When you're planning a vacation, it's common to end up spending twice-if not more-as much as you expected to pay. It really comes down to one thing: poor planning.
We save up all year to take a vacation only to find that we have to cut our trip short because we're just about out of money. This could have an ironic, negative effect on us: we take a vacation to relax, end up spending too much, have to dip into savings or lines of credit and ultimately come home broke, which causes even more stress.
Planning is everything, especially when you want to take a vacation and relax. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for planning to the point that on set, he would often fall asleep in his chair. This may have seemed irresponsible to witnesses, but the truth was that he had spent so many months rehearsing, scripting, designing and choreographing every scene that there was simply no way for anything to go wrong.
There's something exiting in just hitting the road to see where you end up and that's a great approach for a road trip, but when you're heading to another continent and staying several nights, planning can make all the difference in the world between a good vacation and a crummy one. Here are a few things to keep in mind about hotel booking for your vacation to Sydney.
The REAL Reason to Stay in Cheap Hotels…
Cheap hotels are great for more than just the obvious appeal, which is the price. But there are hotels that you can reserve for a month-long stay for less than you pay for rent! However, when you book reservation online the affordable rates are only one small part of their appeal. Real travelers know that paying for an expensive, palatial hotel room is a waste, because it's really only good for one thing: sleeping.
If you want to spend your whole vacation in your hotel room, do yourself a favor and find a fancy hotel close to home. You can save the price of a plane trip and other travel expenses if all you're looking for is a Jacuzzi tub and room service.
Cheap hotel rooms are boring; four walls, a TV, a bed and a bathroom. No heart shaped Jacuzzi, no big screen, HDTV with three hundred channels, no room service, no nothing. In Las Vegas they have boring hotel rooms available for a reason: No one wants to spend a Vegas trip in a hotel room. The same thing goes for traveling the world: The more boring your hotel room, the more time you'll spend on the beach, chatting with locals, going to the pubs or just walking the streets of Sydney.
Location and Pricing
Location and pricing have a simple relationship: the better the location, the more the hotel room is likely to cost. It's possible to get a great rate on a hotel in a great location if you visit in the off season and it's possible to get a great rate on a hotel that's a little out of the way during the busy season. Getting all three is a challenge unless you manage to cash in on a seasonal promotion, which is a possibility. If you're flexible, you can book rooms cancelled last minute. A hotel manager would always rather have a room filled at half price, because an empty room doesn't bring in any money at all.
With that said, one of the best times to visit Sydney if you're looking for affordable rates and less crowded planes is during the months of June through August. This is summer in many countries, but in Australia, it is their winter season. Summertime in Australia begins around November, which is also when visitors are flocking to the beaches, so just remember that their seasons are opposite of the United States and it'll be easier to find cheap hotels in their winter than in their summer.
Get Your Priorities Straight
It's important for any traveler to bear in mind what is most important to them. For some travelers, renting a room a hundred miles from their destination is insanity. For others, driving their rental car to the city actually sounds like a nice way to spend an afternoon if it saves them some money on their hotel. You need to know your own priorities, and here's the good news: this isn't a hard thing to figure out.
What relaxes you? Why are you going to Sydney? What does the perfect trip down under mean to you? Once you can answer these questions, you'll know if you're willing to go to Sydney in the winter, rent a hotel outside of town or crash on the beach in a hammock for a week.
This guest post article was written and provided by freelance writer, Erica Gustafson, online consultant and avid traveler with Expedia, which provided the photo, purchased from iStockPhoto.
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