Barcelona Hotel Deals

by Greg | Barcelona hotels

Well here at last is some good news about the credit crunch – hotel prices are coming down. At last, it really is possible to find some astonishing Barcelona hotel deals, with a minimum of effort needed.

Only yesterday I read an article in the press in which it was reported that some hotels in Seville were offering rooms at 50% of the rate they were charging at the same time last year, and this is something that is being repeated across Spain.

Hoteliers had read that the strength of the euro in comparison with the pound was pricing people out of coming to Spain and they have, thankfully, retaliated in the best possible manner – by lowering their prices.

There are many web sites that offer Barcelona hotel deals to customers, but don’t assume that the prices offered will all be the same – there can be staggering differences. For instance, a weekend in July staying in the Gran Hotel Torre Catalunya varied by as much as £30 for identical rooms on Tripadvisor, while on Ryanair’s hotel section the cheapest price for the same room was undercut by a further £66! In other words, £96 cheaper than the most expensive price offered and well under half the ‘rack rate’ for the room quoted by the hotel itself – clearly, it still pays to shop around.

More than ever, though, it also pays to contact hotels directly. Unless there is a local carnival, Grand Prix or similar event taking place, many hotels are currently at only 50 to 60% occupancy and are dreading that this might become the norm for a little while. Contacting the hotel directly – when they haven’t got a central reservation system that they can by-pass – will often lead to them offering excellent room rates. They would rather you were paying less but occupying the room than leave it empty. Persuading hotels to ‘match’ the prices offered by hotels in the same range as themselves is a tactic that stands a good chance of working, in the current economic climate.

There has never been a better time to land yourself an absolute bargain when it comes to deals for hotels in Barcelona. As long as you’re prepared to spend a little time working through various possibilities, you can get yourself a super room – at a basement price.