Those are the magic words so many people are trying to hear.
As the World Cup approaches the frenzy to tie down suitable housing
arrangements all over Brazil has reached a fever pitch. Take a breath. Cool
down. I've got some practical advice to help you find the room you require.
There are still great rooms available (like this one, for
example). And dare I say it: there will likely still be rooms to find even
after the Cup has begun. Let me lay it out.
First things first. If you are looking for that nice hotel
in the popular Copacabana/Ipanema/Leblon tourist-friendly beach side zone in
Rio, well then, you probably should have had your people call their people a
long time ago. Reports that “all” of the hotel rooms in Rio are booked started
coming out weeks ago. The easy stuff in the nice locations are gone. Period.
Let it go. Just going to a hotel website and booking a room is no longer an
option. You can take a little solace in knowing that the folks who got those
rooms paid through the nose for them. Hotels have been shameless in their
inflated pricing and minimum stay requirements. Chances are great you will
ultimately wind up with a perfectly suitable place for a lot less money.
So now what? What’s a Cup fan to do? Let’s get real,
practical and specific – and get off the well-worn hotel path. Luiz and I have
traveled to many corners of the globe during all seasons of the year. We generally
travel on a limited budget prioritizing our safety while also not being shy about
staying somewhere completely unexpected. Here are several approaches that have
worked for us that may well help you secure your booking.
This is cute, but it is not a good map. Get a good map. |
Before we get into it- get a map. Get a good map, not a tourist map that makes Rio look like just three rich neighborhoods with beaches plus outlying areas. Open up your map and
locate where you need to go while at your location, where you prefer
to stay, and where you would consider staying. Then
identify the bus, Metro and taxi routes that weave in and around those areas.
If there is a subway system (Metro), and of course Rio has one but there may be
readers looking beyond Rio, then expand your “would consider” areas to include
those areas around Metro stops that are perhaps further out than you had first
considered. The subway will whisk you about very quickly, so being further out
is compensated for. The larger your area under consideration the larger your
chances of thoughtful, realistic success.
And don’t stop at city boundaries. Places like Niterói, for
example, may be a neighboring city to Rio but travel times to and from matches will
actually be faster from some areas in Niterói than from some (seemingly more desirable)
areas within Rio. Traffic and transportation routes can easily warp travel
times. And traffic within the city proper can be nightmarish. In the case of
Rio and Niterói there is a ferry service between them that often trims 20 – 30
minutes or more off taking a car, taxi or bus between the same points.
Private rentals
Utilize the websites that post private homes and rooms
within homes for rent. Places like Airbnb, HomeAway, and misterbnb, to name a
few, are part of a growing number of “vacation rentals” websites growing in
popularity. These sites are great for connecting you directly with people who
have opened up their home/apartment or a room therein in locations in and around where
you want to be. (Normally I would suggest checking out the couchsurfing website
for more options, but I have heard again and again in recent weeks that this
option is pretty well sewn up.) The vast majority of hosts and guests that
utilize these services report having a flawless experience and guests often
report enjoying the accommodations better than the typical (and typically more
expensive) hotel room.
This looks pretty typical for a living and kitchen space in a regular one or two bedroom apartment. |
This is a little more on the higher end of things. |
The prices listed by hosts at these sites during the month
of the World Cup vary from the ridiculously expensive, often posted
by those looking to cash in on the “screw-the-tourists” WC fever going on here,
to the great value room that offers more than a hotel for less money,
to the VERY cheap opportunity that is perfectly doable but may be in a location or situation
you had not previously considered - and is available if you just choose to give
it a go.
Be sure to expand your search criteria on these sites to
include any neighboring cities you have under consideration.
The great thing about these self-hosting sites is that just
as you have been procrastinating to finally nail down your housing, so have
home hosts been procrastinating to finally post their unit or room for rent, so
new good stuff, often in great locations, continues to appear. If you don’t
find anything one day, continue to visit the site and watch for new listings.
Once a first-time host books their apartment they will tell their friends and
get them on board for listing theirs as well, so another great place may open
up soon thereafter. Monitor these sites over time. Luiz and I have a room in
our apartment that is available. Check out our listing here.
OK, so that was an obvious option. Here’s another route that
produces fresh results that may be off the organized room-rental grid.
