To reserve or not???

I prefer to spend my time getting to explore the town, not looking for a hotel. We book 100% of our lodging in advance. That way we can get good prices and research the reputation of potential lodging before plunking down the money. All the more important if you're traveling during high season or even shoulder season.

We've done it both ways, and it's just like Michael says. On the one hand no booking lets you be more flexible with what you do and where you go. On the other hand, you can end up spending an afternoon wandering around with all your luggage looking for a place to stay. That is not fun .

If you know where you will be going reserve. The internet has changed European travel, it's not as easy as it once was to just show up and find a room. Even if you decide to "wing it" make sure you have something booked for the night you land and the night before you leave.

Leslie, I always prefer to pre-book accommodations, as that allows me to have more choice over both the price range and which area of the city I prefer to stay in. As mentioned in a previous post, I also don't like arriving in a new city and having to wander around looking for a place to stay (which is especially annoying when I'm hauling luggage). It's a much more efficient use of my travel time to just drop my travel gear at the Hotel and then begin touring right away.

Myself I feel better knowing I have a place to go but I'm travelling with family. If I was on my own I might try waiting till I got there but that would also depend on where I'm going.

When we travel in Italy we make reservations in advance. When we travel in Ireland we just stop at b&b's as we go to find accommodations. As a previous poster mentioned, the internet has changed the process dramatically. We have used venere.com and tripadvisor.com many times with satisfaction. Buon viaggio,

We book all of our hotels ahead of time, for all the reasons already stated. We like to be able to choose the part of town and check out reviews, etc. of lodgings and their owners. This does decrease in flexibility, but we're ok with that tradeoff. When traveling between destinations, we can use that time to spend more time in one destination than another (we usually travel by car, and when traveling by train, usually don't need to reserve ahead). In any event I've usually done so much research on where we'll be visiting that I almost always judge correctly on where we want to spend our time. Though (rarely) you can always change reservations, and if a hotel has room, spend more or less time in one destination over another.

Hint: Prices on websites for Italian travelers are much cheaper than those for American travelers. If you know someone who speaks enough Italian to get by, or you're confident with your Spanish & Google Translate as a guide, you can find amazingly cheap deals on some sites by searching on google.it for the Italian name of your city (ex. Florence = Firenze) and adding Albergho, Alberghi, B&B. On a cursory search, here's an example of a site I found using Italian searches, and it even has (poor) English translations as well, and the prices seem, to me, reasonable. They are not going to be the big slick fancy hotels promoted by the big slick fancy hotel booking search engines, but they can still be quite nice. I am in no way affiliated with these sites: http://www.romaviva.com http://www.viaggiareweb.it/

I notice that the two sites that Steve mentions show very low rates for rooms, but like a lot of booking sites, those rates are the lowest possible rates (off season, etc.). I looked into one of them that said the rate was 23E, but after putting in three days in May, the rate jumped to 80E.

80 euros during high season is a great rate, no? Depending on what it is. I personally don't book a lot of hotels in Rome because I live there, but I believe the average most people spend is between 80euros-150euros a night. Of course there's always the super hotels (Hassler, Intercontinental, Bernini Bristol, Excelsior, De Russie, Hilton Cavelieri, the Grand etc) that will run you well over 300euro a night. I recommend shopping around, finding a good B&B, or often times for the price euro for euro you can get a full service apartment with cleaner in a great area like Via Giulia for the same as you'd spend at an out-of-the-way "comforts of home"-type hotel. In my experience it is never worth staying at a hotel that shuttles you into Rome, it puts WAY too many limitations on what you're able to do in one of the most fun cities to "experience" in the world. I can write some recommendations of apartments of anyone is interested. I've not stayed in them, but I've seen them and heard good things. Let me know! :-)

We travel in October and only book a hotel the night in and the night out, the rest is left up to the fates. It gives you so much more flexibility to do it this way plus the way we look at it we are never lost because we don't have a "must get to" destination.

I'm going with a friend on our first European excursion in May and we've booked all of our accomodations. It gives me peace of mind to know where we are staying. We are both young (21 and 22) and I don't want to run into any dangerous situations, without being able to find a place, or a safe place. I'm sure our parents love knowing that we already have our rooms, too :) Maybe if I were older and traveling with my spouse I wouldn't worry as much.

Leslie, I agree with Michael 100%. I always pre-book lodging and don't like to waste valuable sight-seeing time looking for a place to stay. It's especially crucial if you travel in high season (but even if I were traveling in low season, I would still pre-book). We ran into a family (from our home town) in the Cinque Terre the third week of September 2009 and they were schlepping luggage from town to town looking for a place to stay & had to ultimately travel to a non-CT town to find a hotel. I personally would not find this fun & took great comfort in knowing that I had confirmed reservations! Have a great trip.

It totally depends on the personality of the traveler, doesn't it?

We always make reservations before we travel. I like to look at reviews on line and know as much about a place I am staying as possible. It also matters what time of year you are traveling. I am going to Italy in April and just finished booking our last hotel. We are visiting 6 cities and have places to stay in each. Once we were in Siena in August didn't have a place to stay when we arrived. Most places we would have liked to stay at were already booked. This to me was an unnecessary stress when you are on vacation.

We always have a reservation for our first night upon arrival and also for any large/ popular places. We do like the flexibility of changing our itinerary. But we do have a list of potential places to stay and call ahead early in the day to reserve a room when we decide where we are headed.

I have done it both ways and find that I get better places by booking in advance. As long as they have a cancellation policy that is workable and easy to understand I prefer getting everything arranged before departure. I also think if traveling by car it is easier to go to another location if things are tight.

I always book ahead. I don't want to waste my time when I arrive somewhere looking for a place to stay. We usually have a pretty tight budget, and I like to know before hand how much we will be paying. The exception to that was when we were in Ireland. I left one night "free" because we weren't sure exactly where we would end up one night. We had a car, so that made it easy to check a couple of places out before decided on one. I wouldn't do that using pubic transportation.