So you’ve decided which feis you’re going to. That’s great! Or maybe you’ve decided that you want to feis but want to learn more before committing. That’s a good move, and you might want to check out our recent article for some tips on how to save money on feis. But doing good work means getting more work to do, so now you (probably) have to get a hotel room as well. That can be a little daunting if you don’t do it often, and nowadays it can be very expensive. Then there’s meals to consider, because you’re going to need to eat. But eating out can get very expensive. Below we’ve got a list of our tips and tricks to help make getting your hotel rooms and meals hotels cheap and easy while feising… including a few that are specific to Irish dance.
1: The Room Block
Feis are often held in hotels- they’re big buildings and a lot of them have huge conference rooms that are good for setting up stages in. When this happens, the feis committee will usually set up something called a room block. A room block is a set of hotel rooms set aside for people attending the feis to book. Sometimes there’s a discount associated with these rooms because the feis committee got a bulk price, and often the feis will be allowed to use more conference space if they fill enough rooms in their block. Most feis will have a site you can go through to get a room in these blocks, and if not you just have to tell the hotel when you book that you’re with the feis.
So what are the pros and cons of going for a room block?
Pros:
Filling up the room blocks usually helps the feis in some way, usually through getting access to more stage space to make it go faster.
Having your room in the feis building makes everything so much easier on the day of. It’s easier to get up in time because you’re just going downstairs, it’s not as bad if you forget something in the room, non-dancing family members can hide up there until the music stops- there’s a million benefits.
The rooms are often discounted, letting you stay in that hotel for less money than you usually would.
Cons:
The room blocks tend to fill up at lightning speed- not helped by the fact that some people will get a bunch of rooms at once and parcel them out to friends at their school- so actually getting one can be hard and stressful.
Your hotel is going to be extremely high traffic on the day of.
Hotels with big conference rooms are usually a bit higher-end, and even with a discount the room’s price is going to reflect that. Even if you’re paying less than you normally would for a room at that specific hotel, you might still be able to save more going elsewhere.
So, should you go for the room block? Sadly there’s not an easy answer; whether it’s a smart idea or not is going to vary from person to person and even feis to feis. We can say that it’s definitely something you should consider when making your plans.
2: Other Hotels
But maybe you decide not to go for the room block. Maybe it gets snapped up before you can snag one. Or maybe your feis just isn’t in a hotel; a lot of them are in schools. You’ll still need somewhere to stay, if the feis isn’t close enough for you to drive there and back again in the same day.
Finding the right hotel for you can be especially hard on the wallet some times. Fortunately there are a few things you can do to cut down on the price of hotel visits. Firstly and most obviously, there’s sites like expedia, hotwire, and countless more that can help you find and book hotel rooms at steep discounts, sometimes on very short notice. It’s a very good idea to familiarize yourself with as many of these sites as you can so you can find the one that works best for you and your region.
These sites are also useful for helping you get started on learning when to book hotels. Now, room prices fluctuate a lot based on seasons and how far out the room is being booked and, frankly, some guesswork on the part of the owners, so it’s hard to nail down an exact rule on when it’s best to book a room.
There is a strategy that you can use to fish for good deals, though. If you can get something that’s refundable or paid day-of-arrival booked early on as a fallback, you might see some benefit from scouring the area later in the eleventh hour for those last-minute cancellations that give such good discounts. If you don’t find anything, no harm done. You’ve got your refundable room already locked in. If you do find a good deal, you can lock it in and then cancel your other reservation. There’s not an exact science to when you should book a hotel room, and whether you want to go to the extra effort is up to you and your schedule.
There are also hotel loyalty programs to consider. Many hotels, especially the really large national chains like Marriott, have loyalty programs that reward you for staying at those hotels frequently with things like discounts, cashback deals, and perks. These can really add up over time, especially if you stay under one brand’s umbrella, so it’s worth considering if a loyalty program is worth your time.