Social networking
Duh… Capitalize on the networks you have in place for work
and your personal life. Utilize those online social networking sites. I am a
member of several Facebook Groups in the Rio area that connect gringos,
including groups related to cooking and dining, “garage sale”- stuff for sale,
employment networking, bloggers, expats, etc. These groups are comprised of
folks on the ground in Rio and beyond that can quickly expand your eyes and
ears when searching for a place to rent. Just last week one group member
mentioned that they had a couple friends from Europe looking for a place and
within a few hours a half dozen group members posted that they had rooms or
entire apartments for rent. Drill down into these sites. Search for relevant
groups and politely post your needs. If they are closed groups see if the
administrator will let you make a one-time post. Be friendly and fun – don’t be
an ugly troll. Match the vibe of the group you are poking your head into. Many of these groups prohibit posting solicitations, so consider reaching out to members to make a personal connection and then make your request for local assistance in a private message.
Simple room on the higher end. |
As usual, asking everyone you know to ask everyone they know
will do wonders for your search.
Utilize forums on
travel sites
Sites like Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor. Fodor’sTravel,
VirtualTourist, etc. have forums (discussion boards) where travelers ask
questions of each other and self-appointed helpful locals. The people who frequent
these forums as helpers are usually very eager to offer advice to others.
Locate the forums section and key into the city you are targeting (I've linked to Rio above). You can post
your need for a room or an apartment to rent there. Also request any insider
tips folks may have for those off-the-grid options in those cities.
Pretty typical efficiency kitchen. |
Newer two or three bedroom apartments may have a kitchen like this. |
I have seen multiple posts lately, at several of the forums
I haunt, from World Cup visitors who have already booked space but their travel
companions have bailed on them. So now they are looking to hook up with other
travelers at the last minute to fill out the space and share the costs already
incurred. So it is worth checking in at these sites periodically to see if
fellow travelers are looking for you. If you post a request for help or reply
to a comment already on the board you can have notice of subsequent comments
sent to your email, so you can post requests at multiple sites and not have to
circle back and check them all the time.
Consider staying in a
favela community
Rio’s favelas (usually defined as poor, slum areas) get a
pretty nasty rep in the international press. Heck, most of the time they get a
wicked nasty rep in our local press. To the uninformed person looking from the
outside in most favelas can look like pretty intimidating, nasty and dicey
places. That may be, in fact, an accurate
description for many, many such areas. But there are exceptions. For good or
for bad there have been municipally organized incursions into several of Rio’s
favela communities by police forces to “pacify” these areas. The stated
intention is to win back control of these communities for law-abiding residents
and to deny that control to drug traffickers and their minions. This effort has
been met with mixed reactions by residents and mixed results by police. Let’s
just save that discussion for another time.
For our purposes here it is worth noting that there are
indeed some areas in some favelas in Rio that offer very good and relatively
safe accommodation opportunities during the Cup. Many poor neighborhoods are
just neighborhoods with poor folks living there. Not much drama. And those
folks often have perfectly comfortable housing which some are opening up to
visitors to rent during their stay in Rio.
Check out Favela Experience’s World Cup Accommodations website
for some unlikely yet terrific options. I will remind you that most of the rich
folks in Rio live down by the water/beach. The poor folks live in the favelas
that have been climbing up the steep hillsides for decades. That means the
favela residents have all the killer views.
Book a room in a favela and prepare to have your
preconceptions shattered.
Work it out on foot
Yep. That’s right. Just show up and figure it out. It can be
done. It works. But it is not for everyone.
This is where I offer my pep talk about the power of
personality: your self confidence that allows you to go this route; your
gregariousness that enables you to speak to practically everyone you meet to
ask for their help; and your gut feeling that keeps you calm and safe in
situations that you may not have planned to be in.
This
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to traveling is not new or all that
rare. But it is not for everyone.
In our experience, between Luiz and I, we have found
perfectly suitable and quite reasonably priced rooms upon arrival in P-Town,
Massachusetts during the 4th of July weekend, in Cabo Frio, Brazil
during Carnaval and in Venice, Italy the day before Carnavale. ALL of those
situations are simply written off as a fool’s errand by armchair travelers who
insist on booking ahead.
The thing to keep in mind is that there are most certainly
more rooms available than most people know how to access. I once found a room
in the Latin Quarter in Paris upon arrival and paid less than half of what I
would have paid for most anything available online in advance. I had to walk
down a few side streets and inquire at a number of unlikely places, but it
panned out in less than a few hours.
