There are so many hotels to choose from

How do you all narrow down your list of places to contact for prices / availability?

We are planning on visiting Paris, Loire Valley and the Burgundy area. We plan on spending two weeks in total and we are a family of 4 (2 adults / 2 children age 11 and 9 at the time of the vacation)

Decide on your budget

Decide what's most important to you in a hotel, ie: decor, balcony, need A/C? etc

Narrow down the area of the city you wish to stay in, due to natural beauty, location to key sight-seeing areas, reataurants, etc

start searching on this forum and other internaltional travel forums, as well as places like www.venere.com or tripadvisor.com where you can read reviews from other travelers

Once you have a list of a few, post a question here, after you done your homeowrk, to see if anyone has any additional comments.

Hi ga,

We always stay at the Hotel Bonaparte, 61 Rue Bonaparte in the 6th. About 124E dbl w/bkfst

Hotel Bonaparte
Tel 33 1 43 26 97 37
FAX 33 1 46 33 57 67

For more info, enter "Hotel Bonaparte" in the "search this forum" box.

Photos are at http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&y=-l95uyr

OOOPS,

That's in Paris.

If I'm going somewhere in France I haven't been to before, I check out Fodorites' opinions and then cross-reference their suggestions with:

The Logis de France website
Alistair Sawday's books
Fodor's Rivage series book, and
My trusty Guide du Routard.

Then I narrow it down and start faxing the hotels.

First I read about Paris's history which helped me determine "where" I wanted to perch.
Then I crunch numbers.
That done, I just started finding pictures and info...I didn't know about Fodors travel talk then...
But I was fine without the help.
Strangely, I might be arbitrary about this but the research included Rick Steves...I watch all of his shows on PBS...BUT I dug my heels in and didn't want to be near Rue Cler!
(Boy, am I gonna be whomped for that statement!)

A few years ago,when I was planning for my first trip back to Paris in 40 years, I felt like you do - bewildered. I agree with the above posters re the research, I didn't know about Fodor's then either. A website that really helped me was
www.france.com
That's a hotel booking site (I didn't book through them, tho)and they have a great list of Paris hotels, with many, many comments from people who stayed at the various hotels. Their site can be a little difficult to navigate, but it's very worthwhile to do so. They also list hotels throughout France.