I’ve never been to Berlin. So, how have I planned my trip?
February 29, 2008
This will be my first time visiting Berlin. Though I am familiar with some of its history and I am aware of its reputation as a creative and dynamic Euorpean capital, it has never been on mine and my wife’s top ten desinations we want to visit or revisit soon. Since this will be a business trip, my wife had no input in the decision to go other than making sure our schedules allowed for my absence. She has also asked me to do some shopping while I’m there. What made me decide to go to Berlin is simply the opportunity to participate in the Bloggers Summit, meet and network with other tourism bloggers from around the world plus the opportunity to visit the massive ITB show.
This being a tourism blog and event, I thought I would share my travel planning process. Being time crunched as most professionals with families in North America are, I did not want to spend to much time researching hotels and flights. So I first checked on Expedia Canada, which I have been using to book travel since it was launched in Canda many years ago. I had two criteria to work with - price and proximity to the ICC but not too far from central Berlin. Naurally, my search on Expedia produced hundreds (or what seemed like hundreds of results). So on my first try (several weeks ago) all I accomplished was to confirm that the trip was within my business trips budget. But that first time I did not have time to look at the hotels in more detal. A few days later while I was on Facebook I figured I would ask my Facebook friends, many of whom are in the eTourism space and have travelled everywhere, to recommend a hotel in Berlin. I asked for something cool but not expensive (meaning less than $250/300 per night). My question was sent to about 30 friends but I only got about 6 responses. I did check out all of them. One was too low end (but very cheap), another was too expensive, and the others were either booked solid during ITB, not in the right location or did not appeal to me.
So then I went to Google and searched for Berlin to try and find a DMO. I only looked at the top five or six results of course and ended up on Berlin.de While I did not find the accommodations section helpful, I did like the site to explore what Berlin has to offer a new visitor. I decided to go back to Expedia and made a note to visit Berlin.de after I booked my flight and hotel. Given my time constraints (I never have enough time) I researched some hotels on Expedia as fast as possible looking at their location on a map having already determined where the ICC is (I started a Berlin Google Map for my own use and to share with other fellow bloggers). Once I had a candidate I would search on Google.ca or Google.de for the name of that hotel in order to visit their site to see if they had better rates and to get a further idea of what the hotel might actually look like. Then I went back to Expedia and searched for a few flight hotel combinations (similar prices but different flight schedules - some via the US, some via Europe). And that was that for the day. Still had some time to make a decision and book. Mind you I did check with some airline sites directly, but I found it easier and faster to do it on Expedia. I also checked out the IHG site because my own sites are affiliated to IHG and because I have a lot of loyalty points from Priority Club. The IHG properties for the most part had no available rooms. One thing I thought about, but felt it would take too much time was to check out TripAdvisor, so I skipped it.
Finally, another few days later, when I realized I better book or risk not finding a hotel I logged on to Expedia Canada and booked the package - flight (Continental), hotel (Berlin Econtel), travel insurance and $15 calling card pin.
Having booked the trip I have been going back to Berlin.de a few minutes at a time here and there to research the city and start planning what I will do with the one day and a half I will have to be a tourist in Berlin.
What do I conclude from this experience? That if I don’t have much time to surf, research or search, I will stick to a large player whose brand I trust - at least for the basic elements of the trip - flight and hotel.
Cheers,
(by the way, I don’t have a Flickr account and don’t really want to set one up - so forgive me if I don’t post a picture - I am use to the “other” platform and learning about this one as I go)
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I too spent quite a bit of time searching for accommodation in Berlin and couldn’t find anything at a reasonable price close to venue. I just decided to rough it in a hostel as I reckon I’ll hardly be in the room in any case.