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Bad Rate :: Venere Comes Up Short for Our Chocolate Fix

Where: Van Maerlandtstraat 79, BE 8370, Blankenberge, Belgium

March 27, 2007 at 11:36 AM | 3 Comments

[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same city and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quotes here were valid for the dates of April 7 to 9, 2007 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]

When booking a hotel overseas, often you'll find a better selection with a company in that region. Other times, you might as well stay with the home team. Venere.com is based in Europe, but they've been coming up short over and over for us lately. They had zero rooms available anywhere in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day and the screen shot above is for Brugge, Belgium the nights of April 7 and 9--during the Choco-Laté Festival.

In our Bad Rate feature, we usually show you where you'll get a bad deal for your money, but there's no worse deal than not being able to get a room at all, at any price. So you may want to skip Venere if you're trying to book a European room during a festival, holiday, or...high season anywhere.

Thankfully other sites still have hotels to choose from for the Choco-Laté Festival running April 6 to 10, including the one you access from the Choco-Laté Festival page at What's On When.

None of the deals strike us as particularly terrible since beggars can't be choosers at festival time, but we wouldn't relish the thought of driving 14 kilometers from the center just to stay at the Best Western Richmond-Thonnon, for $191 a night. Yes, it's at the beach, but a northern European beach in April is not very enticing. Plus strutting around in a bathing suit after gorging on chocolate for days on end isn't a pretty picture either.

Related Stories:
· Good Rate: Belgium's Choco-Laté Festival [HotelChatter]