Walk in booking

You can do this, of course.

Where are you intending to travel to?

Certain areas will still be busy in early September and others will be busy later in October when European schools are on half term holidays.

You are unlikely to get better rates just walking into places vs using websites such as booking.com. Certain hotel chains such as Premier Inn in the UK sell rooms in various increasing price brackets and you may pay say four times the rate on the day vs booking 6 months in advance.

You will have less choice booking on the day and who wants to spend much time of your holiday trying to book accommodation?

This isn't my way of travelling but it is possible, depending on the place and the time. It's also possible that you will arrive in the middle of a festival or event and find every room in the area booked, or prices for anything available is horrendously inflated.

Given the easy availability of WiFi almost everywhere, I don't see any reason to wait until the last moment and then have to go from place to place trying to find a room, when you can do an online booking at any time. Just the thought of doing Europe as a nomad, with no reservations, gives me the heebie jeebies. But to each their own.

Times have changed massively for me as just showing up at a train station and then booking a B&B was easy. Now? Just use the Internet when you know your itinerary. As a courtesy and personal assurance, I always re-confirm bookings, especially in B&Bs and small inns, in advance.

I would still book online, even at the last minute, to save time walking around.

Do you mean literally walk in the door of a hotel and ask if they have a room? This sounds time consuming - you may very well have to go into many hotels to find one with availability. Some places may have tourist offices that can help with this - look into it in each place, I have never done it.

I would still book online even if that means getting into the city and sitting down in the train station with your phone/computer to see where is available that night and booking it then. Or make calls from the station.

You'd be better off calling ahead the morning of and locating a room that way.

Many TIs offer a room-finding service, though they charge a fee and I think this option is inferior to calling ahead.

In my experience, that's not a good idea. To give you an example, on one occasion in England I walked into the lobby and asked if they had a room. The guy behind the desk said they only accept reservations on their website or by phone. I went outside, called their toll-free number and made a booking, walked back inside and the guy gave me the key for my room (thankfully I had a mobile phone on that trip). Even if you can get a walk-in room, it will likely be more expensive (I've encountered that too, but I made sure I got my money's worth at breakfast the next morning).

September and to a lesser extent October are also very busy in Europe, so you could waste a lot of time looking for a room in each new town you arrive in. Wandering about an unfamiliar city hauling all my gear and looking for a place to sleep is not my idea of a "pleasant holiday".

There are a lot of people in Europe booking rooms ahead of time. They get to review all available rooms and select the one that is right for them at the most advantageous price. They don't find a place and say, "This is a nice place. I would like it, but I'll pass so someone who just walks in can have it."

No, they take it and you end up with something they didn't want.

Do not assume that September and October are safe months for traveling without reservations throughout Europe. You may hit a special event. You may want to go to a city that gets a great deal of business traffic on Monday-Thursday night. Or you may land in a smaller town on Friday or Saturday that is a popular weekend destination for residents of nearby cities. Making reservations a day or two ahead of time gives you a chance to discover that sort of problem and consider tweaking your itinerary to go to the problem places at less-busy times. It's much tougher to make an adjusgtment when you're already in town and the "Complet" signs are everwhere. Or the 80€ rooms are suddenly 140€ rooms.

Last time I did this was Spain in October 2007 -- although I called ahead from the previous town for the next night. Worked OK except for Sevilla over Spain Day (October 12) weekend when everything seemed to be booked; ended up going to the railroad station tourist office where they found us a "hostal" (they couldn't believe that an American would be fine with bathroom-down-the-hall!)
And online booking has exploded since then. As others have said, walking around a city looking for a room (with bags in tow) is NOT fun and wastes a lot of your limited vacation time.

Know that September in Europe is conference season...so don't think it's the "off" season...in some cities lodging can be very challenging during this month! With sites like booking.com though it's actually not too terribly risky to travel without advance reservations...my husband and I have done this in Europe, even in the summer high season, and met with lots of success. You just can't be picky about your accommodation...as long as you look at your lodging as a place to sleep, and nothing more, this might be a great way to go. We love the flexibility of traveling this way...you just can't expect to get a room in the exact location you may want and may need to compromise in either location or quality.

Stop this thing about "calling" the next hotel. It is 2017. Almost every single mid- and high-range accommodation has an online presence, most are on Booking and others have their own reservation engines with instant information on availability and price.

The compromise solution that works best in these days is to have a smartphone and then make reservations online, even if couple hours before arriving. It is a massive time-saver and it will give you, at the very least, price and availability information if you really want to appear unannounced at a reception desk to book a room.

Do you mean literally walk in the door of a hotel and ask if they have a room? This sounds time consuming - you may very well have to go into many hotels to find one with availability.

Believe it or not, that's the way my wife and I generally traveled to Europe 25-30 years ago, frequently in the Fall. It was pretty rare that we didn't get a room in the first place we tried (Paris was an exception), or through a tourist office when we arrived in the town. However, everything changed with the Internet and easy availability of on-line reservations. I think the last time we did a last minute hotel reservation was 12-15 years ago.

I did this in France about 10 years ago in late June, early July.
(We did have reservations for the first and last days of our trip.)
A friend and I had rented a car and figured that we could always drive to the next town if the one we wanted was full.
And Plan C was to sleep in the car if we had to.
It was fun, we never had to camp out, and we enjoyed the flexibility.
But I wouldn't want to try that now with everything on line and so many people booking ahead.

I have made reservations on the spot, but in March/April not September. A few times in August. And with a car, which makes it easier to move on if a place is full or too expensive. One night making a late reservation we had to turn around and go back a few miles since (searching online) I couldn't find any available rooms within an hour or so going forward. So being flexible is necessary.

Enjoy the trip!

On our last trip in March 2017 we made most reservations online but sometimes only 30 minutes before checking in. On at least two nights we found a place online but then just walked into the lobby to get a room.

While driving in England this past late September, Mom and I did walk-in at a couple of large chain hotels off the highway. In the first case, on a weekend, we had to try more than one hotel, and to move further from the nearby seaside, and to accept a double bed instead of twin beds, and to push the desk staff to think about their options (to give us a room they were holding and then clean another room for the next arriving customer). The second time was more of a mid-week, nowhere-special, stopping when the driver was tired deal and very easy. But we did prefer to book either by phone or online (whichever the location offered) for other stops. Traveling by public transport would make this plan harder.

SharYn's post reminded me of a call-for-booking-from-the-prior-town trip in England in the late 1990's which worked out except for a Friday night when we DID end up sleeping in the car in a mall parking lot. NOT highly recommended!