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 eighth post after Tokyo, Hong Kong, Vienna, Zurich, Rome and Ho Chi Minh City 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.

To recapitulate the three steps

• City Centre or away ? A hotel close to city centre and attractions or far away and use the savings on transport
• The Holiday purpose? What is the main purpose of the holiday – Lazy ? Action packed / touristy? Nightlife ?
• Make a Visit plot – Plot on the map the places of interest
• Work out a detailed itinerary for each day of your trip – for visiting the selected places of interest .
• Once these have been identified the ideal hotel location stares out of the map . Choosing the right hotel

This post is different from my earlier seven posts in the series and shall outline the consequences of not following the three step selection process – Which I followed to great success in the previous seven cities. But I must mention that it is all in hindsight. Our trip to Dubai was not planned as a tourist vacation but a family reunion – My son Jayant had come in from Hong Kong on business and my daughter was celebrating her fifteenth anniversary as well as her fortieth birthday. The focus was to spend time together and not to create a itinerary but to take one day at a time ! I found that Vistara Airways was offering very low business class fares to Abu Dhabi (not Dubai – our destination a hundred miles away) and so we took a one stop hop flight and joined them at Mumbai – Goes against my planning principle – Never plan a travel around cheap airfares – you will end up paying for it in different ways – In this case cab fares from Abu Dhabi to Dubai and since we arrived late night an additional hotel stay in Abu Dhabi ! Time wise we surfaced near lunch time the next day and got to our destination only late evening – A day wasted ! However landing in Abu Dhabi also proved to be a fortuitous decision since we traveled a few days after the Great Dubai flood which had rendered Dubai Airport out of action.

Since we made no Visit Plot or Itinerary (as per my suggested process) we chose a “good hotel” in a “nice location” – The Grosvenor Hotel on the Marina Promenade – As hotels go it was a exquisite luxury hotel with all the right trappings and our upgraded suite was ideally suited for the entire family to gather and the price too was reasonable. As locations go it was upmarket far from the metro and tram station. All this made for a great stay but —— !

Even though our focus was a family reunion we did end up visiting quite a few of the well known tourist spots like the Dubai Mall, Theme Parks for the grandson, The Dubai Frame, The Souks, and the fort and the museums, Not in a well planned away and we took each day as it came.

I have plotted all the places that we visited on the map shown above – This is what I refer to as the Visit Plot in my three step process. Notice that the locations we visited (marked in black) were all bunched together in the north of the map far from the “great” location of our hotel on the Dubai Marina (in red) which proved expensive both in terms of cab fares and time. Had I followed the process I have recommended in the last seven posts in the series would I have selected the same hotel? Maybe I would have chosen a hotel in the Jumerah area or closer to the Airport and the bunched black dots. And would i have landed in Abu Dhabi in the middle of the night just to get a great Air fare? The answer to both these questions is Perhaps Not! Unless there are overriding factors such as in this case. And this experience has demonstrated to me the efficacy of the Three stage Process I have been advocating to select the location of the Hotel.

Always remember Location first -The rest Follows