Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Friends with Benefits

It's great to have friends with benefits, well, more like jobs with benefits. Working in the hospitality industry and specifically at hotels has definitely had its perks, the biggest of those perks being employee rates. Having traveled on employee rates with both Hilton and Intercontinental Hotels since college, I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a hotel room, so I figured why start now! I am fortunate enough to have a great relationship with my employer/boss and even though my last day is just two days away, they are allowing me to travel on employee rates on my upcoming trip. Now employee rates are unfortunately not as easy to come by as one might think. Internationally they can only be booked 90 days in advance and in prime tourist destinations they are extremely hard to come by. With that being said I did have pretty good luck and was able to book employee rates at six different cities on our European itinerary. While it was our intention to "rough it" at hostels, spending as little as possible throughout our trip, I'm certain people won't think we are roughing it the first three cities on our itinerary after the Turkey/Greece tours. Our first stop on our own will be Budapest, Hungary where I was able to book the Intercontinental Budapest at an employee rate of 44 Euros a night. After that we will head to Vienna, Austria where we will again utilize an employee rate of 44 Euros a night at the Intercontinental Vienna. Then on to Salzburg where we will stay at the Holiday Inn Salzburg City for 29 Euros a night. From Austria we will move on through Switzerland and into the French Alps "roughing it" at hostels until we head South to the French Riviera where we will have two nights at the Holiday Inn Garden Court Cannes-Le Cannet at an employee rate of 36 Euros a night. After a couple days soaking up the sun in Southern France we will head to Spain and Portugal with stops in Pamplona, Barcelona, Mallorca, Ibiza, Seville, Lisbon, and our final stop in Madrid where we will finish our Spanish holiday in style at the Intercontinental Madrid for 44 Euros a night. From Madrid we head towards Paris via the Loire Valley. We will end our trip at the Holiday Inn Paris-Gar de L'est where I was able to secure an employee rate of 44 Euros a night. These accommodations in these six cities will give us a break from the hostel life without costing us a dime. In many of these cities hostels started around 23 Euros a night PER PERSON, so many of these hotels will actually cost us less than if we stayed in a hostel, it's a whole different kind of "roughing it". With a little under half of our accommodations booked we still need to arrange accommodation for the other nine or so cities we will visit during our journey, but we will likely book these along the way or find accommodation when we arrive in each of these remaining cities. Employee rates....a benefit I will definitely miss.