Are Hotel Reservations Necessary?

The thing is that not only might you have to settle for the dregs, it is time consuming to look for an available room that A) you can afford and B) is in or close to the town you find yourselves in. We have winged it (wung it?) on many trips and sometimes you do get lucky but it takes time and I am always the one sent in to struggle in a foreign language with the formidable Frau or Madame or Signora in charge of operations.

Did that in Spain in October a few years ago -- called for reservations in town B from town A. (Note -- don't try Seville over Spain Day weekend October 12 -- we ended up going to the train station TI and were told that all hotels were full. They DID find us a room with bath down the hall and stairs to the 3rd floor, which was fine with me but some people might have higher standards.)

I am very talented at trip planning and we often have wonderful hotels with terraces and views or delightful apartments; I am completely incompetent at achieving this on the fly. When we have tried to just grab a room as we go, we have every time ended up in a dump and on one memorable occasion we went from hotel to hotel not finding a room until I was afraid we would be sleeping in our car. I had a list of hotels prepared, but they were all either full or not open for the season (this was in May). On one other occasion we were the only people in a hotel that had the vibe of a Norman Bates enterprise.

If you want to be flexible I would have a good list of possibilities and reserve by phone a couple of days ahead as you go; that way you don't waste endless time finding a room. The other downside of doing this on the fly is that you end up paying a lot more than you need to as you have little ability to comparison shop or snare bargains. We have used the hotels in the Independent Hotels catalogues and had the clerk of one phone ahead for us to the next which makes getting a good room easier since there are no language barriers. Our best hotel room ever -- our huge windows looked on onto the Pont du Gard and we just lay there all night looking at it in the moonlight every time we woke up -- heavenly -- was obtained that way. The clerk asked us of we wanted to pay more for a view room -- so glad we did.

Yes, it is time consuming to find a place. That's a good point.

Really where I'm having trouble planning is in Extremadura. RS doesn't write about it and I haven't found a travel book or even a tour to use as a guide as to how many days to plan for to see the region. We'll be heading north from Sevilla to Salamanca. I wonder why this region is so overlooked. It seems full of medieval towns.

It's this lack of guidance that makes me want to leave the plans open. Anyone travelled through Extremadura?

The choice is up to you and you're tolerance for risk. We have done it both way and as we get older we are tending to book in advance. However everything looks good on the Internet... And we had some surprises. So do what you want and if you do not book in advance, be prepared to look a lot and some times settle for something either are expensive or below your standards. Relax and enjoy your trip either way.

Beyond reserving ahead for your first and last cities, I would be quite comfortable to make other arrangements as you go. If you reserve any thing else, such as Alhambra tickets in Granada, or advance-discount train tickets for the first leg or two, then you could also reserve those city hotels.

Most hotel reservations can be cancelled without penalty. The flexible plan has worked well for me in the past, especially in small towns. But when I couldn't find an opening at any of my Madrid listings on one September visit, the tourist office at the train station found one quite similar and available. The internet adds new search options, and having a car gives you more flexibility in the number of hotels you can reach in or near a given town. Sometimes it might be the more expensive hotels that have vacancies. You do have to be a bit flexible in what you will accept.

I have done dozens of trips in many countries and often will not make reservations. I have ended up in beautiful hotels at very reasonable rates and in rather sparse hotels... but I am usually not on vacation in Europe to sit in my hotel room. I would much rather have the flexibility of travel than to have my whole trip laid out. It's personal preference. Sometimes in large cities or on the day out I will make reservations. But, if I have a car and am traveling in smaller towns I will just wing it. It has really not taken any more time to find a hotel without reservations than to find the hotel I have prebooked. I have spent lots of time driving in circles to find a particular hotel and wished I did not have a reservation:) I also do not have hours to sit on the internet and search hotels... as they often do not appear the same in person.... Lots of my most wonderful memories from my trips were from spontaneous decisions that would have been impossible with hotel reservations.

Not sure what the problem is here. If you are in Granada and plan on traveling to Cordoba, book a room. That gives you all day to get from A to B without the hassle of looking for available rooms. While some people might see this as a restriction, in reality it frees you to travel and see whatever you want to see knowing, at the end of the day, you will arrive at a reserved reservation. Book in advance. Use TripAdvisor as a guide and use Booking.Com to reserve your room. If you decide to change your itinerary, cancel your booked room if you must. This way you can get a great room, at a great price, in the best location. And location is everything.

Ed

For years we have followed the plan of reservations for the first night or two and the last. We will have a list of hotels we are interested in and when we know that we will be moving on will make a call. Works well most of the time, but you need to be flexible. For some a hotel room with a view, balcony, is important. All I need is a clean bed that is flat.

I've done it both ways and sometimes you need or want the flexibility of on-the-go bookings. The risks are finding a town booked (can even happen in larger cities if there is a convention or special holiday/event), spending lots of vacation time searching for a room (either online or trekking around town), getting rooms that are below your standards and the stress of not having a place to stay until the last minute.

The post by janetttravels might show the extremes but I've had those same types of experiences (we should exchange horror stories at the next Chicago meeting). And while it may not be the norm, a bad experience with a hotel can ruin some people's trip.

The internet (if you have ready access to it while traveling) is a godsend for on-the-fly bookings. But you can spend lots of time online searching. Or try and have a short list of places selected ahead of time and hope they aren't all booked.

To visit the Alhambra, you really will need advanced reservations as it is one of the most popular sites in Europe. So that will lock in the Granada portion of your trip.

I travel regularly without a reservation. The vast majority of my time is consumed ahead of time, making a list of potential places and building a spreadsheet, with a handful of choices at each stop, on my Ipod touch (maybe my tablet next time).

We visited Spain for a month April 2012 (considered high season in Spain). I typically book ahead for fixed parts of my itinerary, then call ahead on travel days to get a room at our next stop. This trip I booked ahead for Barcelona (first stop), Madrid (last stop), Cordoba (had booked an AVE ticket so also fixed), and Seville during April Fair (I didn't want to repeat my reservation free visit to Oktoberfest a decade or so before that).

The rest of the places were booked on the fly using a local cell phone and my data base. In every case but one, I got a room at my first lodging choice - so one call was all it took. The one exception was at Granada. My first choice was "completo" (full). My second choice didn't have one room for the entire stay. They promised to find something but we might have to change rooms. The third choice was available, but really wasn't nice so we ended up at the fourth choice, which we loved. Note, the only place I couldn't stay here was the first choice but we went down the list for other reasons.