We booked our flight to Paris in mid-January and so there was a lot of time to book a hotel. This was a blessing and a curse, because from previous experience I expected the hotel rates to be more discounted closer to the actual check in time; but on the other hand, I wasn’t sure 1) whether this would hold true for a non-North American city like Paris, or 2) how March Break week would affect inventory. I also had, in my back pocket, an expectation of how much I should pay for hotels in the city based on my last trip in the summer (tourist season) of 2006.

Surprisingly, I never blogged about my hotels back then. I had stayed at a 3-star in Opera (good location) and a 3.5-star Distinctive (not really) a little further out (although it was close to the train station which was convenient to go to Versailles). I paid $95 and $77 USD per night respectively for the two places.

When I checked in January, the discount prices for the duration of our stay was around $115 USD for a three-star. I sporadically bid throughout January and February without success. The bidding forums were not helpful either because there was insufficient traffic to grok what the going rate for the dates in question were. I really started bidding a couple of weeks ago, doing multiple bids per day by altering credit cards and starting criteria. I went up to $130 on four-stars and $120 on three-stars with no takers!

We ended up getting one of the $115 ones, and I was surprised at the significant increased cost. Although I’ve now realized that if you take into the Canada-to-US exchange rate of about 0.88 in 2006, it is not an excessive increase. I’m not sure why it was so difficult to bid for a reservation but maybe it’s because it was Europe.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: france, france08, travelling