 Poster: A snowHead
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For a stopover on that drive to/from the alps, tempting though it is to use booking.com and the like, you can get better prices (although perhaps less choice and flexibility), if you book direct with the hotels company Louvre Hotels Group - they seem to have the main hotel brands in that market. Their contactclient team are very helpful if you have any problems (I screwed up my online booking through my incompetence, and they sorted it out). Any other views?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Looks like spam, smells like spam and even tastes like spam. Bizarrely, I don't actually think it is spam. Very confusing.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Must admit I'd never heard that hotel group before, although have made use of one of their brands, and nearly looked at another but that hotel was not so convenient.
But I do exactly the same, and book directly on the website of a major hotel chain that begins with "A" and has one brand named after a kind of motorsport, and have saved over such booking websites.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Sign up to Quidco and Booking.com, visit quidco then click link through to booking.com and get cashback on your reservation. Also works on the ferries.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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I don't book stopovers. I don't travel at peak times and I never know when, or whether, I am going to get tired and need to stop. I find nothing more annoying than lying in a hotel bed with a horrible foam pillow at 1 am, wide awake, thinking about how many more miles I could have driven. Equally, if I am very tired and/or it's foggy at 6 pm, I'll stop then.
Kyriad, Campanile, Premiere Class and various other hotels you've heard of are part of the Louvre group. http://www.louvrehotels.com/en/hotel-group.html
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I do stopovers, cos I leave work at 5pm, and know that Innsbruck etc. are 6 hours away. On the slopes at 9am Saturday.
May as well "promote" http://www.hotelbb.de here (for stopovers in France and Germany), and http://www.accorhotels.com (for stopovers just about anywhere in EU), just for a bit of balance 
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| albinomountainbadger wrote: |
| Sign up to Quidco and Booking.com, visit quidco then click link through to booking.com and get cashback on your reservation. Also works on the ferries. |
I do this, although I use topcashback. Managed to accumulate quite a bit on purchases that I would be making anyway. Even better when they cocked up my cash back amount on one of the P&O crossings I booked and gave me 20% instead of 2%...
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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The earlier post was genuine... not an ad ...I didn't put any link in! It was cheaper to cancel the booking.com reservation and go direct to Louvre Hotels... or Accor or any of the others I guess. Ta for other ideas to get a bit of money off.. e.g for the quidco / topcashback ideas. Otherwise, it seems I am a bit of a cheapskate... and a wimp on several counts: a) I need to stop, given my Red Bull years are long past b) I screw up occasionally. But still looking forward to the SNOW! 
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I read an article recently about whether it is really cheaper to buy from the websites like Hotel and Trivago or directly. And the answer was sometimes yes, sometimes no. So you should always check both.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I use whatever chain has the right sort of hotel in the area I'm looking at stopping over. That may be Ibis Budget, Premiere Classe, B&B or perhaps one of the smaller ones. I usually book directly online with them. Louvre (campanile, Premiere Class, etc) have changed their name several times.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I use a stopover - same place every year, CBA with messing around, they know us, we know them. Simples
foxtrotzulu, Same thoughts!
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I also use IBIS who have since purchased the ETAP chain and completed a makeover of their hotels. Although cheap and cheerful, its ideal for just a stopover enroute. Just booked ours for next Februrary en route to the Alps for other half/19year old son for £33, 3 single beds with shower/toilet....bargain me thinks..
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You know it makes sense.
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Layne,
I sometimes get a better price using laterooms etc. but often at the cost of "breakfast not included". Booking direct is usually the best way to go in my experience (esp. if you mention that you've seen the room on xyz.com at less than they are quoting).
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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simon94 - That's good. We're paying £38 a room (but that is fully refundable ..and on 27th Dec). That one was via booking.com. Could have done better by booking direct and non-refundable.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Quote: |
breakfast not included
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often choose that anyway. eg in Innsbruck, I'll pop in to the bakery in the station (next door, but any bakery will do), and spend €4.10 for breakfast, instead of the hotel's one costing over a tenner. Certainly in Austria and Germany, any decent bakery will have a sit down section, and usually a few decent breakfast offers with a better selection of pastries and bread/jam. Obviously this trick only really works in the city centre stopover hotels.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Andy....breakfast not included.....thought I would find it cheaper than the 7 Euros that the IBIS charged for breakfast by heading onto the Autoroute Services, how wrong I was! So I now book the eat as much as you like 7 Euros in the IBIS all the time. Can understand if you in a city but on the way to the Alps we always venture away from the cities..
Mutineer, think if you book in advance you can always get a better bargain, this price is non fundable, but not charged on your card until you arrive, plus its the Half term friday, so thought it ideal to get booked up early.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Simon94, it's not €7 in all hotels! Some are as much as €14.
City ones for me are Bregenz and Innsbruck. Both just off the autobahn (pretty much).
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I like to get up and out of a hotel early, then make my first stop, around 1.5 hours later, for breakfast. There is no way I can do justice to an "all you can eat" breakfast having just rolled out of bed. Last time I did that, on the way down, I stopped for breakfast in a very French café in Poligny - much more interesting than either the anonymous hotel where I had spent the night, or a motorway aire (though the latter invariably offer perfectly acceptable coffee, pastries and freshly squeezed OJ). I found Italian motorway cafés very inferior by comparison - brilliant coffee but rather nasty pastries.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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True that having booked many hotels via booking.com, I've arrived at the hotel to see the same prices displayed at the door. Still, I like their search functions, there's the cashback option that you don't get booking direct, and it seems to me that hotels.com and some others are consistently more expensive than booking.com.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Simon94 wrote: |
| I also use IBIS who have since purchased the ETAP chain and completed a makeover of their hotels. Although cheap and cheerful, its ideal for just a stopover enroute. Just booked ours for next Februrary en route to the Alps for other half/19year old son for £33, 3 single beds with shower/toilet....bargain me thinks.. |
IBIS and Etap have always been part of Accor. They've just rebranded Etap as Ibis Budget. They are updating many of them too.
