Accommodation: Hotels/hostels/camping

• Should I bring camping gear?
• Are hostels good for everyone?
• Are hostels always cheaper than hotels?
• Any tips on getting cheap rooms?
• Should I book rooms in advance?

Should I bring camping gear?

Probably not. There are people who do forms of long-term travel that involves a lot of camping, but that's pretty hardcore. You might want a few small pieces of gear that campers use, but for the most part even the lightest weight sleeping bag will take up too much room and just isn't necessary most of the time. Trips where you sleep and cook outside a lot are great, but camping stuff is pretty much dead weight on most any RTW trip.

Are hostels good for everyone?

No, but there are some things you should consider about hostels, even if you are a hotel person traveling with a relatively large budget. If you are traveling with a partner or as part of a small group then this is much less important, but if you are traveling solo you should really give some thought to staying in hostels at times, even if you can afford hotels.

The hostel movement started in Germany almost 100 years ago as a way for young people to travel cheaply, by making them share in the chores and even locking them out all day to discourage them from hanging around. But the modern hostel movement shares few of those characteristics. Very few places have any sort of upper age limit now and it's quite common to see retired travelers staying alongside students with nearly everything in between.

So not only are all ages welcome, there is little reason to worry about feeling self conscious about your age if you are no longer in school. Sure, younger people will make up the largest group most of the time, but hostelling is now an accepted way of keeping costs down, but also of socializing for all age groups.

Most hostels also have private rooms

Some of us aren't fond of the idea of sleeping only a few feet away from seven strangers with whatever collection of odd habits seven strangers might have. But the trend has been toward offering private single and double rooms in addition to the infamous and sometimes sketchy dorms. A single room in a hostel is almost always going to cost substantially less than a private room in a nearby hotel.

The bathroom/toilet/WC situation is also not as bad as you might imagine. Yes, even private hostel rooms tend to not have an en suite toilet, but most hostels have a series of small, locking shower and toilet areas near every room that are cleaned daily so you needn't worry about a lack of privacy, even if you might have to wait a few minutes to get in there.

Other advantages to hostels

So the price is nice, but there are other advantages to hostel life. Nearly all hostels will have a community kitchen stocked with all the pots, pans, plates, and glasses you'll need. So this can be a great way to save some money on food, and make a few friends in the meantime. And most hostels don't have TVs in the rooms, but they usually do have a TV room/lounge for all the guests. These are the things that make hostels so valuable to a solo traveler in particular.

Traveling alone is great, but that doesn't mean you have to be a complete loner while on the road. Most budget hotels the world around have breakfast included in the room price, but sitting a table or two away from another guest while eating your cereal still makes for a social canyon that is very difficult to bridge. People staying in hotels just don't tend to socialize with one another. And after breakfast your opportunities to meet other guests pretty much disappear until the next morning.

In hostels, even for those staying in private rooms, you have little choice but to interact from time to time. Where is the coffee? Where do these dishes go? Where did you buy that baguette? Have you been to the cathedral yet? It's understood that common rooms in hostels are places where strangers can socialize without feeling desperate, but keeping to yourself is easy as well.

So even if you are more of a hotel person, if you are traveling alone you might consider occasionally checking yourself into a private room in a hostel, and before you know it you might have the option of joining some other travelers on a city tour or a pub-crawl. Upon return from a RTW trip, travelers will often tell you about the great people they met, like the Australian guy in Berlin, or the Brazilian girls in Bangkok. Staying in hostels is the easiest way to create your own global network of friends, and it's usually quite a bit easier than meeting locals when you travel, for better or for worse.

Are hostels always cheaper than hotels?

Dorm beds in hostels are pretty much always the cheapest way to go, and private rooms in hostels are almost always cheaper than even the most basic hotel room with an en suite bathroom, but there are times when they might not be the best value. Even most hostel fans like to mix in some hotel nights here and there. A large and comfortable bed with your own TV at the foot of it can be a really nice treat once in a while.

Hostels tend to be in cities where hotel rooms are considered expensive by many travelers. But a few cities where hotel rooms can be had cheaply still have hostels. If you can get a private room for $12/night is it worth it to stay in a hostel for $6/night? Sure, it's half the price, but it's $6 and in the overall scheme of your finances this is a good place to consider a hotel. In a city where the cheapest private hotel room is $60 and a private room in a hostel is $30, the hostel can be a great value.

And another option to be aware of when considering the hostel/hotel debate is a hotel that usually caters to business travelers. It's typical for both hostels and budget tourist hotels to keep their prices within a fairly tight range, usually only changing with the season and usually not by too much. But larger hotels that rely on business travelers can be jammed for months in a row and then nearly empty for a week or two, in between trade fairs or during holiday periods.

This tends to happen in large cities like Milan, Hong Kong, and Sydney - where most of the rooms are booked for business - as opposed to places like Venice or Miami Beach where tourists rule the hallways. So you might be heading for Milan where a private room in a hostel might be €30, and the cheapest one-star hotel might be €45, but if you look in the right place you'll discover that many two and three-star hotels are empty with rooms available for as low as €35. Suddenly the €30 hostel room doesn't seem so inviting.

