BFF travel - hotels with two beds?

March 29, 2022 8:22 AM

Is there a secret to searching for hotels by number of *beds* vs number of adults/rooms? I'm traveling with my best friend (we're both 40s women) this fall throughout England and Scotland, and I keep looking at hotels but then spending 10 minutes trying to figure out if the location offers rooms with two twin or double beds. I'm not having much success. Halp?

We are two adult women who, for budget reasons, can't really swing getting separate rooms on our trip, but don't want to share a bed if we don't have to. But kayak/booking/travelocity/etc etc allow you to filter for 2 adults, but not by *beds* anywhere that I can find. I keep finding hotels that look great but either discover they don't have two-bed rooms or not being able to determine anything at all.

Yes I realize I can find a place I like and email/call them, but I'm trying not to spend hours writing emails or making phone calls as we are planning on staying in various cities over the course of our two week UK trip. So this would take a huge amount of time to write multiple hotels in multiple cities to get a sense of who can provide us with two beds within our small budget.

Is there an easier way to do this? We prefer hotels vs airbnb/vrbo/apartment rentals, and do not want to stay in hostels at all.

posted by greta simone to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

Booking.com gives options for type of beds in the UK, though there is language saying it's not guaranteed. I believe hotels.com is similar. Hotels vastly prefer is you book direct, so you might use the sites to narrow down your top two choices per location and phone, as that's likely to get you a better rate and some certainty as to beds.

Note that if you're used to the US that a double room with two beds in the UK will be two twins.
posted by hoyland at 8:29 AM on March 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

2nding booking.com - when I last used it, this was pretty straightforward. I don't think you can filter for it in the initial search exactly, but it's certainly quicker than 10 minutes: Search for the city you want, click on a hotel in the results, scroll down to the lower half of the page and it shows you exactly what rooms are available, including bed formation. You can usually then click on the one you're interested in, and you'll get an actual photograph of the room so you can see arrangements for yourself.

Here's an example that (at least at time of posting) shows a variety of bed formations available on the lower portion of the page.
posted by penguin pie at 9:21 AM on March 29, 2022

Expedia also displays photos & specs of all the available rooms.

Unfortunately you can’t filter by number of beds, but once you’ve clicked on a listing you can verify whether the hotel has rooms with two beds. That’s how I did this last time I was in your situation.
posted by mekily at 9:32 AM on March 29, 2022

With some travel sites I've gotten around this by searching for a room for 3 adults. Then once you find a room you can just change the # of guests.
posted by interplanetjanet at 11:38 AM on March 29, 2022 [10 favorites]

Another note on wording - in Britain we call them single and double beds. No one will understand what a twin bed is.

In fact, you might be looking for a twin room - typically meaning two single beds - versus a double room with a double bed.

Probably that won't help with the search websites, but it might if you have to call them on the phone.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 12:04 AM on March 30, 2022 [2 favorites]