How to Book a Hotel for Spring Training

By its very nature, baseball's spring training is a communal experience that brings players and fans together in more intimate settings than you will usually find during the regular season. While some fans like to enjoy the game, and then leave baseball behind for the other 20 hours of the day, others enjoy immersing themselves in a total baseball experience.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Plan well in advance to book a hotel room that meets your needs for your trip to spring training. You may be competing with spring break traffic, so it is best to book by early January.
2. Choose a hotel location that balances your need to be near your team's spring training facility with proximity to other attractions, like the beach. Even if you spend 5 hours a day at the ballpark, you'll still have another 10 hours a day for other activities.
3. Book a budget or inexpensive hotel to help keep your spring training trip expenses within your means. Between the games and the beautiful weather, you may not be doing much more than sleeping in the room.
4. Check your team's web page on MLB.com for spring training package deals and hotel recommendations (see Resources below). The hotels that are listed there are likely to be very baseball friendly, with plenty of fans and an occasional player sighting.
5. Use Google Maps to find hotels within a short radius of the ballpark by pasting the address of your team's spring training facility into the search field (see Resources below).
6. Select a hotel with the amenities and conveniences that are important to you, such as room service and free Internet access. When you discover a new prospect on the field, you can go back to your hotel and use the Internet to look up his minor-league stats at the Baseball-Reference website (see Resources below).

Tips & Warnings

• If you aren't sure what kind of traffic your prospective hotel attracts, and you have no recommendations to go on, try to have a direct conversation with an on-premises hotel employee before you book. You want someone responsible enough to tell you the truth and someone who works on-site rather than for the 800-number resource.