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Availability of Hotels?

Vanozza

Active Member
Time of past OR future Camino
I have walked part of the Camino Frances one and a half times. I ended in Sahagun in April 2019.
Does anyone know the general status of hotel accommodations along the Camino Frances? Have many gone out of business? If open, are they operating at full capacity? I am assuming that prices have increased. Is booking through Hotels .com or Bookings. Com reliable? Any input is much appreciated. I plan to be hiking in October from Sahagun onward.
 
€2,-/day will present your project to thousands of visitors each day. All interested in the Camino de Santiago.
Does anyone know the general status of hotel accommodations along the Camino Frances? Have many gone out of business? If open, are they operating at full capacity? I am assuming that prices have increased. Is booking through Hotels .com or Bookings. Com reliable? Any input is much appreciated. I plan to be hiking in October from Sahagun onward.
In general using booking.com or hotels.com is reliable. Several members have reported that their reservations have been canceled, but it's probably due to the establishment going out of business or changing hands.
Be aware that booking sites don't usually have access to all available rooms in a given property, so there might be rooms available even when the booking sites say that nothing is available.
You can use Gronze.com to find properties and contact them directly. Even if you use a booking site it's a good idea to cross reference the hotel on Gronze so that you can determine if it's on or close to the Camino. You don't want to book into a place that's 10 km away!
Gronze is in Spanish, but if you use the Chrome browser it will automatically translate to the language of your choice.

 
For this September I booked all my western-half of the CF accommodations well ahead, using booking.com, and had zero difficulties doing so.

(And, gratuitously, the next time I'm in Sahagun I'm staying at La Bastide du Chemin again.)
 
€2,-/day will present your project to thousands of visitors each day. All interested in the Camino de Santiago.
I have had great luck reserving rooms on Booking.com. I’ve also had great success contacting hotels, inns, and albergues via email asking for reservations. If you’re walking in October, book rooms now! My other recommendation with Booking.com is to only book where free cancellation is offered. I’ve had to make numerouse changes in the past and with free cancellation, there’s never been a problem. But, if you do see that a property says it is sold out, contact them directly. This was the case for us recently. Booking.com said a hotel was sold out where we wanted to stay in Finisterre. I emailed them and had no difficulty getting a reservation. As trecile said above, use Gronze.com for contact information to may inns and albergues. I’ve found that most of them are very good about responding to your inquiries. Good luck!
 
My other recommendation with Booking.com is to only book where free cancellation is offered.
Yes, but usually there is a cut off date for free cancellation. Sometimes it's one day ahead, other times it's several days or a week. I always put these dates on the calendar on my phone so that I get a notification that I need to attend to it if I want to cancel.
 
Yes, but usually there is a cut off date for free cancellation. Sometimes it's one day ahead, other times it's several days or a week. I always put these dates on the calendar on my phone so that I get a notification that I need to attend to it if I want to cancel.
Me too.
 
The 2024 Camino guides will be coming out little by little. Here is a collection of the ones that are out so far.
We just did a stretch of the Francés in mid-June (read about it here) and did a lot of our reservations on Booking.com. There was plenty of availability for hotel rooms. Albergues were a different story - they're not all open yet.
 
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We walked SahagĂşn-SdC this June 2021. Booked most hotels, pensions, rooms at private albergues with booking.com - used their map feature to find the next hotel that could be booked within a day's walking distance. There are some places where there is not much available, then I looked for hotels in that area on Google maps and booked via email. Again, no problems.
Prices for a double room in hotels/pensions started around 40€. Don't know what it was before - we were on the CF the last time in 2003.. We were mostly very happy with what was offered.
No hotel/pension/private albergue was operating at full capacity, because there are very few guests. Sometimes we were the only guests. (Which was not always pleasant, because some owners were depressed and worried as they are losing money when they reopen but have few guests.)
Anyway, for pilgrims using hotels the situation is really easy at the moment.
 
Does anyone know the general status of hotel accommodations along the Camino Frances? Have many gone out of business? If open, are they operating at full capacity? I am assuming that prices have increased. Is booking through Hotels .com or Bookings. Com reliable? Any input is much appreciated. I plan to be hiking in October from Sahagun onward.
Just my input… on my Caminos in Spain and France hotels were cheaper if higher were not booked through Booking.com. I would book by phone and the owner usually offered a lower price if it was not through and app.
 
The focus is on reducing the risk of failure through being well prepared. 2nd ed.
Does anyone know the general status of hotel accommodations along the Camino Frances? Have many gone out of business? If open, are they operating at full capacity? I am assuming that prices have increased. Is booking through Hotels .com or Bookings. Com reliable? Any input is much appreciated. I plan to be hiking in October from Sahagun onward.

A lot of places closed down permanently on Camino Francés and I think more will follow.

In the Camino Ninja App we do daily updates on the status of open and closed accommodations.

Feel free to try it. It is free to use.

Booking.com is the most reliable way of making reservations in general. If the accommodation closes before you get there you will get a notification from Booking.com.

But it is possible for the daring to go without reservations and call day by day. Some people do. But the caminos might get so busy the next couple of months so it will be full. Bookings are recommended for most people.

Best
Andy
 
Hi Vanozza,
I answer you from a albergue, in FrĂłmista, so, not in your way. There are quite a few albergues open. The main reason they are closed is not economic bankruptcy, it is fear. Although the fear is unfounded, on the French Way there has only been one case of Covid for a year, there were several patients due to a pilgrim, no one died, of course. I have had it and it was like a very bad flu, the same happened with my wife and our two children, the albergue was closed and surely our son passed it to us through school.

Regarding reservations, we have stopped working with Booking.com, on the one hand due to the commissions that must be paid, close to 20%, on the other hand because most of those who booked were Spanish or foreigners who speak Spanish, and their laziness finally costs us money (they admit that they do it out of laziness, really !!!), and another important reason is that for some time, applications such as Gronze and Buen Camino show a reservation button that does not link to We but with Booking, with which the pilgrims without waiting enter the reservation system of that company and we cannot ask the apps to remove that button from the application, the only solution is to escape from Booking. In addition, we each speak five languages or more, it is very easy to speak by phone with our hostel, and in many others they speak only English, which is enough.

There is a lovely group of pilgrims who use google translate and send emails, because they don't want us to lose commission, so they tell us.
Therefore, try to contact them directly, it is easy, and they will appreciate it very much. Booking is stronger and more authoritative with us, and we are weaker each day.
Prices have risen in some albergues, not all. Many of us do not want to further harm the Camino de Santiago and its pilgrims who are not so economically strong today. To revive the Camino, it is necessary to make it easier for money to enter and move, and raising prices is not the best solution, it is almost suicidal. It is necessary just to have a little economics knowledge to understand this, or to have a little common sense.

Right now we are working, by legal mandate, not medical mandate, at 75%.

Also regarding prices, I recommend that you control the prices of the hostels, it can happen very easily that they maintain the prices of before the covid on the internet, and that they are apparently cheaper than another hostel that has not raised the price. We charge € 11, but some other not far from here is advertised for € 10 (price of two years ago) but the real price is € 14.
It is just a real example.
 
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The first edition came out in 2003 and has become the go-to-guide for many pilgrims over the years. It is shipping with a Pilgrim Passport (Credential) from the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.
Three of my reservations ( made several months ago) in various private facilities have changed names this year. I was notified by booking.com that the reservations remains, but these establishments are under different ownership.
 
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