I hope to take an 8 week tour of Europe from about Mid-May through Mid-July. Given the length of the trip and desire to be spontaneous, I don't want to have to book two months of hotel rooms in advance.

I know this is a very broad question but is there any sort of consensus as to whether I can just ride around and look for a place to stay in the early afternoon and be able to find one 90% of the time? I can camp and look forward to doing so but really want to just cruise around in a connect the dots manner from Greecte to Italy to France to Spain and Portugal and ideally find an inexpensive hotel whenever I show up. There will be times on a weekend for example where I'll know about where I'll be and I'll make that reservation a few days ahead of time but other than that I want to just go where the road takes me.

As an example, I would tell someone visiting the US they can likely find a room without issue in April, May and early June. June will transition once kids are out of school but unless you are in a town where there is a major event going on you should still be able to find a room. Sure right now in Florida near any beach will be tough due to spring break but that is the type of example I am looking for in Europe. Vague I know but I need to start somewhere.

Thanks.

NC

Hi Numbers, your plan should work just fine. Internet and GPS has changed everything. You can browse online, and navigate to the door. Your timeframe is good too, nice weather! Local events happen all the time, same as in US

Safe travels

Peter

Hi NC

As a Swiss native and travelling since many years in EMEA l just can say: relax!
Almost everywere you can find hotel an even private rooms via

www.booking.com

Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries, so hotelprices are almost doubble. Hovever on the countryside you will find cheap accommodations, mostly on a private basis i.e. farms etc. Don‘t worry - they wont make you sleeping next to their cows

Enjoy!
Silvio

It's much the same for Europe but the kids tend to be out of school from about mid-July, depending on which country you happen to be in.
e.g. for the whole of August, the population of France heads to the coast so it is a good month to be around, say, Paris.

Apart from booking,com there are a stack of such apps nowadays; as well as gps and the apps you should look into roaming charges for your phone - see the threads in here about communications.
You can use the apps to find a deal on the internet for a room and then ring the place directly to see if they have better offers through their human staff.

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Dave

Hi Dave
You are absolutely right on all you just mentioned.
We used to do the same trick by finding the room via booking.com an then calling the hotel directly for a better price. Sometimes the price difference is significant indeed...
What we’ve experienced more and more is that by doing the reservation via booking.com we are better treated as guests since we‘re then asked to value our experiences on the booking.com platform directly. Something quite important for other travellers since all comments on booking.com are real first hand experiences, not like in trip advisor where you can enter comments just like that.

And - sometimes quite important - like happend to us last summer in southern spain - booking.com calls you up in case of double or overbooking by the hotel and gets you an equal or better accommodation for the same price. A service which we appreciated very much.

Good service has a cost - everywhere - fortunately
Happy weekend!
Silvio

PS: Weather is not nice now, but exploring the HUBBs while sitting next to the fireplace is a real alternative to some outdoor activities...

In addition to arranging accommodation through websites like Booking.com etc, some European hotel chains will offer additional discounts (10-15%) if you book direct with them. Make a note of these sites:

B&B Hotels

AccorHotels group
This chain include Economy and Budget brands, such as:

- Hotel Ibis
- Ibis Budget
- Hotel Formule 1 (F1)

.. plus Mid-range and Upscale brands.

Campanile Hotels
Offer surprisingly good one-off deals from time-to-time.

Not to mention loads of lovely little privately-managed hotels and B&Bs ('Pensions'). Oh, and don't forget Airbnb.com

You will be spoilt for choice!

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Right Way Round ...

I would say yes, realistically you can find a hotel just about anywhere, especially by making use of two advantages:

1) The fact that you don't necessarily need to be in a big city. Finding a cheap room in Barcelona? Difficult. Finding a cheap room half an hour's ride inland? Probably fairly easy.

2) Europe has free roaming now, so get a local SIM and you will always have access to Booking.com etc.

As for Germany: There's an Inn (Gasthaus, Wirtshaus) in just about every village. Very often they offer B&B at budget prices.

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Only when we pause to wonder
do we go beyond the limits of our little lives.
(Rod McKuen)

I've travelled Europe a Lothar Sony if you send me your plan i can tell you some nice places to visit and some places where you can sleep nice and cheap. Also about Greece and some other countries i can tell you where to put your tent and sleep for free...

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There is free wi fi almost everywhere in Europe nowadays

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You will always find a bed for the night just start looking around say 5.6 pm leave it latter you don't get to many options , have a great trip if you are in Bezier are France drop me a line .

I go a couple months every year and usually camp, especially Western Europe, where rooms are expensive. We end up finding really cool people in campgrounds and usually end up with a in hand before the tent is up. We save the rooms for when we want to dry out our gear after a couple days of rain. The facilities are usually pretty good. The farther east we ride we start getting a hotel when the prices drop to US$20/night. Don't make any reservations or routes, just make it up as you go along. You can never get too lost.

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Greg "WANDRR" Turp
2WANDRRs.com

Yes, for sure. I've spent a month or more riding in Europe every summer for the past 15 years, and that's exactly what I do... except I generally don't start looking for a place to stay until late afternoon.

The only thing you need to be aware of - the only thing that might 'catch you out' - is local holidays or special events in each country and/or village. For example, I showed up in Monaco once when there was some kind of car race going on - no hope for a hotel within 50 miles, and even that far away, prices were inflated.

I use an application called "Trip Adviser" to identify where nearby hotels are, see what others think of them, and suss out the prices. Invariably, the prices listed on Trip Adviser are lower than what the hotel will offer you when you walk up to the front desk and inquire. Just show them the advertised price on Trip Adviser and ask if they would prefer to match it right now, or if they would prefer that you book the lower price through Trip Adviser... which will cost them a 15% commission. Needless to say, they always match the advertised price (unless the employee on duty is a cretin).

Michael

I used booking.com on a month trip to europe during June 2017. I would stop for a every afternoon at around 2 or 3 pm and do a search. Never had an issue at all and stayed at some very cool places.

A lot of these hotel chains are French owned.
There is also www.contact-hotel.com for instance which is yet another of the chains in that country.
I have used all of those listed here and they can be of variable quality, depending on what use the particular premises have been used for e.g. those near/in large cities may have been used as cheap accommodation for "contractors". Some of them can be 'very tired' and in need of the proverbial makeover.

Throughout France there is also the Logis chain which are all privately owned premises that market themselves via the use of the Logis branding.
Best Western, the USA based brand, can also be found across many parts of Europe; again, privately owned hotels using the single, recognised branding for marketing purposes.

Within the UK, there are two prominent chains in addition to all of the above i.e. the above have a presence in the UK to one extent or another.
The big UK brands are "Travelodge" and "Premier Inns".

Despite all of these developments in the accommodation business, there remain plenty of privately owned premises, such as the gasthaus mentioned.

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Dave