There are other cases where these pricing anomalies might occur so it's a good idea to keep your eyes open. They tend to only offer these unusually low rates as the empty periods draw near so it's hard to get these deals very far in advance. Some websites specialize in last-minute deals like this and one we like is ratestogo.com. One bit of warning though on these deals - they'll show cheap-sounding rooms in just about every city you search in, but often the cheap places are out by airports or other far flung locations. Be very careful of location before you book.

Any tips on getting cheap rooms?

The tip above is worth keeping in mind when you are thinking about a bit of a splurge or at least ready to take a break from hostel life for a few days. To be honest, most cheaper hotels and hostels rarely offer special deals so most of your special opportunities are going to be at 2-star and above hotels. Fortunately, many of them do offer deals from time to time, so often you can get a room at a nicer place for even less than the normal price at a basic hotel or a private hostel room.

Obviously you'll want to check the internet for special deals, particularly a site or two that specializes in last-minute deals. Those sites tend to offer the same exact places at the same prices so it's not necessary to check a more than one or two. For a baseline on normal prices, with helpful descriptions, neighborhood information, and even city guide information you are already in a great place. BootsnAll offers a huge booking network for hostels and hotels all over the world at prices that are usually impossible to beat.

City-run booking services

Another place you can sometimes get these same sorts of deals is at a city hotel-booking desk. These are very rare in the US, but many cities around the world have an operation set up at their airports and/or train stations that will book arriving visitors into local hotels. You might see them and assume they are likely a rip-off and just a way to add a small commission on top of the price of a room you can book yourself, but usually the opposite is true.

Often these services will have up-to-the-minute lists of which hotels have lots of empty rooms available, and that usually translates into a bargain for the customer. This tends to work similarly to how the last-minute websites work, in that during slow times larger and nicer places will slash their rates to try to fill up some of their empty rooms. It's true that most of them will ask for a small deposit from you to guarantee the room, but usually that deposit goes toward the discounted room price. Of course, during peak times these same counters may only have a few very expensive rooms left when you arrive so this is just a strategy to consider, not something you can always rely on.

Check for fringe seasons

But even going through normal channels there are some ways to save some money. Most cheaper hotels and hostels have set prices that fluctuate depending on their busy and slow seasons, but often times the boundaries of each season vary from place to place. So if you are looking for a 2-star place in some city in early April, and the first place you check has recently shifted into their spring rate. You might discover that a similar place next door is offering its winter rate until mid-April, so a nearly identical room is 25% less.

These price changes usually happen around four times per year, but some places will also have special rates during Christmas, Easter, or other holiday periods. The point is, if you are going someplace and it appears that you are arriving at the beginning or tail end of a more expensive season, you might do well to check around a bit more.

Should I book rooms in advance?

Often the answer to this question is no, but there are some important exceptions to this. First, a quick bit of economics. Nearly every destination in the world will have almost as many hotel rooms and hostel beds as they need to put up their typical kinds of visitors during their busiest season. This isn't to say there will almost always be cheap rooms available, just that there will almost always be some rooms available, except during the absolute peak season. These are just the laws of supply and demand, and they are true pretty much everywhere except communist and recently-communist countries.

So with that in mind let's look at a place like Venice. They might be near capacity, particularly in the more affordable places, most of the summer and during their carnival. So during the other 8 or 9 months of the year you can arrive in town and just look around for a place. Your first choice might not be available, but it's extremely unlikely that you'll be shut out of a room altogether, unless you arrive so late at night that many places have closed their front doors.

So most of the time, in most places, you can arrive in town and find a decent place without a problem. Traveling this way gives you the sort of freedom these RTW trips are often all about. Without advance reservations you can arrive a day later due to your hangover, or because you stopped at some small town on the way. And if you arrive in a city early enough you might have time to wander through the city center for a few hours until you've decided exactly where you'd like to stay.

When to book in advance

But there are times when it makes a lot of sense to book in advance. If you are flying into a city as opposed to arriving by train or bus, it's often worthwhile to book your first night in advance. Unless your flight arrives by the early afternoon, you might be adding a lot of stress to your visit without a bed booked. Your plane might arrive late and then the mad scramble to figure out transportation into the city gets crazier as you aren't even sure which neighborhood you need to go to.

In cases where you've already got a plane ticket it's often nice just to book your first night's accommodation just so you can relax and enjoy the ride. If the place isn't to your liking you can always go out early the next morning and find a better place during daylight hours when the pressure isn't so great.

Pay attention to holidays

The other times it can be good to book in advance are during peak visiting seasons for that particular place. It's almost always obvious which places are busy during summer and around Christmas, but there are different holidays all over the world and some of them fill local hotel rooms while others will empty them.

Consider that in the US, three of the busiest hotel weekends of the year are around Memorial Day in May, July 4th, and Labor Day in September. Most every country has equivalent holidays, but they are rarely on those same weekends. If you randomly arrive in a city at one of these times you might be lucky to find a room for double the price it was just a week earlier.

Religious holidays can also be unpredictable. Easter actually falls on different days in different places, and Lent, which is 40 days before Easter, often triggers a huge week of celebrating in some countries while it's ignored in others. Even if you aren't necessarily going to book a room in advance, you can usually figure these things out pretty efficiently by researching prices for your exact days a week or two before you arrive. Obviously everyone there knows about these holidays well in advance so if prices and availability look okay for your dates when you check two weeks in advance, you should probably be fine when you arrive.

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