in the developed world. Perhaps you can just show up and get a room, but paying top euros for a budget hotel is going to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

The days of just flashing a rail pass and getting on any train to anywhere are also almost gone. Besides, it’s often more economical to get the advance rate prices for trains rather than an expensive rail pass anyway.

Also, there’s the time factor. Why would you want to go from hotel to hotel looking for a room these days? I know Rick mentions that in ETTBD, bit now you’re competing with people all over the world booking rooms on their phone.

Of course, you can always be spontaneous on your sightseeing. You may have planned to be a culture vulture and hit the museums but you wake up and see gorgeous blue skies and end up walking around and then people watching with a glass of wine or a coffee because it’s so nice out.

For anything approaching spur-of-the-moment travel, you really need to do your research about what's going on at your planned destinations. This I'm not so good at. This year I managed to schedule myself in places with a bike race and a classic-car race. Those nights turned out to be unexpectedly expensive. I did know something was going on a few days in advance, when I first looked for the rooms. I could have routed myself around the problem spots but opted not to; the extra cost (in not-high-traffic towns) was probably 30 euros or so.

As I believe has already been alluded to, there are huge potential savings on long-distance tickets for fast (as opposed to regional) trains if you can firm up the timing of your long travel legs well in advance. In the UK, the walk-up fare in some cases is 4 or 5 times the Advance fare that was available 11 or so weeks earlier (and possibly considerably later than that). Alternatively, budget-airline tickets (bought even earlier, usually) can be super-cheap if you don't need to check a bag. You can take advantage of those early-purchase deals and still retain flexibility as to what you do and where you go between the big moves.

If you buy transportation for a few of your biggest moves early enough to snag a great rail or airfare, you may as well also book your hotels in those destinations (for the minimum number of nights you think you'll want) way ahead of time. I almost never make a non-cancelable reservation more than a week out unless there is no alternative offered, but non-cancelable reservations are sometimes available at a savings of 25% or more if you book early. The Premier Inn chain in the UK does a lot of this. Even its Flexible reservations tend to be considerably cheaper if you book your room early.

I place a rather high value on flexibility, but I draw the line at paying (hypothetical example) $120 for a train ticket I could have purchased for $25 or $30 some weeks or months before. Frankly, the major way I avoid doing that is traveling in small increments, which means I'm usually on regional trains (whose fares do not change) or buses (whose fares typically don't change all that much and are usually much lower than the fast-train fares bought at the same time). I also tend to spend a lot of time in each country--visiting a lot of back-door towns--so I'm not going to be traveling many miles per day, on average.

Thanks everyone for the replies. Yes, that daydream of the rail pass and backpack started about 37 years ago when I read Rick's first book. My husband and I did our own version of his 21 days in Europe back in 1992 by rail, including Cinque Terre, Trier, San Gimi, Civita di Bagnoregio Wurzburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and Gimmelwald. We just kept traveling and now I have visited 65 countries, including Turkey with a Rick Steves tour. I think what I want now is a very laid back touring style when I haven't planned every single day. I am not a huge fan of the cookie-cutter American-style hotel or Airbnb, so I always liked to see Rick's recommendations for accommodations.

It's most certainly possible, according to Mr Steves himself: https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/finding-back-doors-in-todays-europe

And you might read the responses to the following question. A similar question was kicked around last week,

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/have-you-waited-till-you-travel-to-book-the-next-segment-s-hotel

For the most part we still wing it especially with airline tickets. Get them about ten days/a week before we need them.

I stayed last Sept. in a small, 3 room, inn that is ( or at least has been at one time ) listed in one of Rick’s books. In 7 days, there was only 1 day when there was another tenant. On our previous week there, 3 years ago, there were only 2 nights with other guests. A listing in one of Rick’s books doesn’t mean it will always be full.

Of course, it is possible. I haven’t traveled that way in about 20 years though, mainly because my husband feels more comfortable with plans or if I am solo, he likes to have an idea where I am... The thrill of traveling without plans can never be replaced by reservations, IMO. Although I must admit the mattresses are sometimes better.

We just returned (in June) from a trip for 28 days. We planned the first 1/3. We did the rest about 4 days ahead using booking. com for accomodations. We spent $100/day/person, $5200 for the entire trip (including air fare, which we did mostly by CC points). We found good accommodations in many places cheaply. Note that we generally travel in the East/South of Europe. Things are a good value still in many places of Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Hungary.

"spur-of-the-moment backdoor travel"...most definitely possible in Europe in the summer. That's the time I am there, ie sometime between May to August. It's all a matter of priorities, imagination, and what you make of it.

