{"id":2685,"date":"2008-10-20T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/10\/psst-looking-for-a-cheap-room-try-a-convent.html"},"modified":"2008-10-20T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-20T13:45:00","slug":"psst-looking-for-a-cheap-room-try-a-convent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/10\/psst-looking-for-a-cheap-room-try-a-convent.html","title":{"rendered":"Psst? Looking for a cheap room? Try a convent"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> That seems to be the advice of a travel writer at the New York Times<\/a>, who today offers some sage advice for travelers trying to save a buck.<\/p>\n

In a word, pray: <\/p>\n

When Kathleen Mazzocco was researching places for an affordable family vacation in Italy back in 2002, booking a room in a convent was \u201clike shooting in the dark,\u201d she recently recalled.<\/p>\n

The guidebook to religious lodgings that Ms. Mazzocco used had no photographs, and she wasn\u2019t sure the information was up-to-date. After mailing money orders to convents in Rome and Florence, she received no response. \u201cI was on pins and needles,\u201d she said. \u201cI had no idea if they had our reservations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But by the time Ms. Mazzocco, a public relations consultant from Lake Oswego, Ore., returned to Italy last year, making a reservation at a monastery was not so different from booking a regular hotel. She found the cliffside Monastero S. Croce, in Liguria, on the Internet, viewed photos of it on the monastery\u2019s own Web site, sent an e-mail message asking about availability, heard back promptly, and, at the end of her stay, paid with a credit card. \u201cThey\u2019d entered the modern age,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For centuries Europe\u2019s convents and monasteries have quietly provided inexpensive lodging to itinerants and in-the-know travelers, but now they\u2019re increasingly throwing open their iron-bound doors to overnight visitors. They\u2019ve begun Web sites \u2014 many with English translations and detailed information about sampling monastic life for a night \u2014 and signed on with Internet booking services. Some have even added spa offerings. Occupancy has shot up at many places, and some of the more centrally located are often fully booked.<\/p>\n

And while some of the people staying at such holy spots are among the 300,000 religious travelers fueling the booming $18 billion faith-tourism industry, others are simply ordinary vacationers seeking a more authentic alternative to an anonymous hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty years ago, nobody was going to monasteries unless they were into religious tourism,\u201d said Andrea Moretti, a travel consultant at the Italian Government Tourist Board, who estimates that between 1 and 5 percent of Italy\u2019s 93 million annual visitors stay in religious lodgings, with Americans particularly attracted to them. \u201cNow even if they\u2019re not interested in religion, people consider a monastery because they like the pace and feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not to mention the price. While peaceful interior courtyards and the chance to hear nuns singing Vespers are certainly part of the allure, religious lodgings are almost always cheaper than hotels \u2014 often considerably cheaper. And with the dollar remaining weak, more and more travelers are looking at convents and monasteries as a way to beat the euro. So what if they don\u2019t have mini bars and room service?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent less than half what we would have in a comparable hotel,\u201d said Marilyn Henderson, a retired accountant from Lakewood, Wash., of the Opera della Divina Provvidenza, in Venice, where she and her husband stayed in July. The Hendersons paid 136 euros a night ($189 at $1.39 to the euro) for a double room with a private bath in the church-owned guesthouse, which has ceiling frescoes by Tintoretto and Tiepolo and is a 15-minute walk from San Marco. \u201cIt was easily equivalent to a three-star accommodation,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Check out the link<\/a> for more. <\/p>\n

Photo: The Monasterium Poortackere in Ghent, Belgium. Photo by Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That seems to be the advice of a travel writer at the New York Times, who today offers some sage advice for travelers trying to save a buck. In a word, pray: When Kathleen Mazzocco was researching places for an affordable family vacation in Italy back in 2002, booking a room in a convent was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-and-that"],"yoast_head":"\nPsst? Looking for a cheap room? 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}