If I am just going to be somewhere for a couple of days, all I need is a bed, a tv and a lockable door. Are there any sites that include cheap hotels and motels?
Expedia’s hotel list can get very cheap, in my opinion. So does airBNB.
Kayak is pretty good. They aggregate quite a few of the other travel websites. There are tools to specify your price range.
In the U.S.?
Try hotwire:
[You don’t know what chain you will get]
Also look at
https://www.motel6.com/
If you want a cheap motel/hotel where the door to your room open directly outside, make sure you get a room on the second level as far away from the stairs as you can. Never get a ground floor room at all.
Ground floor rooms are often used as one-off overnight meth labs.
Try Trivago and Kayak.
- Use any site to find hotel’s?
- Go to the hotel’s site. You usually can get the same price (especially if you have AAA of AARP, etc.) and will get a better room and nicer treatment.
How low will you go?
When I needed to spend a night in Philadelphia, I looked at the nice center city hotels and got sticker shock. I drove out of the city for 45 minutes or so and found a disgusting little motel used mostly by Johns/prostitutes. It was the nastiest place I ever stayed, but boy was it cheap. I doubt you’d find a place like that online.
I use Agoda a lot for foreign travel, especially in Asia. For domestic, I like alltherooms.com. I like to look at the prices (limited by the price slider) displayed on the map to determine best value.
I use Google Map;s and search "hotels [name of city]. Most of them have their standard rate on their pin on the map.
If you’re looking for overseas travel, try googling /hostels [name of city]/
Is this what you’re looking for:
I use it occasionally when I’m traveling on my motorcycle.
You might look under hostels and European style hotels. A few years ago, I stayed in downtown San Diego at what used to be the service men’s YWCA. I had a bed, a tv, a closet, locking door, and a down the hall (also locking) shower facility. It was $50 a night with the third night free. I felt perfectly safe and it was very clean. Not everyone shared my optimism. Some hostels have single rooms available. I’d rather buy a Kindle tablet and skip the in room tv.
Air bnb is a good choice. Check out the Lonely Planet website for help with specific areas.
Not much info about the lodgings on that site-just where they are, a phone number and a rare website.
I’m think thattheseare as cheap as they get.
Some cheaper places are not online, or at least not in online search engines. You might want to look at the chamber of commerce for the place you are going. You may have to call the motel on the phone (they may have a website, but not online reservations)
Sometimes google maps is useful, just search “motels”, then try to find the mom and pop place. I’ve found some < $50/night places this way (perfectly adequate for the 3 waking hours I was going to be there)
Brian
Every city has different pricing schemes, but in general it’s worth checking 4 things when you visit an area:
-
Kayak.com for generic hotels, but once you find the cheapest one, book directly from the hotel for the best service and cheapest rates, and ask for a AAA price if they have it, or ask if they have any more affordable rooms or discounts. Often, for the bigger chains, the guy on the phone will have some leeway to adjust pricing by a little bit.
-
Hotwire.com for maybe 10-20% off the same hotels you’d see in #1, but you don’t know which specific one you get until you book it. (You do see the star ratings, rough location, amenities, reviews, etc. In theory this allows hotels to price under what they normally do and not hurt their brand name. In practice it’s just another travel site with small discounts.)
-
Hostels… Hostelling International and Hostelworld are two good sites. They will almost always have private rooms available (but a shared bathroom down the hall) or you can pay more for an “ensuite” private room with its own bathroom. Some will not allow travelers over 25, but many will. Sometimes these are cheaper than hotels, sometimes not. Basically it depends on how attractive a place is to younger guests who prefer hostels for their social experience. These days, hostels are often pretty fancy affairs in nice houses/buildings, well-kept, fully-staffed, and come with various amenities like breakfast, arranged tours, built-in pubs for socializing, etc. And even the shared rooms will usually have lockers for you to keep the private stuff.
-
AirBNB
If a motel isn’t online at all, chances are it’s cheaper by $10-$20, but very shady and unkempt. At those prices, I think a hostel bunk bed is actually a better idea, but YMMV.