Sleepless in Strasbourg?

By Constant Brand - 10.03.2011 / 05:45 CET

What do MEPs, Parliamentary staff, journalists, lobbyists and diplomats all have in common? Difficulties in booking a hotel room for the Parliament's monthly plenary session in Strasbourg.
● The stressful experience of securing a hotel room
● 'Unfounded complaints'

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Fact file

Availability and pricing

Strasbourg is not Paris, but France's seventh largest city is proud of its popularity as a tourist destination, attracting four million visitors a year, with peaks in spring and autumn, and around the annual Christmas market. Hoteliers recognise that getting a cheap hotel room during this period, which runs from the months of April through June, September and October, and December (the Parliament does not meet in Strasbourg in July or August), can be difficult.

Strasbourg has 116 hotels, with 6,838 rooms, according to municipal officials. In addition, youth hostels, apart-hotels and other furnished residences for rent are estimated to take the total of rooms up to nearly 10,000. Prices range from €30 per night to more than €600. The city's hotel association says that the average rate charged during plenary sessions is €130-€140 per night.

According to Pierre Siegel, the vice-president of Strasbourg's hoteliers association: “We have rooms for the capacity of a city of one million people.” He says that average occupancy rates hit 95% on Mondays, 97% on Tuesdays and 90% on Wednesdays, but drop off to 50% on Thursdays.