Booking a room in the right hotel could be the difference between a dream or nightmare holiday, so it’s very important that you do the research before booking - for some of you, this sounds like a nightmare in itself, but I have written this guide to point you in the right direction.

Research the Location

Have a think about where you would like to stay. Booking a hotel room in the city or next to the beach will be more expensive, than out in the suburbs, so do you mind taking a bus to the beach, or do you prefer to be within walking distance – the location is very important.

When I was planning my trip to Sydney, I wanted to be within walking distance of the Harbour Bridge, and Darling Harbour, so I did various searches in Google, and then used Google Map, to find out the distances between the hotels and the attractions.

Finding the perfect Hotel

Once you’ve chosen the location, use a hotel search site like Hotels.com or Active Hotels, as these types of sites can speed the searching process up, but bear in mind though that they might not be the cheapest prices, so I only use these sites to find a hotel in my desired location and then use Google to find the cheapest prices.

Searching for the best price

Type the hotel name into the Google search box, then browse through the websites, checking each site for the best prices – you might find that the hotel has it’s own website, and you could assume that this will have the cheapest rates – you will be assuming incorrectly though, because from my own experience, this is not always the case.

Another resource is Travel Supermarket – an excellent website that will compare the best hotel deals from over 50 websites including, Opodo, Holiday Inn, Laterooms, ebookers, Intercontinental, Octopus, Travel Republic, and Active Hotels.

Word of “Mouth” reviews

What I love about the internet is that I can draw up a list of two or three hotels that I would like to stay in, then visit hotel review websites like Trip Advisor and read comments and reviews from other people who have stayed there.

You have to bear in mind that, whilst 99% of the reviews are genuine, you do read some dodgy, self promoting reviews from hotels, so it’s worth keeping an open mind and using a few of the hotel review websites out there to get a good selection of reviews.

Once you’ve made your choice, using Google Local, and you can see a satellite image of the local area of the hotel – whilst some of the maps are a little out of date, it gives you an idea of the buildings, roads, and attractions around you.

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