USA roadtrip without hotel reservations (hotels, train stations, best, attraction)
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I like road trips. I usually book hotels in advance for the entire trip. I have had that backfire and had to cancel a bunch due to changes in plans.
I am curious how many people are like me and book entire trips in advance, and how many people just fly by the seat of their pants and just hope a hotel is available when they get to where they are going.
The wife and I prefer to make up our schedule as we go along, and the ability to map out hotels and book on the fly with a smart phone makes that a lot easier than in days past. The only benefit I see to booking ahead is possibly lower rates if you book far enough in advance, and maybe to avoid room supply shortages if there's some big event happening in one of your stopover cities/towns. Then again in the latter case you can always keep moving for another hour or so.
Have always booked rooms in advance, to get that logistical detail out of the way. We plan clusters of day trip types relatively tightly, but leave room for serendipitous finds to. Otherwise, mostly stick to plan. The logistics part, getting there, being there, leaving there is the most tedious. We find on the fly adds an element of stress we are just not interested in.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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I seldom book ahead (except holiday weekends)
Road trips are all about the unknown adventure of meeting people and finding OTHER things to do / different routes than you had planned.
Thus booking ahead would ruin that option.
If I need a hotel. I use an Asia service (Agoda) (I rarely use hotels because I prefer private guest homes worldwide)
We spent one yr on a RTW and only spent 8 nights in hotels... (early airflights)
Some road trips I have taken a couple month 'detour', usually to help a farmer or family in distress.
Far too stressful not to book in advance. I liek to find a hotel near whatever attraction we are going to. A few years ago we did a 10 day self guided rail tour of Switzerland, & I booked hotels within walking distance of the train stations, it worked out well for us.
I always book in advance and know what and where I’ll be staying. Nothing worse than pulling into a community and finding out there’s no rooms available. Years ago before I retired the company booked a hotel/motel room for me while working out of town in a small remote area, after the first nights stay the manager asked if I had “other” accommodations if I was staying in town. The company I worked for had failed to book the required nights I would be there working and thus I had to scramble to get a room in another hotel/motel before the weekend.
I was lucky that the manager of the first hotel told me that I didn’t have more than the one night and that I best book something quickly as the weekend because the railroad crews would be back into the area and all the rooms in town would be full. I had to find another hotel in town that had a vacant room and relocate. You never know what can happen in some cities so planning ahead is important otherwise take a tent with you on the drive.
For hotels along the way, while hubby is driving, I'll try to figure out where we'll end up at the end of the day. We belong to a couple loyalty plans with some common hotel chains and I'll try to use any specials those will give us, i.e., stay 3 nights get the 3rd free or at a discount, or whatever they're offering at the time. If that doesn't pan out, I'll try to use those hotel discount coupon books you pick up at the rest areas and see if that works for us. And I'll also check for any deals on hotels dot com and similar sites. At the same time, I'll look up reviews for any hotel I pick.
It takes a bit of time and searching on my smartphone while we're driving but I don't mind playing travel agent in order to get the best price. Never had a problem finding something. If it's a destination that is popular and it would be best to have something booked, I'll often book that ahead of time.
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