How risky is it to not prebook B&B?

When are you travelling?
You will find two camps on here: those who pre-book and those who are ok with going with the flow. For Ireland, I think a lot depends now when you will be travelling.

Personally, I always pre-book. I hate wasting time looking for places to sleep and would much rather know where I will be stopping for the night. I also find it easier to budget that way.

My wife and I have traveled to Ireland twice, in April 2002 and May 2016. On the earlier trip, we got away with not pre-booking for the six nights outside of Dublin, but I am think it was more stressful than booking ahead. Back then a great B&B could be had for under or around $50 in places like Ennis or Kilkenny. After the Celtic Tiger economy prices went up, and after the crash my sense is prices stayed up. Plus the exchange rate on our first trip was about $0.88 o the Euro, now it's $1.17 to the Euro. Which means while Ireland still provides excellent value on accommodations, the margin for error is a lot less. Plus the large majority of others are booking online because it's so easy. I would not chance it these days--the last trip I took without every night booked in advance was Portugal in 2008. If you don't book ahead you pay too much for what's left over, what no one else wanted in maybe not a good location. It is one country where you probably could get away with it depending upon the time of year, but I would not advise it. If it's too much work to plan things out when you are home, why would you want to work at that on your vacation? There is also a lot to be said for forcing yourself to have the discipline to decide how long you will stay where. Otherwise you may linger too long in places and shortchange stops at the end, and/or end up pushing the envelope by rolling into town at 8 p.m. without a room. It does depend on what time of year how strongly advised it is too book ahead. Also, you must always book ahead in Dublin or risk paying a big pile of money.

Greetings from Ireland,

As the previous posts mentioned, all depends on what time of year you are coming.

As a B&B owner myself I know that you will have zero chance of finding a room last minute, on the day, in Dingle in August for example. Its almost all already booked up online.

Whereas in October and to a lesser extent, September, you'd be most likely fine just finding a place lat minute and on the same day.

Le meas/with respect
Stephen McPhilemy
Rick Steves Ireland tour-guide
Dingle, Derry and Dublin

Thanks for all of the replies! We will be in Ireland the end of August so I guess we better go ahead and get to booking. Appreciate it travel buds.

I would recommend prebooking. I first visited Ireland in 1993 and since then have been back four more times. It's amazing how much the country has changed for the traveler. I never prebooked in Ireland in 1990s, even in summer. Rooms were usually available, but I noticed a change starting in the early 2000s. It was hard to get a room, so I started to prebook. I don't like that because I like some flexibility in my travel plans to make last-minute changes, but more people travel now.

Enjoy your visit to Ireland. It's paradise for me. I love the country. Cheers.

In high season it's risky, not so much in shoulder or off season. But, for me, the issue is not so much that it's impossible to find a place same day (or last minute), it's the waste of time and energy finding something acceptable and affordable when I could just go right to my reserved accommodations when I'm ready and relax. In a lot of ways I am flexible and spontaneous but when it comes to a place to spend the night I want that sewed up well ahead of time. If you're truly a type A, then book ahead, you'll save yourself a lot of unnecessary stress.

My wife and I will be visiting the west coast during the first two weeks of September. We booked most of our hotels and B&B's back in February. This past week we thought about some minor changes to our itinerary and started looking at moving a few current lodging dates as well as adding a few new stops. However, after finding limited or no availability during those weeks we decide to stick with our original plan.
Good luck

You may adjust very well to driving in Ireland but for me the added stress of searching for a B&B vacancy would be difficult. It being so easy to scope out a B&B tht you believe you will enjoy online it would definitely detract from my daily viewing of the beautiful Irish countryside if I had to spend the evening looking for a B&B. I vote prebook!

Due to all the "must prebook" votes. We did! I feel better about it. Thanks everyone!

another point of view... we usually only book our first night in and last night out of every country we travel and there have been many... we like the openness of serendipity....and aren't too fussy about rooms or even shared bathrooms... our last visit in Ireland we went with B&Bs and found the owners passed us along to their friends when we told them which place we were headed to next and booked for us before we left!! we were never disappointed and it was easy....
but part of our nightly fun is finding where we want to go and stay the next night and we look online then book that night for the next night..we usually travel shoulder seasons never full season so that helps. Except in Mexico we do reserve ahead of time.....
hopefully this method will work for us this trip!