Favorite website for hotels on the Continent?

I'm looking for a good deal for a hotel in Florence in January.

What are some of your favorite websites for finding hotels on the Continent?

i work in kinda a strange way-i check out major places like hotels.com, lastminute.com, opodo.co.uk etc...

but the best way i have found is to go to tripadvisor.com, look up the highest ranked places and then google their sites, check each for deals....i've found awesome places this way

and a nice trick is to stay in the ones that are listed as B&B.....i've found some keepers that way!

Thanks for the tripadvisor.com suggestion, Aimiloo! I'm just having a look on it now, and the places look great. It's nice to see that the highest ranked places are not necessarily the most expensive. And I love the candid photos. It's easy for a professional to make an ok place look better than it is, so these help a lot!

I'm going to take your suggestion and look at the individual sites now.

tripadvisor is my friend!

Tripadvisor and Venere are great for gathering info and narrowing down the selection!

Tripadvisor is great!

I usually google the city, like for Prague I googled "prague tourism" or something and there is always a website dedicated to tourism in the particular location you're looking for. For prague I used www.pragueexperience.com but there are others. So I get info on accomondation and other stuff from there and then check them on Tripadvisor to make sure they get decent reviews.

Maybe try http://www.yourwaytoflorence.com/tourism/florence/accomodation.htm
or http://www.aboutflorence.com/accommodation-and-hotels-in-Florence.html

The reason I don't just go straight to tripadvisor is because I just think a tourism site dedicated solely to the particular location you're visiting is going to have more info than a general tourism site that covers the entire world. But tripadvisor is still a great source for reviews to make sure you're not booking some dump! And the forums on tripadvisor are great to get an idea about what to expect from that location in particular from people who have visited and live there.

Try kayak.com

It is very nice.