Charming Small Hotel Guides:
Austria and Switzerland

These books are from the Charming Small Hotel Guides series, published in the UK by Duncan Peterson and distributed in the USA by Hunter Publishing.

Guidebooks were once the main source of information for travelers seeking hotels abroad. Thanks to the Web, that's no longer true. If you're traveling to Switzerland for Austria, for example, you don't need a Fodor's or Cadogan guide to tell you what hotels are available--instead, you can go to my Travel Planner's Accommodations section, to the local tourist offices on my Switzerland and Austria pages, or to my travel articles to find links and listings online.

Still, just knowing what's available isn't the same as knowing which hotels are good, bad, or indifferent. And in an era when yesterday's Baedeker selection may be today's Best Western, guidebooks like the Charming Small Hotel Guides make it easier to find hotels and inns that offer traditional atmosphere with a personal touch. (You can also read guidebooks in a car or train, which makes them more convenient than the Internet when you're traveling.)

The two guidebooks pictured above--Charming Small Hotel Guides: Austria and Charming Small Hotel Guides: Switzerland--focus on inns with "rooms that look like bedrooms rather than hotel rooms; a menu that comes from a kitchen managed with real skill and care; a proprietor who takes pride in the premises and your enjoyment of them--without being intrusive." Each book has descriptions of 200 to 250 small hotels, inns, and restaurants that offer rooms to travelers. In each chapter (organized by province, canton, or region) you'll find a dozen or more detailed descriptions with photos, plus an appendix with shorter mini-reviews of other hotels, pensions, and inns.

Best of all, the Charming Small Hotel Guides are packaged for convenience: They're slender and compact, so you can tuck them into a coat pocket or purse for easy reference when you show up in Lucerne or Zell am See without a hotel room.

To read sample hotel descriptions from these two excellent guidebooks, see pages two and three of this review.

Next Page > Austria excerpt > Page 1, 2, 3

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