Beyond lowering the price of booking, you can also look at potentially sharing a room or suite with someone else going to the same feis. This is obviously easier if you’re traveling in a smaller group- getting two parents and two dancers into one room is a lot easier than four parents and six kids, after all. It’s going to be a tighter fit and less comfortable most of the time, but going half-and-half on a room does save a lot of money and you can potentially afford a bigger room to help compensate for the increased occupants. This is one of those strategies where some people will be fine with it and some people just won’t, and that’s up to you to decide.
Whatever you decide, there are a few factors outside raw star rating and price that are important to consider when you’re looking to get a hotel for a feis. For example:
Do they have free breakfast? This can be a huge help on both a monetary and convenience level, depending on what’s available. Our experience says that you usually see free breakfasts in the two to two and a half star range of hotels, and that’s where we tend to default to on the feis trail.
How close is the hotel to the feis? Another super important thing that sites like expedia and priceline might actually get in the way of. They don’t always show you exactly where the room you’re booking is until you’ve locked in, so you can end up being twenty minutes farther out than you expected… which means getting up twenty minutes earlier at least.
Are there places nearby to get food? This won’t exactly save you money, but it will save you time and grief which can be even better. Having a decent restaurant to hobble into after a long day of feising can do wonders to either make up for a loss or celebrate a success!
Does the room have a fridge and microwave? Meal prep is a massive part of lowering your costs while traveling, and having a way to store and heat food is vital to that. A full kitchen is obviously a little beyond the pale, but a basic microwave and minifridge will get you through a weekend easily. It’s also noteworthy that when the hotel doesn’t have these amenities it often means that they have a deeply overpriced restaurant built in that they want you to go to instead.
3: Meals
Eating while traveling can be a real bugbear. Eating out is easier and usually really tasty, there’s no denying that. Especially when you’re in a hotel room for a few nights and only have a microwave to work with. But it’s a lot more expensive and usually not as healthy as something you made yourself. Prepping meals ahead of time is cheaper and it is healthier, but it can also be kind of a hassle and there are some meals that really do not agree with being shipped across the country in your cooler.
If you’re going to eat out for the night, consider making it a group effort with other dancers and family from your school. Doing a big group delivery order can actually save you a lot on delivery fees if everyone chips in, and nothing says ‘sporting event’ like a swarm of kids and parents sharing a stack of pizzas the night after. It’s also helpful to budget for the takeout in your initial plans- that might seem obvious, but planning to spend some money ahead of time means that you’re more likely to stay within that budget when you’re tired and cranky and impatient in the moment.
As for meal prep, that’s actually a subject we here at Irish Seams have some experience with! We feis all the time, so we’ve had to put together a few menus that are easy to make and travel well when we’re running all over the country. Here’s what we do:
Our Menus For A Normal Feis:
For a normal feis it’s pretty easy to pre-cook everything we need, so it’s not less important that we have a microwave. If there is no microwave available we usually have baked muffins and a banana for breakfast. We try to bake our own, but grocery store bakery muffins are still a lot cheaper than ones you pick up at the hotel coffee shop.
For lunch and snacks we have sandwiches, individual bags of chips, carrot sticks, grapes, apples, clementines, cheese sticks or cubes, and nuts or trail mix all hold up well in a cooler. In the summertime we grill a lot at home, so we often pack cold hamburgers for lunch. We freeze bottles of water to keep the cooler cold heading out to the feis and pack a gallon ziplock to fill with ice at the hotel once the water bottles have thawed and been consumed.
For dinner we bake chicken breast, or broil a steak, and cut it into chunks to have over salad. Pack mixed greens, onions, radishes, cherry tomatoes in a large ziploc. Pack cucumber slices separately; they get soggy fast when mixed with the salad greens. Bring a small bottle of salad dressing and you’re good to go! We have also baked meatballs and stir-fried shrimp in ginger and garlic butter to have with or over salads. The breaded chicken tenders you get frozen at the supermarket are also good cold, as long as they’re fully cooked.
