We will be in Europe for the peak season (around July 7 - 20th). Tenative plans include going through Switzerland, France, Germany seeing WWII stuff and general interest things. Would like to do the two weeks with no specific agenda. The question is would it be a foolhardy thing to try to do this time of year without any hotel reservations. Since we don't know where we will be, reservations would lock us down to a specific agenda. What are the chances we could get off a train in a town and stand a chance of finding a place to stay. Anyone ever done this?
Has anyone any advice for someone traveling in Europe at peak season without reservations??? Please be gentle!
Shrink

Of course you can do it.

To my mind, it's a matter of how much time you are willing to possibly have to take from your day & spend looking for a place to stay (could be easy, could be hard). Or calling one town ahead might work for you.

Are you willing to hop back on the train and continue on, say if you end up in a town with a festival or convention or somesuch so there're truly no rooms available.

And lastly, are you willing to stretch your budget if the rooms available are more than you'd usually spend?

There's lots of tricks to this approach, as hopefully someone will share who has actually tried it (not me) like using the tourist desk at train stations, etc.

Hi Shrink,

As Suze says, of course you can do it. Whether you'll want to do it again is another quetion! The nicest hotels -- the best value, best view, etc. -- will probably be booked up.

I did this once arriving in Montreux, Switzerland, with no reservations in May. I went to the tourist office so that I wouldn't have to make a lot of calls on my own. I found my first three choices were full, but my fourth choice, in Glion above Montreux, had a vacancy.

So I just recommend you go to the tourist office for help when you get to town.

s

They are important. If you don't want to be locked down, you can cancel a few days before -- sometimes with penalty, sometimes without.

We tried that spontaneous type of holiday in the middle of summer. Once. Need I say more?!

I could never travel this way, but it might be fine for you. Don't do it if you are the least bit picky about the type of hotel you stay in. Usually there will be something available if you are only looking for a place to sleep. But I must say, as I've been checking into reserved hotels over the years, I've sure seen a lot of people there begging for rooms as they claim they've been spending hours and "everything in town is booked".

One of my favorite parts of travel is doing the planning. I spend a lot of time before going reading, studying, and usually my itinerary is "spot on", rarely do I feel we've spent too long in one place or not enough in another. On those rare times I have wanted to move on more quickly or change something at the last minute, I have been able to easily cancel a night at the hotel I had booked, and call ahead to some "preplanned but no booked" alternates in other towns I had thought about visiting. I highly suspect that most people who do little or no planning, really miss a lot of what they'd want to see if they only knew it was there.

I sure don't enjoy spending even a hour of each precious day looking for a place to sleep, yet alone several hours -- and I've often seen lines in tourist offices that would obviously take a couple hours to get help from. I feel my travel time can be put to much better use than hotel hunting.

Going to Europe in the high season without hotel reservations will mean that most days, perhaps every day you will need to devote some time to finding a place to stay that night. If you plan on visiting major cities especially Paris it may mean several hours spent searching for accomodations. I have been in that unfortunate situation and would not wish to repeat the experience.

I'm sure I'm repeating myself, but anyway. I haven't done this, but for my recent Italy trip I kept a close eye to see if any better deals showed up than the ones I had selected almost four months before.

I had specific requirements about location and quality and service and I also wanted to stick to a low budget. Not only did no better deals show up, but all of the alternate good-deal possibilities gradually disappeared and/or became much more expensive. For a summer trip, I'd expect this sort of thing to be even more true.

If you think about it and are reasonable about transport and sightseeing times, I'm sure you can come up with a pretty good estimate for how long you want in each place. Best to err on the side of too much time than too little, imo.

Hi S,

You can always find a place to stay. The higher the price, the more likely there will be a vacancy.

We once went to Key West during the season without reservations. The most expensive hotel in town had a room available.

I did this in the summer of 2002. In the larger cities in Italy and in the Cinque Terre, it WAS a pain to try to find a room and very time consuming.

Call ahead at least a day or two and make a reservation.

I sometimes travel w/o reservations in the off season. But in the middle of July it really isn't a very good idea. If you are traveling through scenic and popular areas, not only may most rooms be full, what's still available will be more expensive.

if you do decide to do this - at least book your first couple of nights and last night as soon as you can. Also, it is best to book ahead in any major city. Otherwise you may end up in a less tha desireable neighborhood.

The key is your wilingness to be flexible - and to spend vacation time hunting for lodging. If you are willing to take an inconvenient location, not have a private bath, perhaps not have the amenities you prefer, or have an unlimited budget you should be able to find something. If you are particular and want to keep to a resonable budget - I think you 'll be very unhappy with this choice.

A friend of mine did this once in Berlin when there was some major event in town. The only room available under $500 was in a fourth floor walk-up pension above a club with live sex shows. Would you be happy with that?

Oh - and this was in May - not July.

I never reserve hotels and rarely have a problem, though I usually avoid July. French seaside towns are likely to be heavily booked, but you're not going on a beach holiday. In Germany and Switzerland, the tourist offices are generally very efficient and nowadays have records of vacancies on a computer system. Their offices are often in (or close to) railway stations, and you should go to them, rather than walk the streets. In most cases, especially if you arrive in the morning or early afternoon, they'll find something; if there is some local event that causes all hotels to be full, then you'll have time to move on. Hotels in some big cities are fully booked during trade fairs, but these are unlikely to be on during July, so July might actually be an easy time to find accommodation - it depends very much on whether you're visiting tourist towns or commercial centres.

