if you're currently planning your dream trip to Europe odds are one of the most stressful
obstacles is figuring out where to stay after all proper planning can mean the difference
between staying here here and here don't worry though in this video I'm walking you
through the step-by-step process to finding amazing accommodation in Europe stick around
until the end and I'll also be giving you some bonus tips on how to find free accommodation in
Europe and also be giving you a checklist for finding the perfect accommodation every single
time now let's get to it first things first when it comes to accommodation you have to
realize that best is really subjective because it depends on what your priority is when I talk
about accommodation oftentimes I'll look at it in terms of this triangle price location
and quality - you can only pick two if it's a good location and good quality it'll probably be
very expensive if it's a good price and location the room is most likely not going to be the best
and if it's a good price and good quality you're probably not going to be in the center center so
before you start searching be sure to look into what your main priority is because that's going
to give you a lot of clarity moving forward when you're doing your whole booking process
now let's get to the fun stuff here is my process for finding and booking accommodation so first
thing I'll do is I'll hop on Booking.com this isn't an ad okay but I genuinely do
use Booking.com all the time when I'm searching up hotels at least as a discovery tool just because
I think that their tools and filters that they offer are the best you can of course also use the
hotels function on Google or other third-party sites like Hotels.com but this is just the one
that I prefer and the one that I'm going to be showing you Now spoiler I do recommend at the
end to book your properties directly but for now during the research phase definitely do use these
aggregators just because they give you so many more options and it's really helpful to be able
to see at a glance all the different places that you can stay in so the first thing I'll do is type
in my destination my dates and specify how many people and how many rooms and then I click search
and you'll get something crazy like thousands of results now before I show you how to effectively
vet and filter all these different options I'm going to give you a quick overview for those of
you who have never used this website before so in the center here there are of course all the
different options the default is their top picks whatever that means but you can also click here
and sort by all these different options as well in the upper right hand corner super handy is the map
view which is one of my favorite tools you can use that to look at hotels based on their location and
then when you scroll to the left there's all these filters that you can toggle on and off to further
refine your results isn't that so fun anyways what I usually do is I turn on these filters right off
the bat I only choose hotels that are an eight plus rating because from experience that's kind
of the bare minimum to ensure that there's no huge problems with the property like mold bed
bugs or awful staff things like that and then I'll toggle on free cancellation because for me
non-refundable bookings don't really make sense especially if you're booking a trip really far
in advance because at the end of the day, anything could happen especially these days so it's really
good to have the option to cancel especially when there are so many hotels that do offer free
cancellation anyway and then just like that we've narrowed it down by two-thirds so that's a great
start now I don't usually do star rating filters just because I've noticed that the star rating
on Booking.com can be a little bit weird like sometimes you'll find apartments that are rated
five stars for some reason and as I mentioned in my video last week the star system in Europe
works really differently to North America whereas in North America the number of stars a property
gets more or less corresponds with the quality of the property itself in Europe it's a little bit
different it more corresponds to a checklist of amenities so one or two star properties
usually won't have the big amenities like a gym a concierge, etc. it doesn't necessarily
mean they're bad it just means they don't have the big box amenities that a larger hotel might have
so overall I don't really like using star filters for that reason. Some other filters worth turning
on would be accommodation type so so you know if you want a hotel and definitely not a hostel or an
apartment you can check that. And just a little side note, I'm way too old for hostels these
days but if you are backpacking around Europe and you're looking for hostels specifically a
website I really recommend for that is Hostelworld they're really great and you can just actually
make bookings by paying a really tiny deposit rather than paying for the entire thing up front
which I think is really great alright and because I'm personally happy to do either a hotel or a
guest house now it's time to sort the options in a more meaningful way. I like to sort by lowest
price because usually these will be the least nice options and I really like working my way from like
the crappiest places to the nicer places because honestly if you do it the other way around after
you've seen a place like this you're not going to want to stay in a place like this so it's best to
go from worst to the best so at this point I'll just go through the list and it'll open up a tab
for each of the options that I just like the look of I'm such a tab addict it's ridiculous but yes
don't overthink it have a quick look and if you like it right click open a new tab and done and
if there's any familiar chains that you like or have status with be sure to open those into new
tabs as well all right so I'll continue to do this scrolling through opening new tabs until
I reach a price point that makes me want to gouge my eyes out that's usually my sign to stop and if
you're open to Vacation Rentals then what I might also do is Hop on either Airbnb or Vrbo just to
double check if there are any additional options. As I mentioned in last week's video Airbnb these
days isn't as worth it as before there's a ton of fees and there's a lot of additional labor when
it comes to you know meeting up with the host kind of doing chores afterwards but if you are
a bigger group or you want to home your space then it might still be an option to consider
so if I'm looking into a vacation rental I'll hop onto Airbnb and enter my destination and
dates I'll also tend to toggle on the following filters so entire Place Wi-Fi and any other
amenities that I personally find non-negotiable I'll then go on the map view and shortlist a few
that I like the look of. So after I shortlist any potential airbnbs I'll then go to another
site for my shortlist and that's Premier Inn. I don't always look for Premiere in it's usually
only when there's a big event on or the prices for everything else seem really crazy and I just
want a budget-friendly place to stay now this is a chain that's based in the UK so they have lots of
locations there but they're kind of expanding and they do have other properties elsewhere in Europe,
lots of locations that are pretty bare bones but really reliable and always cheap. They are famous
though for having 800+ properties none of which are available on third-party booking sites so if
you want to look for their properties you have to go directly lastly if it's a special occasion and