Often on the post-retirement trips since 2009, I've decided "spur of the moment" to go Poland, to a border town, or a place in the Czech Rep, ie Brno, even though that was planned somewhat as a daytrip but could very well have been dropped, ie, sort of planned, or day trip in Austria to Wiener Neustadt in 2014 or Leoben in 2018.

Do you avoid masses of tourists inundating a place in Germany in the summer? Several places fit this where I have been to...Ingolstadt, Cuxhaven, Flensburg, Eutin/Holstein, Neustrelitz, Rheinsberg, Neuruppin/Brandenburg. Schleswig, etc., etc.

Yes - possible and easy. All you need is your carry-on, a credit card, debit card (for accommodation that takes cash only), iPhone and a willingness to not back yourself into a corner by insisting on only staying in Rick Steves listed accommodations. Use his guidebook to help you figure out what sights you want to see for a particular destination, but realize there are many perfectly good lodging options that exist but aren't listed in the RS guidebooks.

Forget the rail pass. Point to point is not as restrictive as a rail pass and often cheaper in the long run than a rail pass.

It’s possible, but not in Europe.

"I think what I want now is a very laid back touring style when I haven't planned every single day... I am not a huge fan of the cookie-cutter American-style hotel or Airbnb, so I always liked to see Rick's recommendations for accommodations."

The cookie-cutter places have multiplied in Germany (the country where I find myself most often.) But that has not led to a vacuum of "backdoor" places there. There are still some private B&B's in Germany (most often in smaller towns.) But the vast majority of backdoor options there are self-catering (apartment or "Ferienwohnung") options where you can kick back for a week or two and call the place "home", then play it by ear, as you suggest (which is my favorite way to go as well.)

With this very non-cookie-cutter approach, these are not places that you can or would want to book at the last minute... you would typically pre-plan your stay - and select a base town that's near other places that look interesting to you. But you would NOT have to pre-plan every day's activities because your sightseeing is not intertwined with a change of accommodations. When you pick a base town with good options nearby, you can head out and then back at your own pace, according to your own set of preferences. So it's a "compromised" strategy, whereby you have the security of a place to sleep, along with freedom to move about - or simply stay put - without a schedule.

The problem with over-reliance on Rick Steves' recommendations is that he doesn't address these self-catering options at all. If Germany is in your sights, the most complete sources for such places are the local tourist office websites.

Here's an example of one for Besigheim, a small old-world wine town near Stuttgart:
https://www.3b-tourismus.de/de/gastlichkeit/uebernachten.php?location=Besigheim&type=1

Some sites, like Bernkastel's (which is not far from Trier on the Mosel River) offer English-language pages to their future apartment-dwelling guests:
https://en.bernkastel.de/

So I suggest that you have a look at a specific region ripe for sights and activities, identify a geographically-sensible base town therein, and see whether there's a nice "Ferienwohnung" (or its equivalent in other countries) where you can do this kick-back thing. You might need to check several towns before finding what suits you.

I rarely travel with a set itinerary. The problem is you need to throw away the guides, and actually find the back doors. If everyone is going to Hallstadt, DON"T GO THERE. It's not a "back door" anymore. Go to Schönau am Königssee. Prague is crowded? Go to Ceske Budejovice. Can't get a hotel in Regensberg? Go to Amberg. The thing is there's a heck of a lot of Europe that never sees a tourist crowd.

What I take away from Rick is this, get out and travel. I never look at the hotels or train schedules in guides. Train schedules change, and what someone else likes as a place to rest may not fit me. Travel today is so much easier and information's more accessible; it actually helps not to plan every detail. I like to drive, and have no problem driving in Europe. That makes it easier to actually go down roads less traveled by hordes of tourists. And I find car rental to be fairly comparable to rail travel.

April is fantastic, you get the spring flowers. May's pretty good, as the trees are green and (in Bavaria) the mustard fields are bright yellow. September anywhere other than Bavaria can be great, because every other little town has its own beer or wine festival. Late November is fantastic as tourists are gone and the Christmas markets are starting. I'll go any month but August, because that's when everything shuts down for the local holidays.

Pick the three things you absolutely have to see or do. Plan how and when to do those, and leave the rest of the time open to fate. You'll be surprised how nice it is to vacation like that.

"...there is a heck of a lot of Europe that never sees a tourist crowd." How utterly true !

In Germany if the particular place does indeed see a tourist "crowd," ( such a relative term), then it would be a German crowd, say at the Kyffhäuser Monument or the Zentrum in Weimar.

