You can get the cheapest hotel rates if you plan. Travellers who are prepared to take control of their schedule and decision-making will win the battle against rising accommodation costs in Europe.

Remember the last time you ended up paying more for a hotel than your budget could afford? It might have been a good room, but what could have been a sweet experience was soured by that feeling of being backed into a costly corner.

It shouldn’t have happened, really. Unless something goes drastically wrong with your plans, there’s no need to wear all the worst impacts of inflation on European travel.

Thinking well ahead is the best possible start when finding cheaper accommodation. A clear understanding of your room requirements is also important.

But there are also a few booking secrets worth knowing that deliver savings.

Adjusting bookings by a few days can sometimes make the difference between an affordable stay and paying double price.

Making sure you are getting the best available rate at the hotel you have decided on is the final detail. Rooms might even cost less on the hotel’s own website, if you take the trouble to check.

Here’s a six-step process outlining how to get the best rate on a hotel room.

Step 1. Book in advance to save money on hotels

Is it cheaper to book hotels in advance? Yes.

You’ve heard this before, but it’s worth emphasising the point.

If you’ve recently tried booking hotels as you travel, you have felt the burden of the extra cost. The truth today is that the longer you wait to book a hotel, the more the price goes up.

Dynamic hotel pricing models, driven by rising demand and scarcity of rooms, lift the price. The earlier you can get in, the better. Rooms with fixed rates are getting rare.

Booking ahead now applies to most aspects of travel booking, just like airfares. In some places it now applies to rail bookings too. Here the accommodation savings are potentially large.

Some advertising focuses on the claim that booking with one hotel website gets you a cheaper room rate than you might with another site. Maybe this is sometimes true, but one thing is almost guaranteed – guests who booked at very different times will be paying very different rates for much the same room.

Sometimes booking at the last minute can get you a low rate, too. That’s because the hotel has fixed costs and wants to fill up its room register every night. But for the guest last-minute booking is a risky strategy that can wreck your budgeting. It will likely cost you time and cause stress on the road when you should be enjoying every minute of a fulfilling travel adventure. You might have to choose between spending another hour to cross town to get a reasonable deal or paying a lot more.

We’ve all found a great hotel for our needs, and the price was right, but we discovered it was booked out for our dates. Get in early.

Booking well ahead also helps you ignore scarcity messages on booking websites. You’ll never know whether you are in fact looking at the last available room on the site, but you can be certain that the site’s intention is to induce you to commit yourself now, without considering the booking carefully. Booking in advance takes these distractions out of your decision-making.

How far to book ahead? Six weeks’ lead time will offer bigger savings than a mere fortnight. If you are able to plan three or four months ahead, the savings on any given booking should be greater and far more accommodation options will be available at the booking stage. This way you choose two paths to realising savings by getting in ahead of other travellers.

Step 2. Be clear about what you need in a hotel

Getting the best deal on a hotel room is also about features. So, decide what you need.
You have to make this call this only once.

What are non-negotiable features for your hotel? What services do you expect? Being clear about the essentials makes your booking task easier.

Here’s a list of features to consider:
● Breakfast on the property
● Ensuite shower and toilet
● A 24-hour reception desk
● Daily housekeeping
● A chair with a small desk or table
● A place to hang clothes in the hotel room
● Suitcase rack
● Wi-fi access on the property
● TV
● Windows (some budget hotels are offering windowless rooms at low rates)

Do you need breakfast in the hotel? Economical cafe options might be in the same street, and the web makes this easy to check. Is there free coffee or tea to get you started for the day, or even a small guest kitchen?

Do you need all the above? How can you check? One measure of features is hotel stars.
European hotels are rated by government agencies or hospitality organisations, although systems vary. A multinational European system of hotel stars exists, but nations such as France, Italy (where standards vary by region), Spain and Ireland have their own hotel ratings.

These stars are supposed to be objective. They do not rate quality of features or service standards. Save these for your online hotel review.

When you have checked and know how many stars you need, you can move on and plan your trip.

Step 3. Check out how hotel systems can get you cheap hotel rates

Hotels don’t just cost you money, they can save you money.

After you decide your minimum features, ask: if available hotel choices look expensive, are you comfortable in a more modest room? Bright, basic, budget hotels have been offering savings in Europe for about 40 years. Small, often family-run budget accommodation called hotels garnis or hotel pensions have been around much longer.

Ask yourself whether public transport has to run past the hotel.

But you don’t have to compromise on comfort. Increasingly, low-service, self-check in hotels are saving money for guests. Some of the more expensive destinations, such as Scandinavian cities, are leading the retreat from traditional reception desks, but even hotels in Vienna are now emphasising the low-service model in their listings.

Most of these hotels ask you to check in using a supplied code arriving by email or in a booking app. The hotel staff can be contacted the same way, or by phone. Trolleys of clean towels and bed linen could be available on a take-what-you-need basis. You can change these daily if you really want it.

You might even be happy with a change every second or third day. One very reasonably priced Scandinavian hotel says it will change linen and towels every fourth day of your stay – unless you request the change a day ahead.

