Travel Talk is a new Sosauce blog series in which we chat with our favorite travel experts about celebrating the saucy side of travel. With such successful experiences in travel media, we want to highlight their journeys from turning a passion for wanderlust into a profession, their travel plans for the new year, and how they document and share their own travel experiences.
You can read our previous Travel Talk traveler spotlights here.
This week we are chatting with our friends, Pete and Tom Meyers, brothers and co-owners of budget hotel site, EuroCheapo.com. As fellow New York travel start-up business partners, the Meyers brothers fill us in on what it’s like to run a family business, how the economy is affecting travel this year, and how to score a great hotel deal in Europe.
Tom and Pete looking through hotel review notes in a bar in Brussels
When did you realize you wanted to incorporate travel as part of your career? How is running an independent business in the travel industry?
Tom: We grew up in a family that took a lot of road trips and just had fun riding around together in a big, old family van listening to Queen’s Greatest Hits. So at an early age I guess I associated travel with enjoying myself, learning and appreciating the experience. And, our parents didn’t have to spend a lot of money for us to have a good time.
Running an independent business in travel shares many similarities to our family van: you can choose your own destination and go wherever the wind moves you, but you have to pay for your own gas and sometimes the A/C doesn’t work.
What inspired you to create EuroCheapo.com?
Tom: Again, our family provided a lot of inspiration for the site. In the 1950s our grandparents started a free bi-weekly newspaper mailed to rural families in northern Ohio.
Our grandmother hunted down and wrote the stories, took and developed the photos, did layout and our grandfather sold the advertisements and did a final edit. Until they sold the paper 16 years later, the group put out Ohio’s finest family-run publication, largely produced in the basement of our grandparent’s house surrounded by cats.
Fifty years later, after a brief experience as an NBC page checking for burned out light bulbs and then as a producer at a software company, I started EuroCheapo. I bought “HTML for Dummies,” taught myself the basics of building a website, and eventually quit my job to move to East Berlin where I started the site.
Today, the way we operate EuroCheapo is similar to our grandparents’ newspaper. I edit the site in tandem with several other talented writers here in New York, and manage a large group of correspondents who write for us from various cities across Europe. Pete handles marketing and business-y matters, and we both pitch in to cover everything else that falls in between.
Pete: And just for the record, our grandmother came up with the name. She thinks it’s a riot.
What’s on the travel agenda for EuroCheapo this year?
Pete: We have a pretty busy schedule full of visiting new cities to add to the site and updating hotel listings in cities we already cover. Our listings editor, Sarah, recently returned from Helsinki, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Berlin, and this week Tom will be heading to Paris and then Venice.
Tom & Pete in Berlin
Tom: We’ll also be in Rome and London before this summer and – drum roll – we’re about to launch a new travel podcast called “Wandering Cheapos,” which should be a hoot.
How does a Travel Geek use EuroCheapo.com to find affordable lodging? Walk us through the site.
Tom: We’ve tried to set up the site to help two types of travelers: those who know where they want to go and those who are still trying to decide.
If you already know your destination, just enter the city name and travel dates into our search engine and we’ll display all available Editor’s Picks and prices from several reservation agencies to compare rates. We combine our editorial reviews and neighborhood descriptions with loads of techie meta-search engine stuff, like filters for average user rating, distances to landmarks, price range and accommodation type.
But if you don’t know where you want to go, our city guides feature articles on how to visit each particular destination on a modest budget. Travelers can read reviews and view photos of budget hotels our editors have personally visited. We also talk about city transportation options, what to expect to spend, day trip ideas and plenty of other info.
We realize different travelers have different needs and do our best to give them practical information to plan their trip.
What are some of the most popular destinations for hotels according to EuroCheapo.com this season?
Pete: Regardless of the time of year, Paris is always the most popular city on our site and major destinations such as Amsterdam, Rome, and London are consistently popular. But we’re also seeing a large increase in activity for smaller cities such as Bruges, Budapest and Nice.
What are some insider tips to finding awesome budget-friendly hotels in Europe?
Tom: Try and think about what you really need in a hotel rather than what is just nice to have. If you’re traveling in April, you probably don’t need to worry about central air conditioning. And if you’re traveling in Europe, do you really need to pay for satellite TV in your room?
Pete: Also, try and familiarize yourself with a city’s layout prior to booking and research hotels in neighborhoods where you’ll be spending most of your time. You can save a lot of money by not taking taxis or even public transportation, especially in very large, spread out cities like London.
How has the economy affected European travel? Have you observed any unusual or unforeseen pitfalls in the travel and tourism industry?
Pete: In general, I think people are traveling smarter and spending more time researching their trips in order to spend less. We haven’t seen an abrupt change in reservation destinations, but have noticed people are waiting longer to book their hotels in order to try and get a good last minute deal. And, by and large, they’re doing this successfully – there are a lot of bargains out there.
Some prefer to write, others prefer taking photos to relive their travel experiences. What is your favorite way to document your travel experiences?
Pete: I take loads of photos and always have my Flip cam in my pocket. And I tend to take too many photos of my food, come to think of it. But I try not to make the process of documenting my trips overwhelm the experience of travel.
As owners of a travel start-up, what advice would you give someone also trying to launch a business in travel media?
Tom: Do what you truly love and try to focus on an individual category or niche, rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Pete: Work with talented people who you genuinely enjoy being around. Even if that includes a brother who made fun of your parachute pants when you were 10.
Pete at his favorite seafood stand in Brussels, Mer du Nord
Tom in Berlin just after launching the site in 2001
Thanks to Pete and Tom at EuroCheapo for talking with Sosauce about budget travels in Europe. Make sure you browse EuroCheapo.com to book your own affordable hotel stay in Europe for your next trip and keep up with all things Cheapo at their blog.
We want to put the spotlight on more expert travelers! So if you have great advice and amazing tales to share, email us for a chance to be interviewed here on the Sosauce blog.
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We had the pleasure of running into Tom (gee, I hope that was you!) in Venice at the Hotel Al Vagon back in 2003. We continue to use the Eurocheapo website to book our hotels in Prague, London, and Venice (we almost feel bad that we have family throughout Munich). I really just want to thank the guys and their staff for 1) doing what they love so well and 2) providing the rest of us with their fun insight to travel throughout Europe!
I love the story about the family business. It adds so much more to the Cheapo motto!