Best Western's European Deal is Good But Not Great

November 16, 2009 at 10:25 AM | by juliab | Comments (0)

Winter citybreaks in Europe are our absolute favourite type of shopping-and-culture trips. Hotels are cheap, flights are half empty, the monuments are queue-free and the shops are full of Christmas cheer. Plus, eating loads is obligatory to stave off the demon cold.

So Best Western�s Two Day Promotion really tickled our fancy. The deal is this: 400 BW hotels in Europe and Egypt are offering rates starting at a peasly (for Europe) �49 (�43/$72) up to �79 (�70/$118) over December, January and February (most have backout days around Christmas and New Year, but other than that you have pretty much a free run at it � check the website for individual hotel details). To secure the rates, you need to book on 20 or 21 November on this link.

But then we checked out just how good a deal it was by scoping out the cost of a few days in Rome this December. And we were sorely disappointed.

On the basis that you normally get the best deals on the fanciest hotels, we checked out all four of the �79 hotels listed in Rome. The best deal was for the Hotel Universo, which was showing as �101 for a double (booked online, three weeks ahead) � saving �22. Of the others, Hotel Mondial would normally be �93.50, Hotel Villa Franca by the train station should be �85, and Hotel Presidente, near San Giovanni in Laterano, would be �80, saving you a grand total of, um, �1.

Not good. Not good at all. And that�s just on price � when it comes to location, it gets worse. San Giovanni in Laterano is a nice church but there�s really not much to do in the area, and it�ll take you at least 20-25 minutes to walk to the Coliseum, and about 45 to reach the centre of town. And the others are all near the train station, Termini, which is a pretty grubby area that we always get out of as soon as a taxi will carry us when we arrive in Rome.

Just to be sure, we checked out some other hotels. The Hotel Villa Gabriele d�Annunzio in Florence normally costs �79, but you can get it for �69 with this offer, the Hotel Re EnzoHotel Cavaletto e Doge Orseolo in Venice � yours for �79 � drops from �110 on weekends, and �130 on weekdays. Which is slightly more like it.

The moral of the tale? Choose your hotel wisely if you want to save, but don�t think you�re getting a real bargain. Of course, if you�re definitely going to be going to one of these cities, every $10 saving counts, but it doesn�t look like there�s anything on offer here to get you hitting up the Ryanair website like there�s no tomorrow.

Also, remember, it�s not just low season for Best Western, so the deals are doing the rounds all over the place. For instance, the Hotel Locarno, bang in the hubbub of central Rome, far away from the dodgy Termini nabe and actress Emilia Fox�s fave hotel in the world, has rooms in December for �91, if you stay for three nights. Yes it�s a little more, but you�ll probably be a lot, lot happier.

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