Budget hotels are growing in popularity. With the arrival of low-cost airlines, which have enabled far more people to travel, new hotel chains keep appearing that successfully offer decent quality at a very good price. These hotels are often located right in city centres. Travellers save on accommodation, which lets them sightsee more intensively and make the most of local attractions. This segment of the market used to be dominated by the French IBIS chain; now the choice is much wider.
The a&o chain
You can spot the a&o logo in many attractive city locations across Europe. The German chain's properties are a creative blend of hotel and hostel. Every year the company opens new ones.
a&o properties are often historic buildings with an interesting past - large tenement houses and former industrial buildings are converted. This opens up unusual possibilities for interior design: the rooms are surprisingly spacious, the ceilings high and the common areas exceptionally large.
Today you will find a&o properties in many popular tourist cities such as Berlin, Budapest, Dresden, Frankfurt, Salzburg, Graz, Hamburg, Munich, Copenhagen, Prague and Vienna (since 2019 the brand's hotel-hostel concept has also been operating in Warsaw).
The a&o philosophy is good-value accommodation in central city locations, and the innovative concept of combining a hotel and a hostel under one roof lets you choose between comfortable single, double and family rooms and cheaper hostel rooms, ideal for young, active travellers and groups. The family rooms are particularly recommended, combining a large double bed with a bunk bed for children or teenagers. The room is well lit, with a desk and an open rack that serves as a wardrobe. You have your own spacious bathroom, and the room is air-conditioned. All rooms have private bathrooms and free Wi-Fi.
A special offer lets children under 18 stay free in a room with their parents or grandparents. The hotels serve a varied, nourishing “all you can eat” buffet breakfast. Although the choice is limited, in practice you will find everything you need to put together a varied meal to start the day. There are hot dishes, a selection of bread, vegetables, jams, pancakes, cold meats, cheeses, drinks, coffee and tea. A 24-hour bar is combined with the reception, and there is also a vending machine in the lobby for extra drinks and snacks.
a&o is also big on flexibility - guests can rent bikes and book tickets for local attractions, and groups of more than 10 people can reserve extra meals at convenient times. Guests can also enjoy a lobby with billiards and table football. The centrally located 24-hour bar is a great place to strike up new friendships across cultures.
Even more flexibility comes with the a&o loyalty club: membership is free and brings extra discounts, hidden offers and other services such as early check-in or late check-out.
The chain has 40 hotels in Europe and keeps opening more. Two new ones opened in 2024: a&o Firenze Campo di Marte in Italy and a&o Brighton Palace Pier in the UK. The first of them, in Florence, has an interesting 1960s façade that has been preserved and restored, behind which lie not only 120 rooms but also a spacious inner courtyard with green spaces and areas to relax. The British property is in the very heart of the famous seaside resort, overlooking Brighton's pier. All in all, this year's investments, totalling 500 million euros, went into converting office and retail buildings into new places to stay.
A good example of a centrally located, good-value property is the hotel in Salzburg. It is just 500 metres from the Central Station, the hub of city and regional transport. A former bakery with unusual interiors has been converted for hotel use and divided into 116 rooms. There is a children's corner for younger guests, and a well-stocked snack bar for older ones.
The Explorer chain
While visiting Berchtesgaden National Park I stayed at the Hotel Explorer, part of the Explorer Hotels chain. For a very reasonable price you get what you need: a comfortable bed, a decent-sized bathroom, free parking and an excellent breakfast. And all of it with a cool design.
This chain specialises in catering for active people and has 11 locations in the German and Austrian Alps. The hotel in Berchtesgaden was only a 15-minute walk or so from the valley station of the Jennerbahn am Königssee cable car and the main landing stage for the boats that cruise the Königssee.
The Meininger chain
The Meininger hotel in Marseille is close to the Old Port, which is the city's tourist centre as well as an important transport hub (trams, metro). The rooms were bigger than I expected, and the bathroom was surprisingly spacious. If you don't choose the option with breakfast, there is a well-equipped shared kitchen on site.
Budget hotels are ideal not only for those on a tight budget. They also suit people who explore the city and its surroundings intensively and only come back to the hotel to sleep. They would not be able to use the extra facilities a hotel offers, yet they would still have to pay for them. For such travellers, what matters most is a clean room, a comfortable bed, a bathroom and a nourishing breakfast. And it turns out that the choice of such places keeps growing.
