I am looking for websites to reserve room for my family. Should we stay at branded hotels or rent apartment? We are not into hostels or camping.
We are staying in Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris with side trips to Pisa and Siena.
I'll be mostly picking places from Rick Steves guide book.
Thanks.
I chose eurobooking.com and caupona.com and look for reviews on tripadvisor.com
We will be staying in many of the same cities you are and I booked all of our apartments through Sleep in Italy. I also checked Trip Advisor before booking.
We used cross-pollinate.com for 3 different apartments in Rome and Venice. We were extremely satisfied. I know they have rooms as well, in cities including Paris and Barcelona.
I use vrbo.com for renting apartments. Keep in mind that most apartments have a required stay, some three nights, some four. Depends on the owner. On our recent trip to Venice, we stayed six nights and the apartment was great. It was terrific to take a break in the middle of the day and come "home" to an apartment instead of hotel. Going to Naples in October and will be staying in Sorrento. We've booked an apartment through HomeAway (which is vrbo parent company.)
If you plan to book hotels or B&Bs recommended in Rick's guidebook, you should book directly. The rates he quotes are for rooms booked directly. When you book through a website other than the one Rick lists for the hotel or B&B, they must pay a commission on the booking and will likely charge you a higher nightly rate. Note that very few of Rick's recommended hotels are "branded" hotels. Rather, they tend to be smaller family-run hotels. If you prefer to rent apartments, then the websites mentioned might be the way to go. Some apartments can be rented by the night, while others will require weekly rentals. www.venere.com is another good website if going the apartment route.
