How to find the right hotel for your needs
Whether you are traveling for business or leisure, your choice of hotel will have a major influence on the success of your trip.
When selecting a hotel it is helpful to remember that there is no such thing as the perfect hotel. Five different people attending the same conference will likely choose five different hotels because of the varying priorities which they each have. This does not mean that four of the five people were wrong, just that they had different needs. This article is aimed at addressing the top 6 questions which you will be faced with when choosing the right hotel for you. The questions should help you to think about what your priorities are and place them in an order so you can find the hotel which best meets your needs. We hope you have a pleasant stay whatever hotel you choose!
1. Price Sensitivity
Of course the price of the room is almost always a very important consideration to the decision of which hotel to choose. Room costs can vary from £20 per night to over £500 for premium suites. Although price is an important factor it should not be the most important consideration when choosing your hotel. If you make it such then you risk getting too cheap a room which doesn't meet your needs, or paying too much for a room which offers facilities and services which you don't require. Depending on your requirements the best policy is often to decide on the maximum amount that you are prepared to pay for the stay, then search for hotels that are below that amount whilst also meeting your other stay criteria. By adopting this policy you can be sure that you are staying in a hotel for an acceptable cost, whilst focusing mainly on the location and facilities which you need. Be careful though, added extras such as breakfast or paid parking can increase the overall cost of a room; make sure you are factoring this in when you make a decision based on price.
2. Location
The hotel location can be a very important consideration when you need to be within walking distance of a train station, airport or wedding venue. In these cases it is worth carefully considering maps of the local area to identify which hotels are located where, and what the distance is between them and your required location. Be careful though, as sometimes the quoted distance on hotel search engines can be misleading as it is usually shown as the direct distance rather than the actual distance by road. If the hotel is located across a river from the train station then the quoted distance and the actual distance can be very different. If you are traveling with a vehicle then the hotel's location may become less critical compared to other factors, although being close to a major road may still be important.
3. Facilities
If the nature of your trip is to relax and unwind then the location, and potentially the price, becomes less important. To relax and unwind you may be interested in the facilities which are on offer: does the hotel have a spa, a swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, massage rooms? Or maybe you will be interested in other recreational activities such as golf, horse riding or tennis. You should also take into account factors like whether the hotel has free parking or free wifi, and whether breakfast is included in your room rate. These may be things which you take for granted when you book the room but add to the overall cost of your stay.
4. Reviews
The reviews given to a hotel from previous guests are often an important indicator as to how pleased you will be with the quality of your stay. If 100 previous guests have all given a hotel 9/10 then there is a good chance that you will also be satisfied by your stay. Reading the comments from previous guests can also help to gauge the type of hotel it is and the type of experience you might receive. On the flip side, guest ratings and reviews can sometimes represent an overly extreme viewpoint as people are most likely to write a review when they have had a particularly good or bad experience, therefore it is wise to read them with a little caution.
5. Special requirements
If you have any special requirements for your stay, for instance if you require a room with disabled access or a hotel which is pet friendly then it is important that you can check this before you book. Hotel listings sites can help you to identify hotels which will meet certain special requirements so you can ignore those which are not relevant to you. It is usual to have an area on the booking form to add special instructions (for instance if you need a ground floor room) but its also worth confirming with the hotel directly to be on the safe side.
6. Photos
Photos are another great way to gain an insight into what the hotel is really like. The word 'garden' in a textual description can only tell you so much, but when you see a photograph of the garden in question, then you can begin to get a feel for the hotel. Likewise with the rooms: You may have a preconceived idea of the type of hotel room which you would like to stay in which cannot be conveyed by the words 'telephone' or 'desk lamp'. By viewing a few photos of typical rooms then you can begin to visualise whether it is the right place for you.
The final word
Many of the hotel reservation websites allow you to filter on multiple criteria in order to find the hotel which meets your needs. For many people this is a highly effective way of narrowing down the best hotel but it does take time and can result in suitable hotels being missed because they fail on just one minor criteria.
At Hotels In Luton we have taken a different approach and used market research information to create a model of what the 'average' person wants when they search for a certain type of hotel. For instance, we have a hotel listings page for business hotels in Reading where we rank the hotels based on how suitable they are for people on a business trip: taking the price, location, facilities and guest ratings into account. Not all the results will be suitable for you but it should help you to direct your attention to the top 5 or so results to find the best match for your needs. We believe that we have created the quickest and easiest way for you to find the right hotel. We have also created a number of other hotel listings pages to help different types of customer with different purposes of their stays; in particular for people looking for hotels with leisure facilities, luxury hotels, cheap hotels, pet friendly hotels and hotels with facilities for the disabled. We also have location based search results to help you find the nearest hotels to your required destination, whether it be the centre of town or another location such as a university or wedding venue.
Whether you prefer our hotel listings or the more conventional hotel search websites, we hope that this article helps you to find the right hotel for you needs.