Cheap Hotels

Cheap Hotels (www.cheaphotels.org) is a Website I just discovered which claims to list more than 100,000 hotels worldwide. Among its featured offerings are the Euston Square Hotel in London, where rooms start at $104; the Hotel Harvey in Paris, with rooms from $142; and the Bedford Hotel in New York City where you can spend a night for as little as $113.

Of course, there are also plenty of other sources for inexpensive hotels such as www.hotels.com, www.booking.com, and www.EuroCheapo.com, so Cheap Hotels is operating in a crowded market. However, one of its advantages if your credit is dodgy is that they list some hotels which do not require a credit card to make a reservation. Before booking with any of these sites, be sure to check exactly what is included in the room rate (breakfast, tax, parking, etc.) and what the site's cancellation policy is.

According to a survey conducted by Cheap Hotels, the area of the U.S. you want to avoid if you are seeking inexpensive rooms is the Northeast. This month, the lowest price they found for a hotel on Nantucket, a charming island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, was $301. Nearby Martha's Vineyard, favourite vacation spot for President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other liberal luminaries, is almost as costly with the cheapest room in the range of $270 per night. The Portland, Maine area was similarly priced.

Those of us who live near the Northeast are aware that it is a pricey part of the continent, but it is also a region with a lot to offer in terms of history, scenery and attractions. After all, most of the original 13 colonies were in the Northeast.