If you are one of the lucky few with tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games, you might be considering booking in to a budget hotel for a night or two.

London welcomes tourists from all around the world every year so there are hundreds of budget hotels dotted around the city, but these budget bedrooms may now break the bank.

According to Visit Britain, London will see over 300,000 visitors during July for the Olympics and they will be competing for just 140,000 hotel rooms. The huge demand for hotel rooms means that the prices of rooms are being hiked up tremendously.

The online hotel room website Hotels.com claims that during the Olympics Games the typical London hotel room will set you back £210 per night. This is more than double the average room for the same period last year.

It’s not only Hotels.com that found London hotels were pushing their rooms through the budget barrier, a Which? Travel report also found the same results. The research shows that a room at the Holiday Inn Express on 27th July would cost £359.50 compared to just £85 on 18th July.

If you have blown your budget on tickets for the Olympics and are not prepared to pay these extortionate prices, then at Compareandsave.com, you can check now out our top alternative accommodation, with prices to suit your budget.

Pitch your tent
When considering budget accommodation for the London Olympics you may not have thought of camping. Despite being the largest city in the UK, there are a number of cheap camping options available to you.

Camp in my Garden at www.campinmygarden.com is a scheme, which is the ‘world’s first garden camping community’ and allows homeowners to rent out spaces to pitch tents in their back gardens. Fortunately, there are many London homeowners with fabulous gardens right on the doorstep of some of the major sporting events.

If you have tickets for the Olympic Opening Ceremony, you and three friends could pitch a tent in one of the gardens for £25 per person per night. For examples, one advert states that an available garden space is ‘seconds away’ from the Tube station and thirty minutes’ walk from the Olympic Park.

Camping at the Games at www.campingatthegames.com is another excellent scheme, which has been set up specifically for the Olympics. The idea is that visitors can camp out in the grounds of sports clubs in London, all within a few miles of Olympic venues.

Eton Manor Rugby Club is a 9 minute tube journey away from the Olympic Park and is in an ideal location for a number of the event. Camping here will cost just £10 per adult and £5 per child per night. Even if you don’t have, any of your own camping gear the campsite will provide extra for just another couple of pounds.

Try out glamping

Should the thought of spending a couple of nights in a damp sleeping bag in a sopping wet field not fill you with joy, you could opt for a glampsite. This new phenomenon is taking the UK by storm, as more people prefer a luxury experience when camping.

Check out Camp in London at www.campinlondon.com  offers traditional camping and luxury glamping. They claim that booking into their luxury Bell Tents will be ‘just like staying at a hotel’.  A bold claim but considering camping here provides guests with a 24 hour reception, private lounge and luxury toilets, they may be right. The ‘rooms’ come with luxury inflatable mattresses, 100% Egyptian cotton linen, towels, tables, rugs and even a chandelier. There will be shuttle buses running from the campsite to Olympic Park every day.

 At £100 per adult and £30 per child, the cost of glamping is significantly more expensive than traditional camping, but it is still a far cry from the outrageous amounts quoted for the Olympic period by London hotels.

Hostels

Staying in a hostel is commonly associated with students on gap-year backpacking around the world, but they are a cheap alternative to costly hotel rooms during the Olympics. Rather than private rooms you will usually have to stay in a shared dorm, but other than that they operate in a similar way to a hotel.

Journeys Greenwich West Hostel in South East London has beds from just £40.01 for the night of the Olympic Opening Ceremony. It is sensible to make sure you watch out for minimum stays during the peak season.

The 2012 London Olympics are going to be expensive time for anyone staying in London as the price of everything will probably skyrocket. However, if you are willing to spend the time thinking of creative alternatives, you could save hundreds of pounds.

Staying in a hostel is commonly associated with students on gap-year backpacking around the world, but they are a cheap alternative to costly hotel rooms during the Olympics. Rather than private rooms you will usually have to stay in a shared dorm, but other than that they operate in a similar way to a hotel.

Journeys Greenwich West Hostel in South East London has beds from just £40.01 for the night of the Olympic Opening Ceremony. It is sensible to make sure you watch out for minimum stays during the peak season.

The 2012 London Olympics are going to be expensive time for anyone staying in London as the price of everything will probably skyrocket. However, if you are willing to spend the time thinking of creative alternatives, you could save hundreds of pounds.

	Written by :
	Jemma is a news & research reporter for compareandsave.com.Having worked as a journalist on a number of personal finance websites; she now spends time researching and commenting on UK personal finance stories and investigating new ways to help our readers save money.For press enquiries, please visit our Media Centre page.