Hotel Bookings: What I Know From Both Sides of the Desk

Smart hotel booking tips from a hotel manager & solo traveller.

Book in Advance or Go with the Flow?

I book hotels as a solo traveller several times a year. I also take bookings, every day, in the small eco boutique hotel I run in the Cinque Terre.

That means I have spent years watching the same transaction from two directions: as the person hoping for a good room at a fair price, and as the person deciding who gets it. This guide is the honest version of what I have learned, including the things my own industry would rather not spell out.

First, the thing that actually saves you money

Book direct. Not because it is nicer for the hotel, though it is, but because it is now demonstrably better for you.

Here is the economics. Online travel agencies charge hotels a commission on every booking, typically between fifteen and twenty-five per cent. On a hundred-euro room, that can be a quarter of the price disappearing before the hotel has washed a single towel. Which is why almost every independent hotel would rather have you directly, and why almost every independent hotel will give you something to get you there.

And since November 2024, in the EU, they are legally free to do so. Booking.com was designated a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act, and the so-called parity clauses, which had prevented hotels from offering a better price on their own website than on the platform, are now prohibited across the European Economic Area. Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Belgium had already banned them nationally, and Spain’s competition authority fined Booking.com over four hundred million euros in 2024 for enforcing them.

In plain terms: your hotel is now allowed to undercut the platform on its own site. Many do. Very few travellers have noticed.

So the practical habit is simple. Find the hotel on a platform, then open its own website in another tab and compare. Not just the price: compare the cancellation terms, the room types offered, and whether breakfast is included. Small hotels often keep their best rooms off the platforms altogether.

What you can reasonably expect for booking direct: a better rate, or breakfast, or a more flexible cancellation policy, or the better room in the same category. In my own hotel I allocate only two rooms to the platforms, and I offer better prices and gentler cancellation terms on my own site. That is not generosity. It is arithmetic.

Who actually owns the booking sites

Worth knowing, because the illusion of choice is doing a lot of work here.

Booking Holdings owns Booking.com, Agoda, Kayak, Priceline, OpenTable and Rentalcars. Expedia Group owns Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbitz and Travelocity, and holds a majority stake in Trivago. So when you diligently compare Booking against Agoda, or Expedia against Hotels.com, you are comparing a company with itself.

That last one matters if you use Trivago as your comparison tool, which many people do: it is majority-owned by one of the two groups it is comparing, and it only shows direct hotel rates for properties that subscribe to it. It is useful, but it is not a neutral referee.

When to book, and when to leave it open

The first real question is whether you want spontaneity or peace of mind.

I book well ahead when I am travelling during a festival or high season, when I am going somewhere in constant demand like London, Paris or New York, or when the place itself is the point, and there are only six rooms.

I leave it loose when I travel off-season or to less-visited places, and I book a day or two ahead. That flexibility is one of the real pleasures of travelling alone, and off-season it costs you almost nothing.

One insider note on timing. Business hotels are often much cheaper at weekends and in August, while leisure hotels are the opposite. If you are visiting a city rather than a beach, look at the business districts on a Saturday.

Where to start looking

Ask people first. Friends, and travel communities where you can judge who is speaking. Nothing beats first-hand experience from someone whose taste you understand.

Then use the platforms as a catalogue, not a shop. They are excellent for seeing what exists and what it roughly costs. Read reviews with a filter for your own traveller type, since a hotel that delights a business traveller can be desolate for a solo one, and check Google Maps reviews for the most recent comments.

Be sceptical of guidebook listings, since a good many are paid inclusions, and of any “best hotels” article that links straight to a booking site. Including, I would gently say, most of them.

Reading reviews, from someone who receives them

Three things I have learned from the other side.

Read the middle reviews. Five-star reviews are often written in the first flush of a holiday and one-star reviews are often about one bad moment. The three and four-star reviews are where people describe the place accurately.

Look at what the complaint actually is. “The room was small” in a historic city centre is a fact about the building, not a failure. “Nobody answered for two days” is a fact about the management, and it tells you what will happen if something goes wrong.

Read the hotel’s replies. How a property answers criticism tells you more about how it will treat you than any of the reviews themselves.

How to ask for things, and actually get them

This is the part I most want to pass on, because it costs nothing and it works.

