Is it worth paying more for a hotel that includes breakfast?

Don't fall for the trick of thinking every included breakfast is a bargain. Plenty of hotels charge more and serve weak coffee, stale cookies, and boxed juice that's not worth drinking. It's really worth it when the hotel is in an area with no restaurants nearby, or when you already know the breakfast is decent. If you're in a neighborhood with a bakery, supermarket, or snack bar right around the corner, it usually doesn't make as much sense.

What I'd do is compare the final price, not just the room rate. If the room with breakfast costs 50 reais more and you'd save 30 reais per person eating there instead of outside, then it's not really worth it. But if the difference is small and the hotel is far from everything, that changes things. It also depends on your routine - if you leave early, maybe you won't even use it. But if you like waking up relaxed and having something to eat before heading out, without having to go looking for a place, it can be worth quite a bit, yeah.

What nobody really talks about is that the answer changes a lot depending on where you're traveling to. If you're going somewhere touristy, like downtown in a capital city, a decent breakfast at the hotel gets way too expensive if you pay separately - then it's definitely worth having it included. But if you're in a small town inland or in an area with lots of bakeries and good breakfast spots around, you get more flexibility by going without the commitment.

Another important thing: the total price of the hotel with breakfast included isn't always that much higher than it looks. Sometimes the difference is minimal, like 50 reais a night, but when you go eat out afterward you easily drop 80, 100. The trick is to compare properly - get the room price without breakfast, then get it with breakfast, and then calculate if it makes sense based on what you'd normally spend on food in that region. If the breakfast is really basic, you can also eat lightly there and grab a snack later at a local bakery that's cheaper and sometimes tastier anyway.

Get the hotel's app or call directly and ask to see real photos of the breakfast, not those marketing shots. Then it's easy to decide - if they've got everything, fresh fruit, real cheese and ham, it's worth saving the cash you'd spend eating out. But if it's one of those generic breakfasts with just bad coffee and sliced bread, better to negotiate straight with the front desk to drop the breakfast charge and go eat somewhere cooler in the neighborhood.

I've gotten burned so many times with this that now I always do the same thing: I calculate how much I normally spend on breakfast out and compare it with the difference in room price. If the hotel wants to charge 15 euros more per night and a decent breakfast out there costs 8, it's worth it! But then comes the trap - you really need to check the quality, because cheap hotels that include breakfast are often that sad thing, lukewarm coffee and a plastic cookie.

My advice is to go straight to TripAdvisor or Google Maps for the hotel and head right to the most recent comments about breakfast, because the website photos are always misleading! If people who are actually satisfied mention fruit, yogurt, real eggs, then it's definitely worth paying more.

The best way is to actually calculate how much you'd spend on breakfast outside the hotel and compare it to the price difference - if the nightly rate is R$ 150 more expensive but you save about R$ 120 on breakfast, it's worth it. What the guys didn't mention is that included breakfast also saves you time in the morning, especially if you're traveling in a rush or in a place where you don't know a good spot to eat nearby. But watch out for hotels that offer "breakfast" with only bad coffee and stale croissants - in those cases you're literally paying more just to have less freedom to choose where to eat.

Have you actually calculated how much you spend eating out over a full day of travel, or are you just looking at the room's extra price?

I think people here are right on different points, but we're missing the full picture. It's true that a lot of hotels offer weak coffee and still charge more for it - that's a fact. But it's also true that if you have to pay 15 euros for a small breakfast at some random café every morning, things change. The difference ends up not being that big in the end. What really matters is doing the actual math: how much you'd pay if you ate out vs. how much that room with breakfast included costs.

One thing nobody really mentioned is that a hotel with breakfast included saves time too - I wake up, eat without leaving the place, gain half an hour in the morning. For someone in a capital or a neighborhood where everything's expensive, that's worth quite a bit. The suggestion about checking photos is good, yeah, but I'd add something: ask directly by email or phone what the variety is like. If they say they have fresh fruit, cheese, cold cuts and fresh bread, that's different from reheated biscuits, you know. Actually ask for examples, so you're not left wondering.

I think people are overcomplicating this - most of the time it's just about being willing to wake up early and make the most of what's there. The key thing nobody really mentioned is that an included breakfast saves you time just as much as money, because you don't need to go hunting for a restaurant when you're in a rush to get out the door, and that's worth a lot when you're traveling for work or with a small kid. Now, if you're the type who likes to explore local cafes and only has coffee for coffee, then yeah, it really doesn't make sense to pay premium for a buffet at the hotel - but in that case it's more about experience preference than actual financial math.

It really depends on the context, but I think the question is a bit off. It's not so much "is it worth paying more" as "how much more am I actually paying for it". Because some hotels already include breakfast and charge the same as others without it - in that case it's obviously worth it. The problem is when you see a room at €80 with breakfast and another at €60 without, and you're left wondering if the €20 difference is worth it.

I went through this in Lisbon last year. The hotel I wanted was €95 with breakfast included, and I found another decent one at €75 in roughly the same area. I calculated that a decent coffee there would run €6-7, and I'd eat breakfast there 3 days. That would be about €20 total. So the math worked out - worth paying an extra €20. But I was honest with myself: the breakfast at that €75 hotel was probably just instant coffee and everything out of a tin. So I went with the €95 one. No regrets, because it really did have fresh fruit, cheese that actually looked real, and I saved time in the mornings.

The real trick is doing that simple calculation: how much would you spend on breakfast out those days, how much time would you waste looking for decent coffee near the hotel, and then see if the price difference makes sense. If the difference is €30 for three nights and you'd spend €5 per breakfast, it's not worth it. If it's €10 difference, it's always worth it. And yeah, like someone commented here, it's definitely worth asking the hotel for real photos before you book - you can't trust marketing photos.

I test it differently: I look for specific reviews about the breakfast on Google Maps or TripAdvisor, not just the hotel's overall rating. People comment a lot on the details ("lukewarm coffee", "rotten fruit", "had fresh milk") and that's when you actually see if it's worth it. Then it's just a matter of doing the math - if the room with breakfast included costs €20 more and you'd spend €15 eating out, it's worth it; if it's €50 more, then it gets questionable even if the breakfast is good.