Florence Street Scene	Photo by J. Kane

We have not discovered a single website, nor a single guidebook, that lists all the accommodations for any one location. Today, with the web, we have access to a myriad of choices.

Before contacting a hotel or B&B, we recommend that you review our Tips for Selecting Your Ideal Room. They will help you ask the right questions to obtain accommodations with the amenities that you would like.

Rome, Venice, Florence, and many smaller cities and towns are well represented in websites devoted to hotels. Italy, like many European countries, has excellent, small family-owned hotels, many with fewer than 20 rooms. Such small hotels are common even in the major cities. Often, they more closely resemble what we call B&Bs in the United States. B&Bs in Italy, not to be confused with affittacamere, generally have five or six rooms at most. The difference between a B&B and an affittacamere is that the affittacamere do not include or even offer breakfast.

Many hotel websites show the number of stars assigned to each hotel by the Italian hotel rating system. Stars are assigned according to the amenities they offer, including the number and size of public rooms, whether the hotel has an elevator, and whether each bedroom has a private bath. They are not always a reliable rating of quality. For example, they do not reflect how well the property is maintained nor do they indicate the courtesy and responsiveness of the staff. We would prefer to return to the 2-star Hotel Cimabue in Florence rather than several 3-star hotels in Florence we have visited.

Many hotel web sites provide listings and brief descriptions of hotels throughout Italy while others focus on one or more regions or on a distinguishing characteristic, such as historic buildings.

Municipal websites, especially those of smaller towns, can be excellent sources of hotel information. The municipal websites for such towns often have more hotels listings for each town than any of the websites devoted to hotels; we discovered that was the case for Montepulciano. Many municipal websites are listed in our Where to Go page.

Albergo Luna di Marzo, Volastra, Cinque Terre	Photo by S. Kane

In your travels, you may discover one or more hotels that are as good or better than any that you found on a website. Such discoveries are always a pleasure.

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