Hotels Rates Much Higher Than in Rick Steve's guidebook

While I use RS guidebooks for many many things, I tend to use other resources for researching hotel stays. Sometimes I plan trips that are on super tight budgets and for my best cost-cutting I use TripAdvisor. I pull up the TripAdvisor list of hotels and have them sorted from lowest price to highest price. I then scroll through the low prices until I find a low priced hotel that rates high.

For you, I just randomly put in Lisbon for October 14 to 16 since I don't know when you're traveling. I find that the Pensao Londres is $43 per night at it's rated 90 of 228 hotels in Lisbon. Pesnao Praca da Figueira is at $43 and it's rated at 43 of 228 hotels. There's also the Evolution Lisboa at $88 at it's rated at 55 of 228 hotels.

Read through the reviews to get a sense of patterns from reviewers and choose one that matches your travel style. I saw lots of others in the $50 - $70 price range.

Good luck!

Hi,

The 1st time I used the RS guide book (Italy 2012), I found the rates matched up. Planning for Greece this October, the book was much lower than actual rates.

Mary

I wouldn't rely on a print guidebook for hotel rates (prices are often out-of-date, while the internet has real-time info) - why don't you try www.booking.com and just filter based on your budget? An RS guidebook is way too narrow of a search. There should be plenty of hotels at any price point in Portugal.

Honestly a printed guidebook is not good for estimating hotel room rates. There are too many variables and changes that happen after printing. Rooms types often vary considerably within a hotel, each with its own rate. Some cheap rooms sell out quickly. And a book is likely a year old once is published, as it takes time for the actually publishing. So a 2015 book is really showing rates from 2014.

Guidebooks are helpful in narrowing down hotel options. Then use online resources such as either the hotel websites themselves, Tripadvisor, Booking.com or others to get actual rates, availability and a better sense of conditions and reviews. Many hotels do offer discounts for pre-booking - but be very aware and cautious of the conditions - such as no cancellation clauses.

It can be hard to get hoteliers to tell you what next year's price will be (maybe even more so in Portugal than some countries) but a rate twice as high should have a significant reason behind it. If you want to send me any specific examples, feel free to do so.