The second, in the series of articles about Lviv Tourism, is related to Lviv accommodation. Various Lviv accommodation types are discussed. Readers are informed about advantages and drawbacks of each, which would help them to make the right choice.

In this article I’ll try to tell you some useful and interesting information about how to spend a night or two in Lviv. Lviv is almost European city – only 90 km to Europe border,meaning Poland, but still, one should be aware about local particularities. Ok, so let’s start. I’ll go from the most expensive to the cheapest types of accommodation.

Hotel. Hotel is considered as the most expensive type of accommodation in Lviv. However, some apartments that one can rent and that I’ll be talking a little bit later about, could be even more expensive. There are approximately 30 big and medium hotels in Lviv and about 15 small ones.

Small hotels are like guest houses but they are beautiful and interesting for tourists. So I'll try and give you some hints about how to find the best suitable hotel.

So, how to choose a hotel? – come on, you are tourists, don’t you know about the Internet?! Seriously, there are probably two main ways to choose a hotel – good old booking dot com together with Tripadvisor and Google maps. Just see how far the hotel is from the city center, see the reviews of the tourists on booking and Tripadvisor, compare prices and make a choice.

Why booking? Because they allow placing a comment only to those users that actually performed a reservation and stayed in the hotel. They carefully check this mechanism so reviews at booking are quite reliable source. When it comes to Tripadvisor, they perform more complex fraud check, though not based on reservation ID, but still, the one, which prohibits any cheating. Try to avoid choosing the hotel using hotel’s website – they are capable of moderating reviews that will be shown to customers. Try to guess now, what kind of reviews you’ll see there. Still, you can check hotel’s webpage for any special offers or discounts.

One quite interesting trick – try to book a preferred hotel through booking and then contact hotel directly, asking for a discounts. In the majority of the cases they will provide you with extra discount for your stay, if you make a direct booking and cancel one through booking. (Please note, that booking is just an example of online booking engine in this article. The information is refereed to any online booking site available out there in the web). However, in this case, you will loose all the guarantees, booking is able to provide.

Apartment for rent. If you do not like overcrowded hotels, you can also find perfect apartment for rent. There are lots of sites to book an apartment, if you just type “rent apartment Lviv” or “rent a room in Lviv” you’ll find them. However, there is a warning that should definitely be taken into consideration – unlike Tripadvisor and booking, there is no reliable source to check the authenticity of the apartment description and photos as such are mainly on the site of apartment booking engine. In fact, as a foreigner you can receive something a little bit different from what you have seen on the picture or red about. But still, there are just beautiful and huge apartments five minutes from city center that just wait to be rented.

Hostel. This is probably the cheapest way to spend a night in Lviv. I assume you all know hostelsworld. This is the major point for you. Benefits are just overwhelming – the price, location, comfort, mobility. Now that was sarcasm. In fact, hostels are truly cheap, but service quality is worth the price, so be ready to receive what you have paid for, still the best choice for backpackers. Average prices may be 5 times cheaper than in the average hotel. It is all up to you to choose, open booking and hostelsworld and start comparing service and prices.

Other. Other…hmm… do you have any suggestions? Oh, don’t even think about dormitory or any other type of similar accommodation! You’ll curse it together with Lviv, your life and everything you ever had. That is totally not the option to choose.

One small hint – sometimes foreign tourists, not to fall into traps of fraud hotel reviews or fake hostel pictures, hire a English-speaking local person that supports them throughout the whole process from organizing accommodation up to meeting up in the airport and guiding through the city. Many people find it quite convenient and I would assume it works well, as this supporting person takes lots of your headache away.

So this is mainly it about the transportation. If you have any questions or suggestions please do put them into comments to this article or write directly to me, using the link in the “About author” section. If you are interested about some more information, particularly about how Lviv looks like and what to see there, - please do read more of my articles. Thank you so much for your interest and have a pleasant stay in Lviv.