All the hotels we use have been visited – and often stayed in – by a member of our staff or, occasionally, by a trusted agent. Hundreds of others have been inspected and rejected.
We look for certain standards of comfort and set a high priority on charm, style and warmth of welcome. An important consideration is location, with a strong preference for the historic centre of a city though quiet, too, is a major consideration.
We have many criteria. The truth is that few hotels can satisfy them all. And hotels vary. There is no such thing as a standard Martin Randall Travel hotel. It depends on what is available. In many places we use the best, but sometimes this means one which we would not have selected had the choice been wider.
Were we to limit our tours to parts of the world where a high level of modern comfort can be virtually guaranteed, we would have to reduce drastically the range of tours we offer, confining our coverage of the world’s cultural heritage to places which are near to the most developed resorts and business centres.
We pursue the alternative course, taking the location of works of art and monuments of past civilizations as the main determinant of where we send our clients, sometimes accepting lower standards of accommodation if necessary.
Star rating. Our hotels are mostly rated as four-star, though some are three-star, some five-star. A very few are two-star. The star ratings we quote are those awarded by the relevant national or regional authority – and the criteria vary from place to place. There is no international calibration. A hotel rated as a four-star in one country might scarcely merit three stars in another.
Single-rooms supplements. Nearly all hotels charge a supplement when there is only one person in a room, sometimes charging the same for a room however many people are in it which means it costs twice as much per person for a single traveller than for a couple. We sympathise with the annoyance this causes, and always try to negotiate with hotels, but there is little we can do to ameliorate the problem. On some tours we offer the choice between a single room and a double room for sole occupancy.
Staying on. It is usually possible to adjust the flights to enable you to stay on after a tour for an independent holiday. Please enquire. There is an administration fee of at least £25 for making a change to the basic package and sometimes the air fare will be higher.