How I Find Places to Stay in Scotland

SC and I started to plan our trip to UK about three months ahead of the departure. Upon our decision to spend our time in Scotland mostly, I narrowed down my search for accommodation to these cities/Loch/Isle/Shire- Edinburgh, somewhere near Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, near Fort William, in Isle of Skye, and lastly close to Loch Ness (or Inverness) before we headed back to Edinburgh to take train back to London.

We broke down 10 hours of road journey into a week, by having 5 pit stops along the way.

Pit stop as in, spending a night in a selected accommodation.

source: Google Map

That made my effort to do accommodation reservation easier. I searched accommodation not too far from those places of interest. So strategic location of a accommodation is essential to me, Google map was my best friend during this period of time. Most hosts/agents would provide address, if not, the town or the street name of the listed apartment/hotel/house/B&B, etc. When some listing are vague about the location, I wouldn't want to have second look at it.


Because of this trip, I went into a new territory of online search for holiday accommodation. I no longer can rely on my usual booking platform- Agoda, simply because it has lesser options to offer in the region beyond Asia. I went to Airbnb, as I heard that it offers best accommodation deal in the region of Europe and US. Secondly, it is my preference to get a homely stay for my family during vacation. I feel more flexible in terms of having the facilities of laundry and cooking, if possible. We traveled light and with a quantum of budget. As this was a 2 weeks holiday, bringing 2 weeks of cold-weather-clothes for 2 adults and 2 young children is unrealistic. I need washer and dryer. And I can't possibly dine out everyday. Thus, I need kitchen. By the way, grocery shopping in most western country is a happy affair, most food are packed readily for cook. We tried smoke salmon in fillet form, just need a little butter, and it was absolutely scrumptious! We also discovered that most vegetables in Scotland were fresh and delicious! Corns were sweet, zucchini and broccoli are tender and chewable. I wouldn't have such first hand food experience if I had dined out everyday.

Sorry, I digress. All I saying, don't laugh at me if I tell you I cook while travelling. I don't cook all the time for sure. You will see in my other blog post.

So, my first in attempting to search through Airnb. Good thing is it has friendly interface which I could swim like a fish search easily and had my shortlisted places to stay. Unfortunately, I abandoned my effort halfway, I learnt that Airbnb charges guests a sum of non-refundable service fee for each reservation made. It is meant to help to cover the costs of running their business including the ability to offer 24/7 customer support. In addition, most of the host require 50% downpayment prior to the guest's arrival. In my bigger picture, it would mean losing a sum of money in the event of last minute cancellation. I can't afford it.  We are budget traveller, we have to be mindful of the expenses. The fact is, travel with young children tend to have the risk of booking cancellation, any kind of bookings. So, you can see, my other criteria for deciding accommodation is price within my budget and no payment prior to my arrival to the destination.

Fortunately, we are in such a high-technology era, all kind of information are at our fingertips. There are many other established online platforms with a good range of accommodations to begin with. New booking/accommodation search platforms that I had explored- Wimdu, Roomarama, Expedia, Booking.com and Trivago. I searched through Lonely Planet (LP) and TripAdvisor(TA) too. Reviews in LP and TA are very helpful, but my swift attention could not stick in LP for long and I personally don't like searching through TA, the process of searching is not user friendly. When I enquired through TA, FlipKey appeared in my mailbox with various accommodation offers. It took me a while to figured out the link. nope, I don't like the idea of asking-A-a-question-and-B-answer-me. Wimdu is good as there is free cancellation policy ties with most accommodations listed in there. Unfortunately, I could not find any suitable place for us to stay from there, it could be I was late in making offer, better accommodation were already been booked. Booking.com and Expedia, on the other hand, had rendered a great service with vast property types, ranging from hundreds of apartment, to hotels, to B & B (Bed and Breakfast), to hostel, to guest houses, and sometime, you may found boat. I was over the moon to see some interesting and attractive offers at the beginning. At one point, it was overwhelming and I let price to shortlist the potential accommodation for us. Both Booking.com and Expedia offered free-cancellation policy for most reservation made. Well, there are usually 3 conditions offered for any listed property: Free-cancellation, Non refundable and Special Condition. Similar to Agoda, non-refundable was always lowest compare to the other two. I would pay one with slightly higher charge, just to feel more secure of "what if".

Through Trivago, on the other hand, it taught me to compare prices of one (shortlisted) accommodation at various sources, along with the origin site of the accommodation host/agent. Booking.com gotten most of my booking. I don't know about you, I can't seem to get anything from Trivago, little listing of properties when I typed out one city. I went back to booking.com and expedia or google search manually.

From what I gathered,  Trivago is a Meta-Search Engine, so is TripAdvisor. They are not transactional site for us to book through any accommodation. Trivago helps to give a search result which is offered by booking agents. It is very different from Airbnb, Wimdu, Expedia, Booking.com and Agoda, these are booking platforms, allowing us to secure the accommodation we pick.

All in all, I did tremendous online research. In the event of shortlisted of one accommodation, I would hop around various sites to compare One's price offered. One of my booking deal directly with the host itself, cheaper, while the rest through either Booking.com or Expedia.

Last point to highlight- for all 5 places we stayed, ranging from apartment, hotel, chalet, youth hostel and a guest house (B&B), I was not required for the deposit. I paid upon our arrival. Which I think it was the best part!