When you book direct, write a short, warm, specific message. Not a list of demands. Something like: it is our anniversary, or I am arriving after a long drive and may be late, or I sleep badly and would be grateful for a quiet room if one is free.

I promise you this changes outcomes. When I am assigning rooms and two bookings are identical, the one from the person who wrote something human gets the better room. Every time. Not as a reward, but because I know something about them and can do a better job.

Then be specific about the boring things, before you book:

• the room type and how many people, stated plainly
• your dates, and remember that Europe writes them day, month, year
• whether you want a refundable rate or a cheaper non-refundable one
• anything you actually need: an extra bed, a cot, a pet, a dietary requirement, a late arrival, a ground floor

Say if you will arrive late. Small hotels are not staffed around the clock, and a message at four in the afternoon saying you will be there at eleven at night is the difference between a warm welcome and a locked door. And do not phone a small hotel at midnight unless it is genuinely urgent, because you will be waking someone.

Email or the booking engine are both fine. For small hotels, WhatsApp is often the fastest route to a human.

The small print that catches people out

“Non-refundable” means what it says. It is genuinely cheaper, sometimes by a lot, and it is the right choice if your dates are certain. If there is any chance they are not, the flexible rate is insurance and should be priced in your head as such.

Check what “free cancellation” actually means. The deadline is usually a set number of days before arrival, and sometimes it is measured in the hotel’s time zone at a specific hour. Note the date in your calendar when you book.

Expect a card pre-authorisation. Many hotels hold an amount on your card before or at arrival. It is not a charge, but it will show on your account and can be a nuisance on a tight balance.

The tourist tax is usually extra. Almost everywhere in Europe, there is a per-person, per-night city tax that is not included in the rate you saw, and is often payable in cash. On a week’s stay it is a real number.

Check the breakfast policy. In many countries, it is optional and expensive, and there is a better bakery around the corner. In others, it is generous and included, and skipping it is a mistake.

Star ratings are not comparable across borders. They are set by different national systems with different criteria, and in Italy they even vary by region. A three-star in one country is a four in another. Use photographs and reviews instead.

Avoid half board unless you are somewhere genuinely remote, where it may be your only option and a good one.

If something goes wrong

Reconfirm a few days before arrival, by email, and keep the reply. This takes one minute and resolves ninety per cent of the problems that would otherwise happen at the desk.

If the hotel cannot honour your booking, which does happen, the industry norm is that they arrange and pay for an equivalent room elsewhere and cover the transfer. Ask for that calmly and clearly. It is not a favour, it is standard practice.

Ask early, and ask kindly. The earlier in the day you raise a problem, the more options the person in front of you still has to solve it. By evening, they have usually run out.

Turning up without a booking

Sometimes the best trips are the unplanned ones. If you are winging it:

• Look at more than one place before deciding, and always ask to see the room first. Nobody reputable will refuse.
• Be wary of hotel runners at stations and ports. Some are fine. Many are paid to steer you somewhere specific.
• Ask your current hotel to help with your next stop. We usually know who has space and who is good, and we are often happy to phone ahead for you.
• Arrive in the early afternoon, not at nine at night, so you still have choices.

Where your money sleeps

One last thing, from the hotelier rather than the traveller.

If you book an apartment rather than a hotel, check that the listing shows its official registration number, which most European cities now require. A listing without one is very likely operating outside the rules, which means no protection for you if it falls through, and it is one of the units cities are trying to bring back into housing.

Because the honest version of this argument is not about hotels being better. It is that a small hotel or guesthouse employs people, pays local taxes and was built to be what it is, while a flat let out year-round is a home that somebody used to live in. In the places that visitors love most, that difference is now the whole ballgame. I have written about this at length in tourism sustainability.

A final thought

A hotel booking is not really a transaction. It is the first conversation you have with a place, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

Be clear, be human, book direct where you can, and read the cancellation terms. The rest tends to look after itself.

If you have a booking habit or a hard-won trick of your own, tell me in the comments. I collect them.

Further reading

• My guide to packing light and the ten things I never travel without
• The best travel apps for independent travellers
• Where to stay in Paris, a worked example of choosing a neighbourhood
• Where to stay in London
• Tourism sustainability: it was never about the crowds