How Travellers Can Find Cheap Accommodations in the UK

Make the most of your visit to the UK with London Hut! We share insider tips and secret information on everything from famous attractions and shopping to accommodations and travel safety. 

Accommodation is typically the biggest expense for budget travellers, beating food, entertainment, sightseeing, transportation, and other miscellaneous travel costs by a significant amount. If you manage to snag cheap accommodation, you can save a significant sum of money. You could use this money to travel longer, buy yourself something nice, or just put it in your piggy bank for later.

Below, LondonHut offers some tried-and-tested ways to find cheap accommodations in London and across the UK:

Choose a budget-friendly place to stay

The UK has many signature accommodations meant for budget travellers. If you don’t mind making a few sacrifices (like sharing your space), you could find something decent for less than €20 per night. Examples from the Guardian include boutique hotels, hostels, bunkhouses, “bothies,” cottages, and shared rooms. You can find hostels in London for as little as €15 per night, with breakfast and free Wi-Fi included.

Book at the right time

When you book matters a great deal. It’s easier to find cheaper accommodations if you book your stay in the off-season, which is from November to April. Booking your stay as early as possible – 6 months in advance is ideal – will help you secure a better price. Furthermore, booking the place for a significant duration is almost always better (you typically get discounts if you do). If you can, aim for mid-week stays, which tend to be the cheapest. Avoid booking accommodations for a single day – those are the priciest.

Be flexible with the location

Being flexible with where you stay will also help you save money. The countryside and smaller towns, for example, are much cheaper to stay in than larger cities and tourist hubs. Staying several kilometres away from your destination and travelling there and back makes for the biggest savings. To find cheap accommodations in a particular area (like London), select the “find places within 10km” or similar option when looking at maps on booking sites. 

Consider cost-sharing

One of the best ways to save big on your accommodations is to share its cost with someone else. Ideally, this would be friends and family who are travelling with you, but it could also be an acquaintance you made on a travel group in a pinch. You could book a whole apartment, keep a room to yourself, and give another to someone else. Other sharing options worth looking into are house swapping and couch surfing.

Pick places with miscellaneous benefits

Every place you book comes with certain amenities, services, and similar benefits. If you book a place with good miscellaneous benefits – like free Wi-Fi, laundry, a kitchen, a fridge, a lounge, a pool, and similar – you will end up saving the money you’d otherwise spend on said benefits. It may not seem like much, but every little bit counts when you’re on a budget.

Hunt for deals, reward programs, and other discounts

Many hotels and other places frequently have deals and discounts, especially during off or shoulder season. If there is a particular chain of hotels or B&Bs you frequent, signing up for their rewards program will help you secure great deals (including free stays). Some other ways to find discounts are checking social media pages, using your credit card points, signing up for newsletters, and negotiating group deals.

Clear your search history periodically

If you mainly look for accommodations using the internet, then you must clear your search history periodically (or log in from an incognito window). That’s because most popular accommodation listing sites as well as search engines log your search history and use it to price up any accommodations you might be interested in. CBC explains this in detail. Clearing your history and deleting cookies can help you reset these markups. 

Do you travel often to the UK? Consider buying a vacation home

If you’re a frequent traveller to the UK – whether for personal or business reasons – purchasing a vacation home here could be an option worth exploring. This could be a small flat, a maisonette, or even a cottage. It would make for a good investment, save you accommodation expenses, give you a guaranteed place to stay even during the busy touristy season, and even help you generate passive income (if you let it out when you’re not living there).

Finding cheap accommodations in the UK isn’t hard if you make good use of the internet and don’t mind a bit of research. If you have contacts in the UK, reaching out to them can help you find local deals on accommodations or give you access to accommodations not listed online.