Pension/Farmhouse Outside of Garmisch

You might check Booking.com for accommodations. I went on Google Maps and hit the + key a few times, and relatively few icons showed up. There are some places east of town that are reasonably priced. VBRO is also representing some properties.

Hi Brian- In my experience, GP does not get overrun by tourists in the summer. There are many apartments in GP that will accommodate 5 people. However, since you will have a car you may be better off financially looking at areas outside of Garmisch proper. Are you going up Zugspitze from the German or the Austrian side? If you are not German literate, you would probably be better off looking at a site like Booking.com as previously suggested by David. They have good maps that show the locations of places to stay and their reviews are usually pretty accurate. I would suggest that you make reservations that include free cancellation as soon as you know the date of your stay.

Have a great trip!!!

The best resource is always the town website, in this case www.gapa.de

Thank you for the replies. Bookings.com was a huge help. Yesterday I spent a good part of the day researching accommodations from many different sources and sending out email inquiries. I thought I'd wake up today to find many replies but had none. I was able to find everything I needed on Bookings.com. I booked places in Fussen, Grainau, Salzburg, and Munich today for our trip in June. All are canceable and I can access them all from their app. What a difference a day makes! Thanks again.
Brian

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day researching accommodations
from many different sources and sending out email inquiries. I thought
I'd wake up today to find many replies but had none.

Not surprising you had no replies. If you sent out inquires after about 11 am on Friday, your time, it was already past closing time in Germany. Unless the places had reservation people working on Saturday, you really couldn't expect responses before Monday, at the earliest. Many times I've sent out inquires and received responses within a few business days. Were you really in such a hurry that you could not have waited?

It's unfortunate that you had to use a booking website. I've found based on considerable experience booking in Germany that town website often have two or three times as many properties as booking websites, and they show a lot of less expensive, although entirely satisfactory, places compared to booking websites.

Case in point, the last stay on my trip a year ago was a small town in Franken. Booking.com shows four hotels in town. The average price on booking is 107,50€/nt. Those same four places are also shown on the town website for 97,25/nt average. In addition, there are an additional 9 places (total 13) on the town website with an average price of 75,50€/nt.

This town is not an anomaly. I've done the same analysis for countless small towns in Germany and I've always found the town website to have more, and more economical, properties than booking websites. Booking websites are convenient, but convenience has its price.

Have to agree with Lee 100%. Better deals are found emailing direct. Town websites offer many more options that booking sites. I’ve waited a few days for replies. No big deal. My opinion, after 100 nights in Germany and Austria, family owned and run Pesions, B&Bs, Gasthof, offer the best value, terrific breakfasts, and the opportunity to stay and have some interactions with a local family. It may take someone a few days to respond, they are usually kept pretty busy. Patience.

The exceptions to the less-expensive-away-from-booking-websites rule are major hotels (e.g. Marriott) where they set a ridiculously high "rack" rate so that booking websites, travel agencies, etc can appear to be getting you a great discount. For those hotels you might as well use booking websites.

I like booking.com as it helps to really organize me. It presents several different options and ratings from fellow travelers. That said, we ended up with a better deal in a place by cancelling and booking directly through the hotel. So I think a good ways of planning is to use booking.com to do your research, and then email the hotel directly and see which one gives you a better rate.