I'm wanting to stay somewhere really nice and aesthetic with a view or something unique to it
I'll just hop on social media usually TikTok and I'll type in my destination and hotel this can
often show you some really unique properties... probably expensive ones but if price is no
obstacle then this is definitely another great way to add more hotels to your shortlist. With
the shortlist done I'll review them again just to see if there are any now that seem like an instant
no compared to the other options usually there's quite a few and after I whittle the list down to
my finalists I'll cross reference with Google reviews. I find that the rating that hotels
have on third-party websites don't necessarily give you a full picture idea of what the hotel
is going to be like so I definitely recommend at least cross-referencing with some reviews before
you make a booking so what I'll usually do is I'll type the hotel name then I'll just look on
Google reviews again it's not enough to just look at the average score you should really read into
individual reviews just because the score that you see is kind of an accumulation of reviews
from the past few years so it doesn't necessarily tell you how the hotel is now especially if maybe
they've changed ownership or if they've changed things up through renovations things like that
you should really look at some of the newer reviews just so that you have an idea of what
to expect so I'll read through the newest reviews have a quick skim and if everything looks alright
then I'll keep it on my short list but oftentimes especially if if you're booking for a place that
seems a little bit too good to be true what you'll see is there's some red flags like oh
this place is doing renovations right now it's super noisy or hey there's a heat wave going
on right now and they don't have air conditioning things like that another thing I'll do especially
for properties that don't have a super high average rating is I'll also look specifically
at their one star reviews just to get a gauge on whether those one star reviews are fair or
not. Oftentimes you'll see okay like a bunch of one star reviews that say the same thing in
that case you can probably concede okay that is a real flaw of the hotel but sometimes there's just
these crazy one star reviews left by clearly disgruntled customers and you can almost tell
based on the way they've written the review that they were kind of in the wrong so I like to give
hotels a fair chance especially if there's like a huge discrepancy like if there's a bunch of five
star reviews and then just like a handful of one star reviews that's dragging the rating down I
really like to investigate further and look into that. Alright after you've read all the reviews
and you have your final short list it's time to make a decision. Honestly at this point if you've
done all this work your shortlist is probably full of really good options so you really can't
go wrong with them but you know take some time to decide weigh the pros and cons and then make your
decision. Now after you've chosen the hotel the last check that you should make before you book
is to see if it's cheaper to book directly with the hotel oftentimes hotels will offer you some
kind of incentive as I mentioned before to book directly with them whether it's a discount free
Wi-Fi free breakfast anything like that so look directly on the hotel website see if there's a
deal and then book all right so you've chosen the hotel you've decided where you're going to book
it now the last thing you should do is to look into options that'll help you maximize cashback
or points because at the end of the day even if you're on a budget you're going to end up spending
quite a bit of money on hotels so you should look into ways that you can actually maximize
the rewards that you get from spending money on this trip so first off you could get a travel
rewards credit card which is always a really good start but even if you don't want to use a travel
credit card there's a lot of other websites that you can use to potentially accrue points so the
British Airways Executive Club store for example if you fly frequently with British Airways you
might be collecting Avios points so you hop on their store and then you can actually to
get three points for every dollar that you spend on Airbnb or even eight Avios points for every
pound that you spend on Booking.com so you can actually rack up a bunch of points just by booking
through their portal because they have a special partnership you can also look into cashback sites
like Rakuten which offer you cashback when you book through them now this isn't going to be a
huge amount of money usually one to three percent but if you're using it frequently it can add up
to a nice little random check one day so why not and lastly if you are booking with a chain hotel,
do look into whether or not they have a loyalty program that you can join for free oftentimes
they'll give you some kind of perk like free Wi-Fi or free breakfast in exchange for joining and then
you can also accrue points for future stays. Oh sorry I know I said lastly but the last thing last
last thing I will say on that topic is if you are looking into booking with a third party another
Hotel website worth considering is Hotels.com and one really cool program that they have is if you
book 10 nights then you get one night for free but yeah if you don't travel frequently enough
to do like Hotel points status at a certain chain you can just book with Hotels.com,
book a bunch of of different properties and then eventually work your way up to a free night at
some point in the future all right so we've covered standard bookable accommodation but
if you are in a budget and you are open to maybe a different style of accommodation there are quite
a few options that allow you to actually stay in Europe for free and so I'm going to quickly
outline those options now so first off there's Couchsurfing which is a free community that you
can join it's essentially a network of travelers from all around the world who are open to meeting
new people so they'll often you know say okay you can crash at my place sleep on my couch and in
exchange then maybe one day you'll host them it's very much like a goodwill based kind of community
it's definitely not for everyone certainly not for introverts but it's an option to look into if
you're really on a budget there's also house swaps so let's say you live in a place and you want to
live longer term in another destination you never know you might be able to find someone from that
destination who wants to swap places with you like in The Holiday so that's another option to look
into there's also house sitting and pet sitting so there's certain websites like these ones that you
can browse where people will say they're looking for someone to look after their place or someone
to look after their pets while they're gone and so oftentimes you can get free accommodation in
exchange for watching over the house or watching someone's pets and last but not least there's
certain websites where you can find people who will host you for free in exchange for you
performing some kind of labor for them so there's like websites like this one and this one where you
can say okay like stay on a farm and help paint fences in exchange for accommodation. Alright
thank you so much for watching if you're looking for that checklist to help you book the perfect
accommodation every time you can find that here and if you're looking for more practical travel
tips in the future be sure to like and subscribe thanks for watching see you next week byeeeee!!