Comments on: What is a budget hotel? The travel media doesn’t seem to understand

By: Jasmine

Jasmine — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:58:17 +0000

I’m glad someone’s finally addressed this. For a while there, I thought I was either becoming increasingly dirt-poor (I don’t think I am), or inflation is gaining at a pace I can’t even begin to comprehend.

What bothers me the most are the hotel rates. Decent, sometimes even really good-quality airline fares can be had, and struggling restaurants are always trying to get more customers in the door with dinner specials, etc., but hotels and travel lodgings in general don’t seem to ever really let up. A week’s stay at a so-called ‘budget’ hotel or inn in a major city is almost equivalent to one month’s rent there. I didn’t say I was planning to live in London, or NYC, or Paris, etc! I just want to stay long enough to see as much as I can, as tourist, as visitor.

Last fall, I stayed in NYC for a week at about $200 a night. My room was tiny, about 200 square feet total, including the bathroom. It wasn’t 4-star, it wasn’t even near any particular sites, and it definitely wasn’t a deluxe suit. It was in Manhattan but not near any popular location (I stayed on E.23rd at Third). At the time, I thought “Wow, that’s a bargain,” but I always felt that was still pretty pricey. When I read your article, I was so relieved to know that it wasn’t just me who thought some of these ‘affordable,’ ‘budget’ prices weren’t really that great.

If there’s anything keeping me from traveling these days, it’s not the airfare and it’s not even for lack of money – it’s the accommodation. I inevitably always encounter a situation where even the recommended ‘budget’ options blow my total budget out of the water.

By: Karen Bryan

Karen Bryan — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:26:10 +0000

Great piece David, what constitutes a budget hotel seems to depend your travel budget. In Italy last year I managed to find decent double rooms for around £60 a night including breakfast in Umbria and Tuscany in May.

For the UK the best budget option is Travelodge promotional rates, they’re running £12 sale at moment, which for ensuire room is cheaper than a bed in a hostel dorm.

By: What We’re Reading: September 11, 2009 | Two Go Round-The-World

What We’re Reading: September 11, 2009 | Two Go Round-The-World — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:03:25 +0000

[...] post on the travel media and budget hotels by David Whitely, aka the Grumpy Traveller (a freelance travel journalist currently residing in [...]

By: Alex Robertson Textor

Alex Robertson Textor — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:24:30 +0000

Absolutely fantastic post. I’ve written about my frustrations with precisely this sort of thing many times, especially with regard to the US budget travel press. It will never stop amazing me that $300/night hotels can be plugged as bargains. Nearly every place I’ve visited in my years of traveling for work or for pleasure—including insanely expensive places like St. Barts and Anguilla—has a few guesthouses with rates under $100. That these inns get virtually no coverage astounds and annoys me beyond measure.

By: hussy

hussy — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:07:03 +0000

maybe it is coz the travel writers are getting/wanting freebies and so they don’t want to stay in actual cheap “budget” hotels then why would they need to write about them? so intead they set the mark at the level of accomodation they would like to be comped.

By: David

David — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:32:54 +0000

Aargh – just wrote a huge reply to this, and lost it due to shitty hotel wireless.

Ah well, here comes the summarised version.

1) If there are no budget hotels worth writing about in a city, why run a piece on budget hotels in that city? You wouldn’t run a piece on the best drinking establishments in Brunei, would you?

2) How much disposable the readers have, how much they’d like to have and how much the publications would like their advertisers to believe they have are three very different things.

3) There’s a vast audience of ABs/ ABCs out there who are not being catered for. They’re exactly the ones Annie mentioned. They may earn good money, but they aren’t living in a fantasy land where £150 a night constitutes ‘budget’. They may read the likes of Conde Nast for a bit of fantasy, however. Publications are tailoring prices to the small upper percentage of their readership, rather than the mean or median.

By: Melissa Shales

Melissa Shales — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:12:33 +0000

Hi David, In guidebook terms, I usually get asked to price bracket into 3 or 4 categories at most which means you have to cover everything from £30 to £500 a night in very broad sweeps. As a result, I generally set my budget category at anything under about £100 a night for a double b&b, but will try and squeeze in a mention of what good value it is if something is under £50 (relatively few places are). Not my idea of budget, but different for many people…
By the way, Jeremy, I agree entirely that boutique is one of those words that is completely misused – a 300-room monstrosity is not a boutique hotel. Nor is a former pub with chintz and china dogs.

By: Jeremy head

Jeremy head — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:48:20 +0000

Hi David – It’s also about the sector the magazine/newspaper is targetting. Like you I’d say £50 is budget… but readers of the ‘travel porn’ mags you describe might well see £150 for a double as budget eg T&L, Conde Nast Traveller… I’d say £150 probably IS ‘budget’ for these titles.
My gripe is the word ’boutique’. Surely this should mean small, quirky and independent?? I did a search for ’boutique hotels in Malaysia’ on a travel website recently and got offered the Sheraton in KL!
@ Annie.. it’s not baffling at all the editors don’t want you to mention more than one budget place… the budget places aren’t going to advertise next to your features… the luxury places are far more likely to. Sad but that’s the way it is these days…

By: Annie Bennett

Annie Bennett — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:54:12 +0000

The thing I get asked most by a long chalk (by real people spending their own money)is to recommend places to stay in Spain that are fine but not grotty with a handy location. That’s it. I’m always trying to find places like this – say €80 double, €50 single, tops – and put in the legwork, because it’s what I want too. It’s totally baffling that for most pieces you only get to recommend one ‘budget’ place at the end of a list of stupidly expensive hotels. Annoyingly, these recommendations then get pinched endlessly by journos who don’t spend their time tramping around foreign cities. Am thinking of sticking something totally ridiculous in in future to catch them out with the cut and paste…

By: Matthew Teller

Matthew Teller — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:50:20 +0000

Fair point, Jill – but the point is, the travel media should be thinking about their readers when they use the term ‘budget travel’. What prices are in the destination, in this case, is an irrelevance: the point is – or should be – to write an article that is geared towards how much money has Jo(e) Public got in his/her pocket to spend, not one that reflects the relative price positions of national economies…