There’s a simple rule of thumb you need to bear in mind when looking for a hotel in Milan – what is it you actually require from the place you’re going to be staying in? This may seem extremely obvious, but my experience is that people often forget this basic principle.

To get to the bottom of this, you need to go into the question at a basic level. So when you’re looking through the list of Milan hotels that are available to you, you are in the best possible position to make an informed choice about the hotel that most matches what you’re looking for.

The first thing to look at, of course, is why it is you want to stay in a hotel at all. Generally, this will be because you’re going on holiday or for work purposes. There are other reasons, such as perhaps visiting people or attending a function, but the most likely scenario is you’ll be there for a break or for work.

Once we have in mind why it is we’re going, we then need to determine where in Milan will be the best place for us to be based. This will take into account factors such as whether you want to be near the town centre, near to any sightseeing opportunities, or near to where you’ll be working.

Next you’ll want to be thinking about what sort of facilities you require from the hotel. It’s a long time since you’d have to check whether a hotel had en suite bathrooms or not, as most nowadays do, but you could potentially save some expense if this isn’t important to you. You might also be interested in there being a bar and restaurant on site.

Back in the day, it was unusual for holiday accommodation to include a gym or swimming pool on site, but this is much more common now. And if you feel the need to go on the internet while you’re away, you should check if the hotel has wifi internet access, which is increasingly the norm.

We suggested you might be able to save some cash through looking at reduced facilities, and obviously your overall spend is a key consideration. There’s not a lot of sense in looking for top of the range luxury if you know you can’t afford it. Fortunately, Milan has many hotels in various price ranges so you should find something suitable quite easily.

So, knowing whereabouts you want to be, and the kind of things you want from your hotel, you’ll want to check out all the hotels in Milan that match your criteria. You can compare them all against the list of features you’ve decided upon, and zero in on the best match.

And finally, you’ll want to be sure the hotel you want to stay in is actually available on the dates you want to be there. Make sure you check for each of the nights you want to stay to ensure your chosen hotel is suitable for the whole time frame you want to book for.