To find the right hotel for you, you firstly need to decide on a budget for your stay, this may seem like a needless comment but lots of people just assume that Australia is going to be cheap and don't bother to budget their stay. In fact Sydney is not a budget destination it has mostly mid to high range hotels. To find a reasonable budget you should decide on what amenities, services and room layout you want, then you must decide where you want to be located. When deciding on a hotel these are all important factors and you may have to be willing to compromise one or more of these to suit your budget.

Now to find out what options you have in this regard you have a few choices, assuming you do not already know the area well, you can surf the web for hours upon hours looking at individual hotels and hotel reviews (this is not the option I recommend as the time you take doing this can be better spent on planning your daily activities or in fact anything else).

Secondly, you can use one of the large database driven accommodation websites that offer you a large range of hotels with very generic and often misleading information on the hotels they are offering you.

Thirdly (and this is the option that I am here to most strongly recommend). You can use a specialty web service dedicated to offering a comprehensive service and first hand, local, well informed, un-biased, useful information. Yes there is such a place, as with most major cities, Sydney has a large tourist industry and many businesses focused on niche markets within it. These smaller local businesses take pride in providing the best local information and do not charge any booking fees, unlike the larger database driven hotel directories. All that the smaller agent asks is that you book through them so that they can claim a commission from the hotel you end up booking with.

This commission does not effect the price of your hotel and often you will get a better price than if you book directly with the hotel because the hotels offer agents like "M-Power Accommodation" more competitive rates as they know the agent will be looking for the best deal for their client because the key to being a successful agent is in having a satisfied client.

Booking your hotel through a local agent (like M-Power which is the only one I would use and can vouch for), is the smarter and easier option, let me tell you more about why that is:

M-Power Accommodation which runs the web site www.sydneyhotelsaccommodation.com offering a range of Sydney Hotels will be there to help you with any information you need. You can talk to them over the phone if you wish or via e-mail. They will answer your questions from first hand knowledge of the hotels around Sydney, they are not just reading a marketing blurb set out by the hotel. They will book the hotel for you and if for whatever the reason there are problems when you arrive like the hotel over booked themselves (which does happen, although the hotel usually wont tell you when it has happened), M-Power will take responsibility as an agent and will hound the hotel until they give you a room or find you an equivalent alternative and will never let you find yourself staying in some flea bag motel or hostel sharing a bunk with some drunk backpacker who snores like a broken fog horn all night. Which is what could happen if you book with one of the larger hotel booking agents.

As far as the larger booking services are concerned. Once they have their payment it is in the hotels hands and they would prefer to never hear from you again unless it is to give them more money. Most of the large hotel directories that you find even when they appear to be only area specific accommodation are generated from a world wide database of hotels and the company that owns it has very little to do with the local area you are staying in except a registered name and maybe an admin guy in an office somewhere.

If you are interested in staying elsewhere in australia you can get the same service with a more select range of hotels from the following links:

Cairns Hotels
Melbourne Hotels

Also if you are planning an event in Sydney you can have a look here for sydney conference hotels where you will find a useful list of hotels that cater specifically for functions and events and come highly recommended. You can also discuss arrangements for accommodation and more specific needs with the freindly client relations agents.