S/o let’s discuss Europe for people without travel points/status

[Anonymous]

Looking to plan a fairly standard London/Paris trip for two parents/two teens next summer. No points or miles to spend, no travel status.

Assuming a mid range trip; what should I expect to pay per night for hotel for 4 people and airfare, one way into CDG, out of LHR or vice versa.

[Anonymous]

Are you targeting to spend average prices? Or want hacks for deals?

[Anonymous]

How uncomfortable are you willing to be in hotels? Are you set on a hotel or would you do an Air BnB?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you targeting to spend average prices? Or want hacks for deals?

I am definitely open to deals, but not if I have to spend $100,000 on credit cards to get it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How uncomfortable are you willing to be in hotels? Are you set on a hotel or would you do an Air BnB?

We need 2 Q beds and a small bathroom. We are fine if the room is small. Open to Airbnb, but worried about cancellation policies.

[Anonymous]

I feel like exchange rates, inflation, and pricing is so volatile right now, it's really hard to predict what it will be like next summer! I was expecting my European trip this summer to actually be more costly, but the strength of dollar to euro helped considerably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How uncomfortable are you willing to be in hotels? Are you set on a hotel or would you do an Air BnB?

We need 2 Q beds and a small bathroom. We are fine if the room is small. Open to Airbnb, but worried about cancellation policies.

This will be the hardest part - finding accommodation centrally located that has two queen beds. Doable, but you'll have to do a little searching and be a bit flexible on location. Or, get connecting rooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like exchange rates, inflation, and pricing is so volatile right now, it's really hard to predict what it will be like next summer! I was expecting my European trip this summer to actually be more costly, but the strength of dollar to euro helped considerably.

Likewise, we just returned from Europe and the strength of the USD relative to the Euro (almost at parity) made it easier and more pleasant to visit attractions, dine, stay in beautiful hotels, etc…. Not sure if it will be the same next year.

[Anonymous]

I think you can do it for less than $10k but depends how long your trip is. I would sign up for fare alerts, jump on tickets less than $600 each if you can get them, and try Airbnb or rental apts. there are so few hotels with 2 queen beds—you will likely need 2 rooms or a suite and that adds up. Also. You can save a little on food costs that way.

Consider adding a few nights in the countryside onto your trip. London is blisteringly expensive and it’s both cheaper and nicer (IMO) to get outside the city.

We did a 10 day England/Spain trip a few years ago for about $7k but it was not at all opulent and I worked very hard to keep it at that price. Assume prices are higher now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How uncomfortable are you willing to be in hotels? Are you set on a hotel or would you do an Air BnB?

We need 2 Q beds and a small bathroom. We are fine if the room is small. Open to Airbnb, but worried about cancellation policies.

This will be the hardest part - finding accommodation centrally located that has two queen beds. Doable, but you'll have to do a little searching and be a bit flexible on location. Or, get connecting rooms.

Agree. Hotels in Europe don’t have many rooms that allow for four people - even if two are kids. We had to find places that had a sleeper sofa or would allow a rollaway bed, but it’s tough.

[Anonymous]

not to pile on -- but be sure to search for hotel rooms for 4 people. We managed to find several for 3 - but not 4

[Anonymous]

I had good luck searching on bookings dot com for a recent trip to Greek and multiple room in multiple hotels over 3 weeks. The site has tons of criteria you can search by and most places had lots of reviews. Lots of details provided, for example, size of room, what the bedding would be, distance to restaurants, wifi availability, etc etc. We ended up with one boutique hotel that was just phenomenal-one of the most memorable places we've stayed. I was also able to book an airport Sofital on the site. Easy modification and cancellation rules too. I will definitely check it out again for other destinations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How uncomfortable are you willing to be in hotels? Are you set on a hotel or would you do an Air BnB?

We need 2 Q beds and a small bathroom. We are fine if the room is small. Open to Airbnb, but worried about cancellation policies.

+1 You will have a VERY hard time finding this in Europe. You will need 2 rooms. Look to Airbnb

[Anonymous]

We just did trips to Italy and Ireland this year for our family of 3, and every time you search for rooms for 3 people, 90% of the options disappeared. So even if i found a room that i thought would do us fine (say, two full size beds - because DS and i are both small so we could share that no problem, with another one for DH), that room would not show up on the results list when i searched for 3 people. And if you looked at the description of the room on the hotel's webpage, it would describe it as "fitting up to 2 people". I didn't want some kind of issue when we got there that we weren't allowed to add a third person, or got charged some kind of third person penalty fee for not abiding the rule. We had to pretty much narrow our search to "suites", which mostly meant standard sized rooms (in a typical US city) with a pull out that the hotel set up every day. They were typically 50% more expensive than one room, but a lot cheaper than 2 rooms. I'm not sure if you can put 4 people in a room without upgrading to a "full suite" (which is probably the same price as two rooms). I mean, can you book it? Yes. But i just don't know what the consequences are when you show up with that many people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had good luck searching on bookings dot com for a recent trip to Greek and multiple room in multiple hotels over 3 weeks. The site has tons of criteria you can search by and most places had lots of reviews. Lots of details provided, for example, size of room, what the bedding would be, distance to restaurants, wifi availability, etc etc. We ended up with one boutique hotel that was just phenomenal-one of the most memorable places we've stayed. I was also able to book an airport Sofital on the site. Easy modification and cancellation rules too. I will definitely check it out again for other destinations.

also, may airbnb owners seem to cross post on this bookings site -- so you'll find lots of apartments, etc, that will be good for 4 people.