Many, many local hotels do not have a website or are not
even on consolidated business association websites. So searching for space via
the internet shows only a portion of what’s out there. You need to walk up and
down every street in your (prioritized) “preferred” or “would consider”
neighborhoods and stop at every hotel and inquire. If they are full, ask where
they might suggest you look. Just because a hotel is relatively invisible
beyond its front door does not necessarily mean it is not worth staying at.
Certainly preview the rooms, but keep an open mind. You may be very pleasantly
surprised. The available room may have a balcony overlooking a magical hidden
garden area. Many family owned hotels are just not working the business
networking thing. There are scores of these types of hotels in Rio.
The trick behind making this pressured search work is: a)
trust you will find a room, b) travel light so you can search without lugging
around multiple pieces of luggage, c) give yourself some time to search before
it gets dark. Don’t arrive at 5 p.m. and expect success before the sun goes
down. d) speak to EVERYONE you come in contact with and ask for help, e) if you
find a place that is fully occupied, question everyone there about their ideas
for where else to look (once a clerk at a small hotel in Cusco, Peru agreed to
call her brother at another hotel which lead us to a tip that paid off), f)
include in your requests for help a friendly suggestion that you would pay to
be a home guest at their place or the place of someone they might suggest
(again, this has worked out well for us in the past), g) don’t give up easily.
Enjoy the hunt. Rather than get all stressed, know that it is going to take
time and effort and just pace yourself. Take in the neighborhood feel and
notice the architecture around you. Stop for lunch or a coffee, etc. It’s only
a fool’s errand if you give up too easily and act the fool while looking.
One of our best week long stays came about by meeting
someone at an ice cream parlor who, after chatting for a bit, offered to move
her and her baby out of her home and into her mother’s place to then rent us
her house. She needed the money and we needed a place to stay. Win, win. Plus
we had all the conveniences of home. Then there was the time in relatively
rural Turkey where our inquiring around for a great place for dinner resulted
in a guy giving us a ride (to and from) his brother’s restaurant a few miles
away. The food was excellent. People who need the money will help you find a
solution. Wear a smile and talk to everyone. And have fun with it.
If all else fails consider spending the night in one of Rio’s
hundreds of “love hotels,” generally labeled motels. These establishments are
in most areas and can vary from pretty fancy setups where all the magic happens
to seriously funky flop houses where you should probably use your own sheets.
But seriously, many of these motels can be a reasonable place to spend a night to get a
fresh start on your neighborhood search in the morning.
Perhaps I digress. Admittedly most folks going to the World
Cup did not pay all that money for air travel and game tickets to find
themselves sleeping in a temporarily-converted children's room and doubled up
with three generations of residents in a private home or in a room adjacent to
a sex worker’s home base. I guess my point is to think outside the box and know
that a solution is out there for those willing to put in the shoe leather to
find it.
So to wrap up…
The bad news (which you already know) is that
if you have read this far you probably have plans to be in Brazil for the World
Cup but you have yet to secure all the housing you need during your stay. The
good news is that you still have a lot of time to sort things out. But don’t
delay any further. Get to work putting some of these tips into action. People
with extra cash in their possession can usually pay someone to solve their
problem for them (and in the case of the World Cup they will get very expensive
accommodation, for sure). The rest of us have to produce some personal magic,
otherwise known as hard work.
Don’t panic. You still have time. Now get to it. Being in
Brazil for the World Cup is going to be amazing and worth all your efforts.
Good luck!
3 comments:
Nice comfort room, but i failed getting the ticket! Sold out.
I find even suggesting anyone staying in favelas quite reckless or downright criminal. There is no pacifying going on. There is a full scale war. Police are being beaten up so bad that national guard i.e. military had to be called over to help. The overall atmosphere in Rio De Janeiro is far from anticipation of a great sports event. Instead whores, drug dealers and thieves are waiting big fat tourists to arrive.
Well Anon (whoever you are...) you are certainly entitled to your opinion. But I stand by my suggestion. I did not suggest that people wander into an unknown neighborhood that feels sketchy and knock on doors... I offered a reputable middle-man service to find a room. Like I said: "Book a room in a favela and prepare to have your preconceptions shattered."
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