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For me, the IBIS budget product is just about ideal for a 10 pm stopover. But I have taken to travelling with my own proper pillow - even decent hotels often just have foam jobs.
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Do I have to pay extra for that 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Boris,  never miss a trick, do you?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Just to be clear, in prices quoted earlier, no 'soirée mousse' was included.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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pam w, I like my stopover booked in advance. The grief I would get if we couldn't find a decent meal and bed for the night just wouldn't be worth it.
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Guess it depends when: e.g On a Friday night after a late getaway after the new year break. Up the A6... everything seemed to be full. Wasted a lot on time roaming around Mâcon and eventually found a fairly grim one in Chalon. Book something comfy in advance instead.
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You know it makes sense.
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mutineer, absolutely - if you travel at peak times then booking in advance makes a lot of sense.
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The grief I would get if we couldn't find a decent meal and bed for the night just wouldn't be worth it.
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On the drive down my objective is to get there. I am not too bothered about how decent a meal I have, really and one of the advantages of doing the drive on my own is that I can please myself! Might stop early and have a good meal, might drive till late, might drive all night if the stars are out, the road clear and I'm not feeling tired.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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pam w, we do have a much longer journey than you though, hence the requirement for the decent meal and bed. I know how far we can go now without losing concentration.
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Poster: A snowHead
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we do have a much longer journey than you thoug
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indeed - a great deal further, and on invariably busy roads. Don't envy you that, at all. I take a break every 2 hours - more often towards the end of a trip, when I also find myself slowing down, without consciously thinking about it. I find it difficult to anticipate how long I'll be able to maintain concentration - it varies quite a bit. I had a CD from the Road Research Laboratory which incorporated latest findings about driver fatigue and "talked you through" a 20 minute nap, followed by a 5 minute walk (invariably out in the cold and dark!). That was surprisingly effective - any longer than 20 minutes and you feel dozy when you wake up, it seems. I've done that a few times, and can now do it without the CD. It has a very stern warning that you should only do it once in a journey, and that if you feel tired again, you should stop properly. On the way home I have a nap on the tunnel, to be prepared for the M25! I've twice had to stop far earlier than anticipated because of bad weather - thick fog once, and heavy snow once.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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pam w, hubby is not very good at sharing the driving, which is why I enforce the stops. He hates being in the passenger seat.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Hells Bells wrote: |
| pam w, hubby is not very good at sharing the driving, which is why I enforce the stops. He hates being in the passenger seat. |
Mine is the same - he's a dreadful passenger so we do book stops en route, all within a 5 minute drive of the motorway as - God forbid - we shouldn't be able to get right back on that road the next day
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Montana, I don't at least have that problem, but heaven forbid I might close my eyes just before a motorway junction, because as sure as eggs is eggs he will miss it, or take the wrong one.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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We drove from Glasgow last Easter, first time driving, and the one thing I would do differently is book somewhere in advance. Saying that though, the reason we didn't was that it was our first time, so we weren't sure how far we'd get ( we did have a stopover in England), and didn't want to be reaching our stopover and realising we could have driven further. What happened though was we were nearing Troyes by the time we were thinking about a stop, it wasn't too late (we had a 5 year old in car), can't remember exactly but maybe about 9 ish. We knew Troyes area a bit having camped there the year before, so decided to stop around there. Ended up there was some sort of event in Troyes so we couldn't get anywhere. Anyway to cut a long story short we ended up driving about trying various low budget style hotels to no avail. Ended up in what was probably a lovely little family run hotel, they only had a double (this was 11.45am) but said they'd find another bed and put in in, so we went up to the room, just wanting to crash as we wanted to be away early doors, but were hanging about waiting on this bed. Eventually OH went down for some water, met the owner who was still looking for a bed, and just told her it didn't matter we would just all sleep in the double. This was 12.15am. In the end we didn't sleep well, wee one takes up all the bed, and we kept thinking we'll sleep in in the morning (we were picking friends up from Geneva). I think this would have been a lovely wee hotel to have stopped at earlier had a meal, and a few drinks and a decent sleep. The car park was mainly UK reg's.
On way back we didn't want a repeat, so booked a budget hotel. Stayed in these before, but this wasn't one of the usual names, we got there at 10.30pm, the code we were given wouldnt work, area felt dodgy, again with a wee one, eventually got in, but it was stinking of smoke, could hear everyone walking by in corridor and I just didn't feel comfortable at all. Again hardly any sleep, for different reasons, although wee one had to share our bed again as the 3rd bed was a bunk very high up.
So for next Easter if we go, I intend just forking out the extra and making the stopover part of the trip, particularly on way there. So maybe book into Troyes , aim to arrive around 6, get a change and have a nice meal somewhere. Bed early, hopefully good sleep and an early start in morning.
It was our first trip, so trial and error, and I don't mind cheap, it's just somewhere to get a sleep. It may just need a bit more planning to get the "right" cheap place.
I'm looking forward to doing the drive again, I loved it!
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Hells Bells, thanks for that, some nice places!
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hubby is not very good at sharing the driving, which is why I enforce the stops. He hates being in the passenger seat
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Hmm.  Maybe he should go in the back with the dog(s)?
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FAQ