When there’s a Microwave available, our favorite breakfast to take on the road is homemade Turkey Apple Sausage patties on biscuits, with a banana or fresh berries. We have also taken partially cooked bacon to crisp up and have on a biscuit with cheese. Much cheaper and healthier than fast food!
We are generally busy working the booth at lunch time, so our lunches don’t vary much, but if you are going to be able to go back to your room for lunch, you could take some macaroni and cheese, soup, pasta, etc to warm up for lunch in the room. You would avoid the line and the prices for the feis food, which is generally just chicken strips and fries or pizza. Some places have started bringing in food trucks and similar groups nowadays though, which are definitely a little more tempting.
Dinner when we have a microwave available ranges from warming up homemade beef stew, casserole, or pasta, to just heating a frozen dinner we picked up at the grocery store. It just depends on how busy the week has been and whether we’ve had time to meal prep. We generally try to plan our meals a week in advance, and have meals during a feis week that we can make extra and freeze portions for the feis. The frozen meals help to keep the cooler cold during travel and are easily reheated each night. We always try to have vegetables and fruit each day, even if it is just carrot sticks and an apple.
Our Menus For Extended Stays Like Oireachtas or Nationals:
When we are going to be at the venue for multiple days, we make sure we will have a refrigerator and microwave in our room. We also generally pack our instant pot. After a long day at the booth, the last thing we want to do is head out to a restaurant or wait for delivery. It is nice to come back from a long feis day and be able to quickly make a stir fry to serve over premade rice that we can heat in the microwave, or cook some meat and potatoes to have with a side salad. We normally make a meal plan that includes each meal for every day so that we don’t even have to think about what to prepare. It helps us to make sure we pack everything we need and we don’t resort to eating junk food because we are too tired to think about what to fix.
We have to be at the booth very early, generally an hour and a half before the feis starts, so we tend to plan for easy breakfasts that we can take with us to eat while we are setting up the booth. Bacon or sausage patties and biscuits, muffins, chunks of ham and cheese are all tried and true favorites of ours. We always have a banana at breakfast because it helps prevent leg cramps throughout the day- eat your potassium, folks! Egg cups or hard boiled eggs are also good options, but we tend to avoid eating eggs when feising.
(TIP: Don’t store your salad and delicate veggies in the room fridge. They tend to freeze things. Instead, use your cooler as a produce drawer for your fruit and veggies and add fresh ice each morning.)
We always pack finger food for lunch, because we tend to graze for lunch instead of taking a dedicated lunch break- there’s just not enough time most days. Chicken chunks, steak bites, meatballs, ham and cheese chunks and sandwiches are all good sources of protein. We try to avoid peanut butter sandwiches, even though they hold up very well, because of possible allergies among the dancers we serve. We always pack carrot sticks, clementines, apples, grapes, and individual bags of chips. We also bring tea bags, including some decaffeinated for the evenings, and some cookies to have as a bedtime snack. Dinners are generally a mix of premade (at home or store bought) stir fries, casseroles, soups or stews, and pastas or salads with meat and cheese.
(TIP: Pack paper plates, a roll of paper towels or napkins, plastic cutlery, an insulated coffee mug if you want to take a hot beverage to the feis, and an insulated mug or water bottle to take water or a cold beverage to the feis. We make ice tea in the room to drink throughout the day – we need the caffeine!)
We also take a small glass microwave safe dish for heating up our meals and a dish cloth and dish towel that serves as a wrap during transport and a potholder when heating. It seems like a lot to plan and pack, but our wallets and our bodies are much healthier when we take our own food. We generally get all our food and supplies into a mid-size cooler and a grocery store reusable tote bag, or two bags if we bring the instant pot.
What meals do you prepare for traveling? Are there any tips and tricks for scoring cheap hotel rooms that we missed? Let us know on our facebook page, and we’ll see you next time for more tips!