A well located hotel adds great  value to your trip – I have devised a simple three step process to find the right location for a hotel . This series now runs into the fifth post after Tokyo, Hong Kong, Vienna and Rome Choosing the right hotel.

Malati and I have made numerous leisure trips across the world. With time, experience and a lot of hindsight our hotel selection has become more focused and precise. Which means  more comfortable and convenient stays. And of  course a more pleasurable holiday and pleasant memories! While price is important the biggest challenge I have faced is in deciding the location of the hotel. In the past, I would have got a good price, and a great deal with lots of add- ons only to find that the hotel is far away from most places I wished to visit and nowhere near public transport. As a result the holiday became a drudge even before it began! However  with experience I have evolved a simple process to arrive  at the best  choice  of  the location. Malati and I visited Zurich this summer and here is our selection process.

City Centre or Away?  This is the first decision point in selecting a hotel location. Do you prefer to stay  away from the city center where the hotels are cheaper and then use the savings to pay for expensive local transport or stay in the city center where the hotels are slightly more expensive. In the case of Zurich, unlike many cities, the City Center is just 10-15 mins away by train from the Airport. With such proximity and hotel rates at 25 to 50 % lower hotel the airport area makes for a very viable option. On the other hand a city center hotel allows flexibility in sightseeing and the option of returning to the hotel for an afternoon siesta before setting out for a second round in the evening. This is a great idea since Zurich has nearly sixteen hours of sunlight in summer. If you are looking at night life would you like to trudge home in the middle of the night after a happy evening? Availability of transport home is always an issue to consider. Trains in Switzerland do not run through the night and an expensive taxi ride is the only way to get home in the wee hours. And so the choice of location is therefore determined by your holiday and sightseeing plan.

The Holiday Plan – Define the broad purpose of your visit? Sightseeing? Shopping? Museums and history? Leisure-  Lazy  hotel stay? Eating ? Zurich  offers you all options – Your broad purpose will lead you to the places of your interest – which is often different from what the tour guides say.  So if you are a first timer do some research. Some searches on the net for starters  are  “What are the top 10 things to do in Zurich”. I found Trip Advisor a great place to start. Lonely Planet is another great site.Once you have gone through a few web sites you would get a pretty good feel of the city, the distances involved  and places to visit. Enough to create an intelligent short list.

We had just one and a half days in Zurich before heading to the more idyllic spots of Switzerland. Our own short list comprised of a visit to the churches – Fraumunster, Grossmunster and the Peter’s church and a walk around the old city of Zurich. Stroll down the Bahnofstrasse with some high street shopping leading on to Burliplatz pier. A boat cruise on the lake to the Lindt factory at Kilchberg. A meal at one of the sidewalk cafes on the Bahnoffstrasse and a visit to the the COOP store at Annahof. Two museums of the four – The national museum (Landesmuseum), the FIFA museum and the Art Gallery Kuntsthaus and the clock museum on Bahnoffstrasse. Ride on Zurich’s excellent tram network to get a feel of the town albeit through a tram window. And wind up the day with a stroll along the clear waters of the Limmat. This pretty much makes a fairly packed schedule for a full day. Notable omissions to the list are the Uetliberg mountain and the Rhine falls some distance away from the town .

The Visit Plot –  Now  plot the shortlist on a map and you will find that most of your places of interest are bunched together in a small area. Interestingly my area of interest was bound in a small area about 600-800m wide and one and a half kilometers long as you can see in the sketch. Add or subtract the circles and expand or contract them as per your plan.

Superimpose the visit plot on the Zurich tram network. Zurich is serviced by a very efficient and dense tram network. The tram network suggests a hotel preferably with easy access to Zurich Hb , Central plaza, Burkiplatz and the Bahnofstrasse all within our area of interest.T

The Itinerary

At this stage with the  places of interests plotted on the map and a fair  idea of the tram network, make out a detailed  itinerary. Work out the most efficient visit sequence for the day to include travel time and mode: time spent at each location and even your meal and rest breaks . And Voila! Your answer for the ideal location for your stay in Zurich will now stare out at you. Once you have zeroed in on the right location finding the right hotel is an easy task – . Needless to say the further away you go from the tram junctions the prices of hotels drops sharply – True of any city  but even more pronounced in Zurich.

I zeroed in on the Hotel Central Plaza ideally located on the Central Plaza tram junction. It was a two minute walk from the Zurich main station and less than ten minutes by tram to any place of my interest. It cost a little more but saved me not only transportation costs but also time and perfectly suited my sightseeing plan.

 So always remember –

Location first- The rest follows .