ireland bed & breakfast availibity

August is high season, so if you are going to be in major tourist spots you will find less availability. You can look at prices at www.discoverireland.com and make reservations from there, too.

We were going to stay outside of the main tourist areas and make a short drive to them for the day. Hoping to find some reasonable rates in the smaller towns. We only have our first and last nights reserved. The rest of the time we are going to wing it. We have had great success with this in other parts of Europe. I hope we have the same in Ireland. What do you think?

You'll find a place. The real question is how much time you'll spend looking. I'll suggest that you have a list of places where you plan to stay.

We went in May for three weeks and had reservations for only the first and last nights of our stay. We winged it the rest of the way and had no trouble. August will be more crowded but doable. Before leaving we set a tentative itinerary and I researched B&Bs on Tripadvisor for the locations we intended to visit. I made a list with pertinent info (Phone number, rates etc) for the top rated B&Bs in those areas. (My list was top 10do what you're comfortable with maybe top 5.) By having a list, you will reduce the time necessary to find B&Bs and you will know how highly rated they are by fellow travelers. Good luck and have a great time!!

As Ken said, you will find something - B&Bs are plentiful. I never book ahead anymore when I go (but I don't go in August). I would suggest getting a B&B directory from the website listed above or the Tourist Information desk when you arrive and carry it with you. Then you will have contact info at your fingertips.

We recently returned from Ireland and followed the suggestions, which have been shared with you for finding a B and B. When we visited Ireland before, we spent too much time looking for a B and B each day as we had not made any reservations. This time we had reservations (found in Rick's guidebook) for most nights but not all. Since our global phone was not functional-thanks Verizon, we went online to find places to stay. We typed in B and B's in the city where we wanted to stay and a list of B and B's came up with descriptions. We also tried lastminute.com and found a special on a hotel near Galway for about the price of a B and B.
Barbara

I am in Ireland right now and as I have wandered around, there a lot of "no vacancies" signs, you might want to try to book in advance if you can!

We just returned from Ireland yesterday. We drove from Dublin to Galway (incl Aran Islands from Rossaveal), from Galway to Killarney by way of Cliffs of Moher, Killarney to Kilkenny by way of Cashel, Kilkenny to Dublin. I was really surprised by the number of vacancy signs posted - both hotels and B&B's. As there were four of us, I pre-booked and used all hotels. I knew if I wanted to get my husband and daughter to travel overseas again then I would need nicer hotels. Now that we've been once I won't hesitate to do B&B's with a lot less structure!

We toured Ireland for 2 weeks just after the Iceland volcano exploded 2 years ago. We pre-booked all of our B&Bs for the trip. However, we learned at our first stop that the volcano had caused huge numbers of cancellations and we could have waited until we arrived to find places. We were still glad that we pre-booked because we were able to research on Trip Advisor and through blogs like this to choose B&Bs that fit our needs more. We were there in June, early in the tourist season. No idea how things change for August touring!

We are traveling to Ireland for two weeks in the middle of September. We have prebooked the entire two weeks. For us, it makes good sense on 3 levels, as long as you are reasonably sure of your itinerary. First, by booking here there are no suprises in what you are going to get. You can pour over Tripadvisor or whatever and find the place and price you want at leasure, instead of from an ipad or something on the side of the road in Ireland. Secondly, even if your plans change, as long as you let the B &B know, it seems the policy that you can cancel the night before or even morning of without penalty. Lastly, all the places we contacted seemed to go out of there way to help. One owner in Dungannon even went as far as to look for last names the same and my Grandfather's in the phone book, as one of the reasons for going is to explore his past there. I know, many folks just wing it, but we are a couple in our 50s and like the idea of not having to fuss about accomdation every night.

"First, by booking here there are no suprises in what you are going to get." I hope that's true for you, but it wasn't true for us. We had one of our carefully chosen, prebooked B&Bs give away one of our two rooms even though we had a printed confirmation in hand when we arrived. The owner found rooms for us with another B&B, which turned out to be a complete dump. We had another lose our reservation completely. They managed to fit us in, but only by bumping the next people who arrived, reservation in hand. Just be prepared with a Plan B, in case you need alternate arrangements.

We did want to spend our days touring, not searching for a place to stay. We did email and call a week or 2 prior to our trip just to re-confirm our reservations. We did have to cancel our first night's reservation due to a travel glitch that forced us to miss our first day in Ireland. All of our B&Bs were well run and fit the descriptions we found on Trip Advisor. For us, planning ahead is a must.