Sadgoth's Guide to Wave gotik treffen / leipzig 

WGT - Accommodation

Leipzig is full of hotels, it's a major conference city and thousands of people stay in Leipzig each week to attend international conferences to the north of the city, so you have plenty of choice to suit your budget. However you could decide to stay in one of the many hostels, pensions (B&Bs) or to rent an apartment

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If you decide to stay in a hotel/hostel then you have two things to consider before you book, location and cost, for me it's always location, location, location, so you really want to be in the central ring of Leipzig, as a preference top right of the ring near to the Hauptbahnhof / main tram stop down to the Moritzbastei, however this location will also be the area that sells out first and that will be the most expensive (in general). Another good piece of advice is to check out new hotels, they tend to be cheap the first year they are open and / or won't know about the yearly drumbeat of WGT so could have really cheap prices. If you go for a hostel then you need to decide if you want to bunk in a room with others or have an individual room (feedback from various people over the years has been mixed about hostels, mostly positive esp. most will have a fair contingent of goths in them and apparently the party never ends)

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Whatever accommodation you book I advise you to book early, up to a year in advance (it’s free to reserve a room (in most cases) and you can always cancel a week or two before the event if you can’t actually make it). The best place to book your hotel is on the Internet. There are a multitude of websites where you can book hotels, however Hotel comparisons sites will provide you with the best deals normally such as Trivago, Booking or Hotels dot com. Apartments are a way of getting a little more freedom for a lower cost you can also stay with friends and cook for yourself should you wish. Most apartments tend to be a little further away from the centre of the city in residential parts of the city, Airbnb is probably the best site to use to book an apartment (just watch out for the scams). As for Pensions, these can be located via Google and by a  number of Hotel booking websites, they are dotted across the city and tend to be cheaper (note the owners will probably not speak English and there may be restrictions on when you can come and go)

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If you can afford it then my personal advice is to stay at the Pentahotel Leipzig because this is where the majority of the bands will stay and it’s interesting to hang around downstairs in the lobby bar and people (band) watch, however it can be very expensive. Alternative Hotels that I have used are the Seaside Park Hotel (4 star) or the Westin (4 star) if you have less budget then I would go with one of the Motel One's (3 star), PremierInn's (3 star) or even the Ibis (2 star). If you have the money then the only place to stay is the Steigenberger the best hotel in the City, but expect to pay well over £1200 for your stay.

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Hotel Prices vary from year to year; in 2006 Leipzig was one of the Host Cities for the World Cup and prices went up, and seem to have risen year by year. There can be a number of other festivals taking place in Leipzig over the same weekend, these inflate the cost of hotel rooms esp as they tend to cater to wider more affluent customer (if WGT clashes with the Bach Fest, Wagner Fest or even the Leipzig City Stadfest then prices will be high and rooms will sell out very quickly). In addition WGT takes place over a bank holiday weekend so prices are naturally higher.

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If you are reading this after January then I would suggest that you need to book very quickly, and then you may struggle to find an affordable room in the centre of Leipzig. If its later than January I would suggest that you will be staying in a hotel outside of the City Centre, or paying a premium price (or you can gamble, the official WGT forum and the sadgoth.com Facebook page will have offers of accommodation quite late in the year as people who have previously booked hand back their rooms, these can be transferred to you for no cost, and they are often at the lower rate as they were booked early, however I would also book a room you can hand back, just in case none of these present themselves or you are unlucky transferring them).

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There is an alternative to staying in a Hotel, you can stay in a Guest house / B&B (called Pensions) or in an Apartment. These will be cheaper and will take a little more work to find (as most of the websites seem to be in German only). Apartments are getting more popular, some are only rented out for WGT...there are a couple of sites out there to help you book these but the best has to be Airbnb . Apartments tend to be located away from the City centre (in more residential areas, however they are cheaper and give you more flexibility when it comes to eating and getting up etc). For some its worth weighing up the cost benefit of a larger cheaper apartment outside of town against additional transport costs, if you are a good walker or happy to use the tram then an apartment may well be for you.

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