I tend to plan my trips way ahead of time, the better to savor the anticipation, the better to be sure of getting the flights and the rooms I want for the best price.

Is September ridiculously early to book a room in a b & b for a March trip? What about January for a June trip? I tend toward family-owned, reasonably priced places, often in isolated country settings. Am I alone in booking so early?

It depends on where you're going, but 6 months out is smart to do if you're trying to find a good hotel in a big city that books up early. Sometimes 6 months isn't enough.

In April this year, I tried to book the Hotel du Champ de Mars in Paris for mid September, and they were already booked up. When we tried to find a hotel in Rome in 2003, we had a tough time finding something under our budget of $100/night that was not near the train station.

So no, you're not nuts, but whether the hoteliers think you are is for them to decide for themselves. But then, who cares what they think? As long as they take your reservation...

Happy travels,

Jules

Um, correction. That would be April of <i>last</i> year, since April of this year hasn't happened yet.

Jules

Fodorites trying to book apartments in Hvar, Croaita for this September are already being told not available - which I'm even surprised at. If it's a &quot;hot&quot; destination - the sooner the better.

We tend to travel in May and September/October. Our reservations for May have been done for months and we are now booking for the fall.
We really like getting our first choice in accommodations.

The worst thing any hotel can tell you is that they're not accepting reservations that far in advance. It's possible that in Sept they don't know yet what their rates will be for March in the next calendar year; in that case, ask them when they will be accepting reservations, and contact them a couple of weeks before that.

We booked a Paris trip for Oct in Feb once, and my London trips were always booked in the Spring for the Fall. I hate to find out I missed out on something by waiting til the last minute

We are traveling to Germany and Switzerland in May and I just finished making our reservations. I had trouble getting the hotels I wanted in 2 of the 6 places we are staying. The Rheinfels Hotel in Stein am Rhein was full on the days I wanted and there is a huge exhibition going on in Frankfurt from 14-20 May which is making hotel rooms scare and expensive.

If you want to stay somewhere special like a castle hotel or a hotel in a small town, the earlier the better.

I often book hotels up to a year in advance although sometimes the hotel will reply they are not yet taking reservations. When that has occurred I have always asked &quot;when&quot; I could do so and I've always been given a date/timeframe.

Once, when a hotel's webside wouldn't &quot;allow&quot; a booking as far out as I wanted to make one I e-mailed the hotel directly, told them the dates, and they responded with a booking offer.

I don't think it ever hurts to plan far ahead, especially if you know exactly where you want to stay, etc.

I'm booking now for October, that's the high season, and I've already found that plenty of places are booked. I used to work in hotel reservations in the DC area, and we had people booking up to a year in advance. When there was something special going on (July 4th, Memorial Day, etc) sometimes we would book up 4-5 months ahead, and we had 400 rooms! If you're looking for one of the smaller, more intimate hotels, especially in the city center, I think 6-8 months ahead is appropriate for high season. For low season I would look to book 3-4 months ahead, just to get the best rate and room. Our rates used to depend on availability, so the more rooms that were booked, the higher the rate.