Find Edinburgh Cheap Hotels
Edinburgh can be as expensive as any other city in Europe when it comes to finding a hotel room. The canny traveller should be able to find good cheap hotels and alternative accommodation within their budget.
The best sites for cheap Edinburgh Hotels
It’s definitely worth visiting the main travel operators like Expedia to check prices. You’ll often find cheap prices on the large chain hotels and also if you combine your hotel with a car hire or flight.
Some other places I always check for cheap Edinburgh hotels.
- www.laterooms.co.uk – hotels place their empty rooms on this site to help fill them at the last minute. Often find good deals here sunday-wednesday.
- www.booking.com at HolidayScotland – Holiday Scotland have a comprehensive Edinburgh hotel search with the booking.com engine.
The cheapest hotels in Edinburgh are Hostels
With such a large number of visitors coming to Edinburgh on a budget looking for a cheap hotel, a number of excellent value, clean comfy hostels have opened up to fill the gap. In many you can have your own room and en-suite and loads of them are situated right in the city centre. Hostel rooms can be half the price of hotel rooms.
Find a cheap hotel outside Edinburgh city centre
This is a compact little city and if you really want a cheap hotel in Edinburgh, ignore all the listings you find for hotels on the Royal Mile or Princes Street. By booking an Edinburgh hotel room a few minutes bus ride from the city centre or a 20 minute walk, you have a large number of hotels to choose from, almost guaranteed to be cheaper than the Edinburgh City Centre hotels. Look for hotels in Areas like Newington, Bruntsfield, Stockbridge, Murrayfield, Leith.
Try a guest house instead of a cheap hotel in Edinburgh
When searching for a cheap hotel in Edinburgh, don’t limit yourself to checking the “hotels only” box in whatever search you are doing. Guest houses can often provide everything that a hotel provides but at a cheaper price. Many guest houses in Edinburgh are friendlier than hotels but still offer en-suite, parking, breakfast and dinner, licensed bar etc. You often couldn’t tell the difference between a guest house and a hotel, especially with the larger ones.
Avoid Festival Time to get a Cheap Hotel Room
The Edinburgh festival swells the size of the city by 10’s of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of visitors. It’s very difficult to find a cheap Edinburgh hotel during the festival. Prices in Edinburgh hotels are often very high in August.
At new year, avoid a few days either side of Hogmanay – Edinburgh’s hotels are also very busy and it can be difficult to find a cheap hotel room anywhere in the vicinity at this time.