In Australia, the phrases “weekend” and “hotel bargains” don’t usually belong in the same sentence; if anything, prices ramp up at the weekend as leisure travellers take short breaks.
But the opposite is true in Europe, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights are usually the best time to stay somewhere nicer without having to shell out more money.
Many hotels in major European cities offer substantial discounts – or weekend packages – in a bid to fill hotel rooms. Half-price deals can sometimes be found, while discounts of 25% are common.
For a quick overview of the bargains on offer, try using a search engine such as Kayak.com. Comparing a random week to two nights in the week before it, the price at the four star Swissotel in Zurich comes down from EUR255 a night to EUR140 a night. On the same weekend, the five star First Reisen in Stockholm is reduced to EUR136 a night from EUR191.
The chain hotels also offer special weekend packages. The brands of hotel firm Accor, such as Novotel and Ibis, heavily promote deals that throw in extras such as free breakfasts and late check-outs alongside rates that are up to 50% cheaper.
Peter Hook, Accor’s general manager for communication, explains that this is largely due to business travel patterns.
“In Sydney getting a room on a Saturday night at our Darling Harbour hotels is very difficult because the city hotels attract a vast amount of “local” leisure business,” says Hook.
“In fact, on Saturday nights over half of our guests at the Darling Harbour hotels would come from within 50km of the city.”
In Europe, this is not the case. Major cities attract large amounts of business travellers both from within their own country and internationally, but large exhibitions and conferences are generally held midweek. Also, local leisure travellers tend to leave for the countryside or head to their home towns to visit family.
Marcel van Aelst, manager of Amsterdam’s luxury Hotel Okura, says that it’s simply a case of supply and demand.
“As we cater primarily for the business traveller we are a bustling arena from Monday to Friday. But we have a product that we cannot put on a shelf and sell the next day. So we are able to offer very attractive weekend packages for the leisure traveller when we have less demand from our business clients”.
These deals include the Okura Deluxe Package, which at EUR475 for an Executive Junior Suite slices EUR225 off the price. It also throws in a bottle of champagne, late check out and a complimentary beauty treatment or massage.
Many European city hotels see the weekend deals as a way to drive business bookings. Robert Cook, the CEO of British upmarket chains Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, says that business travellers are often the ones that will visit at the weekends for leisure.
“If you come to the new Hotel du Vin Edinburgh for £99 a night instead of £139, get dinner for £10.95 per person and have a good time, then there’s a high chance that you’ll book again at full price next time you’re up on business,” says Cook.
“Either that, or you’ll book at one of our other hotels. It’s good word of mouth too.”
There are a few exceptions to the cheaper-at-weekends rule – mainly cities that rely on tourism such as Venice – but any city that attracts large business traffic will have significant accommodation discounts to be found. This is especially true of cities that are in the second tier for tourists, such as Oslo in Norway, Brussels in Belgium or Cologne in Germany.
Using booking and search engines can be a good way of finding what is on offer, but the hoteliers advise that going direct is the best way to get the cheapest deals. Some hotels are known for reserving the best rooms for those who book direct and putting those that book through third parties elsewhere.
Cook and Van Aelst say that the best way to track down the bargains is to check out the hotel’s own website a couple of weeks in advance, but Francisco Ventura from London boutique hotel Megaro disagrees.
“Telephone bookings tend to be better than website ones,” says Ventura. He has a point – there’s more room for negotiation on the phone, especially at small, independent hotels.
But even if booking through a search engine, there are big savings to be made. On a European trip, weekend deals offer the chance to upgrade to a higher standard of accommodation without having to spend as much money.
Peter Hook from Accor says that the key is thinking counter-cyclical. “Arrive on a weekend, enjoy the city’s shopping and entertainment and then pack your bags and go touring on Monday because that’s when the business clientele move in with their expense accounts and gold credit cards.”
This article was originally written for the Sun-Herald.
Copyright David Whitley