I don't see any reason you can't do this, and agree with the advice to just go to the tourist office. That's what they do, find people hotel vacancies.

The only place I don't think this is possible is when you are in some city or town with really an extraordinary festival or event going on, but not just regular tourism. In that case, even the tourist office may not help. The other thing is you absolutely cannot be picky about where you stay. You have to be the kind of person who just wants any kind of room and doesn't care what it's like or where it is. YOu probably will have a variety of price ranges, you just can't be picky about location or the best values or nicest places, etc.

For example, my niece and her boyfriend went to Paris once without reservations (not particularly in that busy a time period, either), and they had no plans or knowledge of hotels. So, the tourist office got them a room in some large modern hotel around the edges of Paris. So, they certainly got a room, but my niece was sort of complaining about how she didn't really have that much fun, etc. Well, that's what happens when you don't plan and just put yourself into a tourist offices hands.

In a small town, you won't be real far from things and have major location differences as much, though.

Compared to most folks here on Fodors, I would be considered nearly a non-planner. I rarely use guidebooks, have no itinerary, wait to find a free map after I arrive BUT I do have a plane ticket and hotel reservations. Since I most often stay each place ~5 days min. I don't find it feels restrictive to me.

p.s. don't go to Montreux during the Jazz Festival in July without hotel reservations!

As others have mentioned, your options upon arrival at your destination will be far more limited than if you were to make reservations now, taking note of the cancellation policies, should you wish to "adjust" your plans/itinerary.

You would at least wish to reserve your accomodations at the start and finish of your trip.

And, you would want to have a list along of appealing places (location, price, etc.) to stay at your overnight destinations, along with their phone numbers. Would you be able to book on the phone in the local language?

I, personally, would not wish to spend valuable time during a short two-week trip, at each destination, securing a room for the night - where? location? quality? price?

I suppose there are plenty of people who would disagree that the "adventure" and "exploration" that comes with finding a place to stay is not necessarily a "waste of valuable time" (by the way, what time on vacation isn't "valuable"??????). I also think the chances of success depend on the time of year and the place.

You have said it better than anyone who responded: &quot;We will be in Europe <b> for the peak season </b>&quot; and I would advise you to consider how much time you would spend, at home, deciding where to stay and making reservations. It will take even longer if you wait.

i did this twice. both times i felt the holiday would have been much better with more planning. i wasted a lot of time in places that were not interesting and the hotels were not well placed.

i think it is a little bit of a waste to ask this sort of question because everyone's experience will be different and there are often regional/local festivals, events, holidays, etc where general advice is not helpful. the question might be helpful for the general idea of agendaless travel but no one can tell you the chances of not finding a vacancy.

on my most recent experiment with this, part of the holiday was very poor due to lack of planning/reservations and the other half was excellent due to happening upon a great seaside town and liking it so much we stayed for the remainder of the holiday. the feeling that fate brought us there increased the enjoyment as opposed to if it had been carefully planned.

overall, however, i think poor planning comprimises a holiday and while you might hear of a lot of good outcomes like mine, i think overall, the negatives outweigh the positives. for my experience stated above, the poor part of the holiday was not a disaster but more a matter of using valuable vacation time, and wasting far too much money for a less than interesting or enjoyable experience.

You only have two weeks and you're traveling during the peak season--if you want to spend vacation time chasing rooms, that's fine. But I wouldn't do it. Remember, even if places seem to be &quot;off the beaten&quot; track to Americans (or Australians, or wherever you're from), they may be popular with other Europeans. For example, we took our summer vacations in the Austrian Steiermark for a few years. The places we stayed at weren't listed in any guidebooks targeting American readers. Nonetheless, all the hotels were fully booked by German visitors.
Frankly, I would NEVER travel this way in high season. When I was 13, my father took us to Cape Cod in July. He thought there would be no problems &quot;winging it&quot; with no reservations. The first day we got to Cape Cod, we spent 6 hours trying to find a place and finally ended up at midnight in a nondescript B &amp; B, with my brother and I sleeping on the floor. The next day of the vacation was spent hunting for better accommodations. That left us only 3 days to enjoy Cape Cod--not very relaxing!
And then there's the story of how my husband and I spent our wedding night in a Ford Taurus in the parking lot of a Perkins Family Restaurant in Clarks Summit, PA, because he thought we could just stop at a hotel along the way on our drive up to New England for our honeymoon. During peak leaf peeping season. Also homecoming for all the area colleges.
Get yourself some reservations!

I don't know why I couldn't find this yesterday...

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34557708

I repeat my opinion from that thread...

&quot;All the people who provide and receive advice on this forum will thank you for NOT making reservations in advance - - you won't be competing with &quot;us&quot; for the accommodations with the best locations, the best features and the best rates that &quot;we&quot; snarf up by making reservations in advance. We appreciate your settling for the places in the less ideal locations, with the crummier features, at the higher rates.&quot;

Best wishes,

Rex