Step 4. Book the right day to get a lower hotel bill

Decide whether room supply is higher than demand for your hotel stay. This might sound like an odd issue, but along with advance bookings it’s one of the factors most likely to get you the best hotel rate.
Events are critical to demand. When a festival, for instance, or a trade show is on, prices shoot up. The classic example is Munich’s Oktoberfest, during which hotel and hostel prices can quadruple. But trade shows, in German cities in particular, have marked effects on accommodation prices too.

You can download Raven Guides’ report on getting the cheapest hotel rates, which covers how events affect hotel prices.

Even outside this events, modern dynamic pricing means some days of the week are usually more expensive than others. Where tourist markets are most important, weekends – usually meaning Friday and Saturday – are the most expensive days. Public holidays, especially ones that create long weekends, lift demand and hotel rates accordingly.

All this means you might pay differing nightly rates over a multi-night stay.

Have a clear understanding of what peak season is. In northern or central Europe, the “summer” months make it hard to get cheap hotel rates, as does the Advent period of Christmas markets and the weeks either side of the new year.

Almost anywhere in Europe, the price-conscious traveller seeks to avoid June, July and August, when heat is increasingly a problem. Rooms are a lot more affordable in April, May (especially early May), the second half of September (except in Munich) and October, while many attractions are open. Around the Mediterranean, mild weather extends into March and November.

Where a business market is targeted by the hotel, weekdays and business events could lift rates.
So how do you find out all this? There are two tools:

● A calendar. Before booking anything, get your hands on this. Pick out any public holidays, check a list of events on the relevant tourist website, and enquire about whether there are trade shows. Show organisers have these calendars. The bigger the show, the higher the demand and the hotel rate.

● A hotel booking system that includes a month-by-month calendar. It doesn’t have to be for the hotel or hotels you might be considering, just one that’s relevant for the dates and city you want. Here’s a good 2024 example from Vienna:

See the huge bound in rates over several days from February 28?

On March 3, the huge outdoor public skating event known as Wiener Eistraum, running over several weeks, was set to wind up for another year. It looks like the days leading up to the closure were expected to be busy with out-of-town visitors. Other events were adding to demand.

Either way, do you want to pay the 77% higher rate on the Wednesday? Or the 105% higher rate on the Friday or Saturday?

Also, some destinations tend to be more expensive than others.

If you are visiting such a destination – let’s imagine Copenhagen – try to avoid being there on a Friday or Saturday. If that won’t fit your schedule, consider accommodation options that are a little cheaper. There are several inexpensive hotels within a few minutes’ walk of the central rail station.

Comfortable alternatives are usually around – a two-star hotel, a pension, a guesthouse or a private room in a hostel-style property. Or stay a little out of town somewhere that still has good transport connections. You can stay at a higher comfort level more affordably during the week.

Step 5. Ask whether you can shift your accommodation dates to get cheap rates

This ties in with the previous point. If there is a snag in the plan caused by expensive dates, try adjusting them a few days either way to see whether a much better offer shows up. Would it be worth changing your plans or making a detour? In Europe, there’s usually plenty of things to do and see not far away.
If your answer is yes, you might have to return to step 4 here.

It often costs less, especially on booking websites, to choose the non-refundable, fixed-date rate options. This difference can often be about 5%, but it’s not hard to find cases where the flexible option costs 11% more.

It’s worth considering whether you really need the option of rescheduling a few days ahead of your stay. We should be alert to hotels devising ways to charge us more.

Step 6. Compare the rates on the hotel’s website with booking websites or apps

The rates on the hotel’s website for your dates will often differ from the results on booking websites. If you have an account with a booking website, the hotel choices you are surveying might throw up a helpful discount of 10% or 15%. Check whether a smartphone app offers a worthwhile discount you can’t get elsewhere – many are out there.

Keep in mind the fact that a booking website might claim to have the lowest rates, but the hotel’s own website – if it has one – might be quite explicit in its promise to offer the lowest rates. There’s one way to know for sure, and that’s to take a few minutes to check and compare. The Raven Guides report shows the hotel’s website is often cheaper.

This six-step process probably won’t save big money on every night’s accommodation. But you can make substantial savings on some bookings (or nights), marginal savings on others, and come out with a meaningful overall discount to the hotel bill for your European trip.

It’s also possible to mix and match other tactics, such as interspersing a long overnight train journey in a comfortable sleeper carriage that avoids a night in a hotel. Combining travel and accommodation saves money, as well as time.

With a clearer picture of the key issues affecting hotel rates, let’s summarise the money-saving steps to take:
● Book in advance
● Be clear about what you need in a hotel
● Check out how hotel systems can cut your hotel bill
● Decide whether supply is higher than demand for your target date
● Check how flexible your accommodation dates can be
● Compare the rates on the hotel’s website with booking websites or apps

If we are smart and prepared, we are not helpless. Booking the hotels we want, when we need them, is one key to affordable travel.

Download the Raven Guides free report How to get the lowest hotel rate online 100% of the time  or explore more European travel tips. Join the Raven Travel Guides Europe community.

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