In Reply to: How do you decide where to stay? posted by SarahD on Monday, 10. October 2011 at 11:18 Bali Time:
by first deciding on the general location and type of accommodation you want.
We have a young daughter & like to have the best of both worlds...
the facilities of a resort but with the extra space of a separate living & kitchen area. This really narrows it down for us as we find there are limited options available for apartment style rooms within a hotel/resort complex. Hubby also has a requirement of being no more than 5-10 mins walk from the beach which narrows it down even more!
I then look for feedback on our options on Trip Advisor, here & other online forums. You will always see both negative & positive reviews for a place (case in point, we LOVE Villa Puri Ayu in Sanur and have stayed twice previously but others have bagged it). When making a decision, if the majority of reviews are good then I choose to ignore the bad ones (dependant upon what the bad reviews were in relation to - some people expect champagne on a beer budget IMO).
I spend weeks researching before finally booking and we have never had a dud yet (touch wood!). My husband has always been more than impressed with my choices of accommodation, especially for our budget which is similar to yours :-)