I'm going to give you some advice to help you navigate the huge number of hotel choices you have when you travel
Hello! Welcome to Trip Hacks DC, my name is Rob
I'm a tour guide here in the nation's capital. If you're coming to Washington DC and you're looking for the best tips
tricks, and hacks for exploring the city,
make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the bell notification icon so that you don't miss any new videos. And if you're interested
in signing up for a Trip Hacks DC tour, head on over to www.triphacksdc.com
afterwards, to see the tours that I offer. In this video
I'm going to give you some tips to help you pick a place to stay that best fits your needs.
Everyone has different tastes and preferences,
so it's important to understand that there is no universal "best" place to stay. If you've been to DC before and you have any personal
favorites, leave a comment on this video and let everyone know what it is and why. Otherwise, let's get started...
My first tip is to understand that "niceness" is relative.
People ask me all the time if ______ is a nice hotel? Unfortunately
I'm actually in a pretty terrible position to answer this question.
I've stayed in plenty of hotels during my own travels, but almost none here in Washington DC.
And why would I? Since I live here and I already have a place to stay; just like you probably don't stay in hotels in
the city where you live either. For that reason
I always try to stay up to date on which hotels have good reputations and make recommendations
accordingly. For example, when someone comes on one of my tours,
I almost always ask them where they're staying and how they like it.
If a hotel has a bad reputation or people who have come on
my tours have had legitimate reasons for not liking it,
I make sure that I know that. Another comment that I hear people say all the time is:
"I don't care if the hotel's fancy, it just needs to be clean". Now, this is sort of a given,
nobody wants to stay at a hotel that's dirty. But the thing is there's no universal standard for cleanliness either.
You can see what I mean by looking at online reviews for any hotel.
One person might praise it for being super clean and another person might say exactly the opposite.
It's not necessarily that one of these reviews is fake or made up,
it's just that people have different standards and preferences when it comes to these things.
I'll have some more tips about how to navigate that shortly.
My second tip is that you should focus on where you want to stay. The biggest variable that will impact the quality of your trip
is how close the hotel where you're staying is to the things that you want to see and do.
In a previous video
I laid out 11 areas of the city and suburbs where I would recommend staying, and why it might be a good place.
I highly recommend clicking over and watching that
afterwards, to get a sense of the different options that are out there. If you can stay within walking distance of the places
where you want to spend the most of your time you're going to have a better experience.
Even though we have plenty of ways of getting around these days,
you really don't want to spend your precious vacation time
commuting all around. Plus, staying nearby will give you a chance to stop back at your room and
recharge and refresh before heading out for the next activity.
My next tip is that you should set a budget and decide what you want to spend within reason.
The thing about hotel prices in DC is that they are extremely
date-dependent. If you come here on dates when travel is slow
you can get an amazing deal, and if you come at a time when all the rooms are booked up
you're going to pay a big premium. And I am not talking about tourism here.
Business and conference travel is what really jacks up hotel prices. When the National Association of ________
has their national conference in Washington, DC,
they can bring tens of thousands of their members to town all at the same time.
That is a whole lot of hotel rooms taken up for a single event.
It may seem counter intuitive, but some of the best times to come to DC are actually on weekends and dates around holidays.
That's because event organizers tend to avoid those dates; regardless,
I have several videos about getting a great rate on a hotel and I will leave links to those in the video description.
My next tip is to see if your favorite brand has properties here. Washington DC has hotels from most of the major hotel brands:
Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and IHG all have plenty of properties here.
So if you are loyal to a
particular brand or a specific loyalty program, a great place to start is right on their website. That will definitely help cut down the
huge number of choices you would have to navigate otherwise. And my last tip is to be smart about using
TripAdvisor and Yelp when researching hotels. What I mean by this is don't just assume
"oh, only people who have bad experiences leave reviews" because that's just not true;
but also don't just look at the overall score and take that as gold. Take some time to read the actual
reviews and see what people are complaining about and whether it's something that you would care about too. For example, a lot of the negative
reviews about downtown hotels will mention something about how big of a rip-off the hotel parking prices are. In my Where to Park video
I mentioned that parking at hotels can be $50 or more per night.
But if you're not planning to drive or you've watched my video and know the best places to park for cheap,
then this doesn't matter to you at all. The other thing you can do is to look at the actual traveler photos.
Any hotel can hire a professional photographer and make any space look nice;
but you can use the photos that people themselves have posted from their stays and see if they match
the official photos or if it looks like a place that you would find comfortable. They do say that a picture is worth a thousand
words, and when it comes to reviews,
sometimes they tell you a lot more about a place than the actual written reviews.
And remember that if you're still having trouble I have some other videos about how to get a great rate at your hotel
where to stay and they recommended hotels guide you can check out by going to www.triphacksdc.com/hotels
And if you're coming to DC soon and looking for a tour,
you can click on the Capitol dome on the left side of my head,
that'll send you over to www.triphacksdc.com where you can see the tours that I offer; and for more tips and hacks,
go ahead and subscribe to the channel by clicking on the Trip Hacks DC logo
which is popping up right now at the bottom of the screen. Enjoy your trip!