Here"s A Quick Way To Guarantee You Get That Guest House Room

While I was staying at this cool little guest house in the heritage area of Georgetown (Penang, Malaysia) I observed this particular situation happen on a daily basis.
Throughout the day, travellers would constantly walk in off the street and ask if there were any rooms available.
Now this place was obviously pretty popular, because it was full most of the time.
So you'd see these travellers walk right back out heading for the next guesthouse.
Now of course anyone can take a chance with an approach like that.
But if you've got 20 minutes here's a way that is 100 percent guaranteed to get you your room, not to mention save you walking around hoping to get lucky.
And it's pretty simple too - as long as you have Internet access here's how to do it: 1.
Go Online And Search for 'your location' and 'guesthouse' in one line.
What came up for me (and what I eventually used) was the Lonely Planet website.
This sites gives you a great list of guesthouses available in ANY chosen location, plus how much a room costs per night, and good little Lonely Planet reviews of each place.
2.
Refine Your Search by looking at the reviews (quality of the guesthouse, for example, does the guesthouse have Internet or offer free breakfast?, cleanliness, storage for your gear etc), what particular price you are budgeting for, and so on.
3.
Be Flexible About The Choices.
The 'trick' to getting your room is that you need to A) be flexible about choosing different guesthouses, and B) try different dates if you are not finding the right room come up.
4.
Lock In Your Room.
As an example, I plugged in my travel dates and had to move things around a bit, trying different guesthouses until one came up at the right price.
Once you find your chosen room/guesthouse immediately book your spot.
With this site you only need to make the deposit - you pay the rest when you're actually there.
(I like that idea!) That's the process in a nutshell.
By booking (actually paying by debit/credit card or PayPal) you're issued with a booking number and details (including map and directions from the airport) to your guesthouse.
Print that out and you're done.
Your room is locked in and your name is on it - no need to spend time walking around asking anymore!