Spain 2020: Hotel Planning

NOTE -> This trip occurred pre-COVID-19 and feels like 100 years ago

I almost always book refundable rates for hotels because our plans are always changing and I’m always looking for the best deals. For this trip, the hotels were more challenging (and changing) than most trips and I utilized the refundable rates to our advantage.

We had our dates set. We were arriving in Barcelona and we were departing from Madrid. We figured we’d be taking the train between the two at some pint during the week but the days were a bit fluid in the beginning. Initially we’d plan to spend 5 days in Barcelona and 4 days in Madrid.

I looked for Marriott hotels in Barcelona in hopes of finding something we could use with points, utilizing the 5th night free benefit to extract maximum value. I was sorely disappointed as there weren’t any hotels close to the city that would accept 4 people in a room for a points redemption. This is not uncommon in Europe as most hotels only allow two people per room. Looking at paid rates (and checking my trusty AAA rates) I found very few hotels that had rooms for 4 people. The cheapest one I could find was the Renaissance which was over $450/night. I booked it on a refundable rate just to keep it as a placeholder.

As time progressed, I went back and forth on how “bad” it would be to have 2 rooms instead. I found a Four Points by Sheraton hotel that had rooms for 2 people that were around $100/night. We could get two of those rooms for half the price of the Renaissance and still get breakfast free breakfast as an elite benefit since my wife and I each have enough status to get that benefit. I booked 2 rooms under my wife’s account for 3 nights (not 5) and canceled the other booking.

By this time we had started thinking about doing a wider tour of the country and fit in a short stop at Valencia which is only 3 hours away by train. The science museum and aquarium there would be hits with the kids. Since we couldn’t book rooms on points in Barcelona to get the 5th night free, if we stayed 3 nights in Barcelona, we could spend 2 nights in Valencia and the final 4 in Madrid. A plan was starting to come together, but I needed to find a hotel in Valencia.

In Spain, I noticed a lot of A.C. brand hotels for Marriott. This is because the brand was started in Spain before being acquired by Marriott several years ago. The brand has boutique hotels in urban centers so the locations are usually good, but they do not offer strong elite benefits. Of interest to us, they do not offer free breakfast for elite members, so I had written them off in my searches.

In Valencia, there wasn’t much of an option, though. There were two AC hotels and one Westin. The Westin was quite expensive as we’d have to get a suite for all four of us to be in the room but one of the AC hotel had a two room suite. Instead of looking just at the AAA rates, I also looked for package deals offered and found a refundable rate for a room with a breakfast package for 2 adults and 2 children for the suite that was $300/night for the room. While that was a lot of a room, it seemed like a large room and one that would fit us all together. Since it was refundable, I figured I’d book it and figure out if I could find something better at a later point.

Then there was Madrid. Everything I looked at for Madrid was expensive. We were looking at $700+ per night for a room that fit all four or at least $200/night per room for a room that held two of us (i.e. $400/night for 2 rooms). They weren’t even hotels that looked all that exciting to stay at or in particularly good locations.

After a fair amount of searching I finally found an AC hotel that was located a little further away than we normally stay, but I could get 2 rooms at just under $150/night each that included breakfast.

We kinda had hotels, but I wasn’t all that happy with them, so I’m glad I had refundable rates!