Rick's backdoor philosopy is included early in every one of his guidebooks. I am not sure if your intention was to equate that with traveling without reservations, on the fly, but that's not what it was about as far as I know. It's more about traveling "close to the ground" and getting close to the culture of the places you visit. "Connecting with people carbonates your experience..." Backdoor travel is not about going to one place over another either, as far as I can tell. Rick's books still feature lots of over-touristed spots.

If you meant "is spur of the moment travel even possible," the answer is sort of, in some places, if you are not concerned with how much you spend or quality of experience. If you don't mind paying too much for a dumpy hotel three mles from the center of the city you are visiting, then spur of the moment is certainly possible. But it might not make for a great trip. I don't understand why people want to travel plan during their trip, when it's too much of a burden to do from home. A better strategy to simplify planning might be to make fewer stops, closer together, with more time in each place.

The last time I traveled without a room reserved for every night was September 2008 in Portugal, and that was for only two of fourteen nights.

Times have changed but so have I. When I was 18 a backpack and rail pass would have been great but I didn't care about where I slept or ate either. Now that I know what I know, I need to plan ahead to avoid disappointment. I also know that a rail pass isn't a good idea for short trips and you'll mostly be seeing train stations on your trip.

I think it's easier when you don't care where you stay at night. With more of the world traveling and using Booking.com/Tripadvisor to plan, well reviewed budget hotels are usually filled months in advance in big cities even in April/May. Some people don't care about where the sleep as long as it's a room. I'm one of those who likes to know what I'm getting for the money. But I'm also a planner so not having any plans makes me nervous. YVMV. However, it will never be like the 1980s when my friend was able to go over to Germany/Austria and find a hotel for most nights without planning and at a decent price. Had I but known about RS back then.

"...it will never be like in the 1980s and...find a hotel for most nights without planning and at a decent price." How utterly true!

That's exactly what I did in Germany and Austria in the 1970s and 1980s in the summer as a solo traveler, when I opted not to stay in a hostel, showed up at a Pension or small hotel as a walk-in. There was always a single room available...Tübingen, (west)Berlin, Lüneburg, München, Regensburg, Salzburg.

An international Rail Pass is probably a bad value proposition nowadays. Long-distance trains often (not always) require seat reservations and more and more are subject to pass-holder quotas (i.e. each train will only take x travelers per departure using Eurail pass). National rail passes in Germany and Switzerland are still a good proposition if you are going to move around a lot.

Furthermore, almost every single accommodation provider is now bookable online. Major reservation websites made yield-management easier even for small properties. Therefore, they rarely will have a "set price" any longer. One can take a look at the back of the door of your hotel in some countries and see some legal advice on the "official price" (an old-time legal requirement of the pre-Internet days to prevent scams at hotel receptions on check-out or confusion on actual required prices).

So walking into a lodging facility and asking for a room is time-wasting and, in many cases, very expensive relative to the costs of just making online reservations the day before to the same property...

There are ways to be semi-flexible while not profligate. One of them is to choose longer stays at strategically convenient places that make train day-trips convenient. Then, you don't need to set your itinerary for the day trips until a few days before, when some reasonable weather forecast is already in place.

Another option, if cash flows are not a problem, is to buy full-fare train tickets, online, which can be changed for no fee until (near) departure.

Booking.com (and some other reservation sites) often have decent-priced fares that are fully-refundable (and often don't even require pre-payment). They are more expensive than non-refundable fares, but less than you think.

Thus, you can have a preset plan that, although more expensive than pure bargain-hunting, is still a known quantity on your budget and a known form on your travel map, retaining your freedom to change with no additional costs.

Lots of good points made, want to add another consideration.

Half-planned travel, where you do a lot of research about an area but leave yourself open to spontaneity, can be very affordable. There are a lot of "undiscovered" (internationally, at least) areas in Germany, like the Rems-Murr-Kreis, or large swaths of Franconia, where you'd have no problem finding decent, affordable accommodation in shoulder season, quaint towns, etc. But you're not going to randomly stumble upon these areas, you'd have to research to find them in the first place.

Another good deal in many areas are regional day passes. In Germany you can take regional and inter-regional trains throughout a whole federal state for a very affordable price for a day, so you can explore, show up without reservations, etc. But this doesn't work in most cities (even cities that aren't that popular for tourists, such as Stuttgart, where the good (already overpriced) hotels and best restaurants book up early, but a nearby half-timbered town 15 minutes by train may be totally available. The key is to being where the tourists aren't at any given time.