It’s a common belief to think that paying for accommodation will cost us an arm and a leg.
But, did you know that you could reduce your trip expenses by whether renting an apartment, exchanging your home or staying at hostels or monasteries? We’ll show you that hotels and resorts are not the only type of accommodation that exits and that you can still travel without paying a fortune and sometimes even for free if you know where to search.
These are some of the best and common types of accommodation.
Apartment Rental or “short-term apartment”
This is a great accommodation option to reduce costs if you are traveling with a group or your couple or if your stay is long. In general, the payments for renting one are on a weekly basis. Often they offer better amenities than hotels at a good price. For example, having a kitchen and a laundry machine will help you reduce costs.
The website by excellence for renting an apartment is Airbnb, but there are other alternatives such as Roomorama and Wimdu.
Hostels
Staying at hostels is an appealing option, when you don’t want to spend most of your money on accommodation. It’s preferred by a large amount of travelers especially backpacker. Hostels have rooms with a dormitory style where you share facilities with other guests such as the bathroom. But, there is also the possibility of paying for a private room if you are a solo traveler, a couple or a group of friends. But in essence, the more people you share your room with, the lower the cost.
The quality and cost of hostels are not a really good deal in the US, but if you’re planning to travel to Europe (France or the United Kingdom) you should give them a try.
Some good websites for booking hostels that we highly recommend are: Hostelworld, HostelBookers, and Hi Hostel.
Hotels
We are not going to dwell on this since they are widely known. As many of you know, hotels are a costly option if don’t know where to search. For this reason, we woul like to share with you some of the best and our favorite websites for booking hotels and finding great discounts: tripadvisor.com, Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Booking.com, and Agoda.com.
Home Exchange
What this type of lodging is about is more than obvious. For those travelers who own a house is an interesting choice since you’ll exchange your house with a person or a family living abroad. It’s more than normal that for this type of lodging, one of the highest concerns is security, however, bear in mind these two things: first, there are sites who offer high standards of security and have a strict verification process. And second, keep in mind that also another person is trusting you their home.
If you would like to give a try to this type of accommodation and want to have more information, we highly recommend you the site homeexchange.com.
Couchsurfing
This is the most common way to get free accommodation while traveling around the world. A host lets you stay at his or her house in city you’re visiting. What we love about couchsurfing is that you get know the people and culture of a new country from a very close way. For sure, experiences that you’ll never live if you stay at a hotel instead.
Those types of accommodation listed above were the most common ones.
BUT THERE IS MORE!!!
Especially, for those who are lovers of something off the beaten tracks
Other non-mainstream options of accommodation are…
House-sitting: you keep a house clean, safe and in good condition and take care of pets while the homeowners are away in exchange for cheap and even FREE accommodation. If this is something that you would like to give a try, you can check HouseCarers, MindMyHouse, TrustedHousesitters, Luxury House-sitting
Camping: a good option, for those who love going into the wild and get in contact with nature. Just make sure that camping is allowed where you’re going to do it. Often you’ll have to ask for permission or pay a fee.
Sleeper train: this is not fancy at all, but you’ll have cheap accommodation and you’ll save time with this option since you’ll travel at night long-distance routes.
Monastery stay: if you are OK with a bed, a desk and food cooked by monks and nuns, try a monastery. This is a budget option, and sometimes they are free or accept donations.
Farm stay: Try a farm stay if you want to learn about the farm living style while having relative cheap accommodation. Click on these links to start your search: Monastery Stays Locations, Monastery Stays Around the World (CNN).
Trying the vagrant style: our last “type of accommodation” is for the most adventurous ones. Basically, this is about sleeping on the street. But the best and safest places are airports, train or bus stations.
But a big word of WARNING, this is a very dangerous practice and in some countries you will even have to pay a fine if the police catches you doing it. So be cautious before trying it.
Before finishing off, we want to tell you that what you choose as lodging for your next trip will certainly depend on many factors such as your travel life style, your interests, the number of people traveling with you and your needs. However, as we saw it’s always good to know that there is plenty of choices out there to choose from.
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