Want to go to the Olympics?

"Rooms available during the Olympics? Are you kidding?" Frederica Pontone's eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up. "We've been booked ever since they announced Torino would be the host." The receptionist at Turin's Hotel Dogana Vecchia gestured across the hotel's 18th-century courtyard. "My father—he runs the Hotel Residence San Domenico, just behind here?—he's full, too. They got the whole French delegation. We've got the Canadians." She shook her head and smiled sadly. "I don't think there's a room left in all of Torino."

No Room at the Inn

She's right. Every last hotel room in the host city has already been reserved for the February 10–26 2006 Winter Games. That doesn't mean you can't find a place to stay in Turin, or find a hotel in the surrounding Piemonte region. Just that finding a bed will require a little creativity. (Getting tickets to Olympic events is far more straightforward; we'll cover that at the end of this article.)

First of all, there are plenty of hotel rooms to be had in the region, so long as you don't insist on staying in Turin itself, where they will hold most stadium events (skating, ice hockey, and all ceremonies), or in the Val di Susa/Sestriere mountain resorts two hours west of Turin where all the Alpine events will take place (skiing, snowboarding, bobsled, luge, etc.).

The official portal for booking hotel rooms during the Games is Jumbo Grandi Eventi — which translates as "Big Huge Events" — but its pickings are pretty meager. When I checked on November 6, it was offering stays in 39 largely mid-range hotels throughout the region, costing on average $105 to $335 per night for a double room. Most were in towns in the industrial Po plains of eastern Piemonte, amidst the vineyards southeast of Turin, or in the northern lakelands around Lakes Orta and Maggiore — all area lying roughly one to three hours away from Turin and the other Olympic venues.

Slide show   Italian Dreams History, architecture, art and much more - great Italian destinations! more photos

But Jumbo falls far short of listing all the hotels in Piemonte. I leafed through a travel guidebook packed with hotels that did not appear on Jumbo's list. A few phone calls revealed that, although many are already booked, there are still plenty of rooms available in such intriguing tourist towns as Alba (of truffle fame) and Asti (of the sparking wine). There are also as-yet-unbooked B&Bs in the town of Stresa on Lake Maggiore, and available agriturismi (farm stays) tucked in the wine hills of Le Langhe.

WINTER OLYMPICS More on Bode Miller Picabo thinks Bode's testing his limits Expert: Is Bode a rebel without a cause? Analysis: Miller’s mouth gives Games a boost Olympic Spotlight: Learn more about Miller MORE WINTER OLYMPICS COVERAGE

Obviously, the hotels on Jumbo are not the only options. In fact, I count four major alternative strategies for securing lodging during the Games.

1) Buy a package

This is the easiest but most expensive option. A lot of those already-booked rooms (not to mention the already-sold tickets) were snapped up by tour companies and travel agencies for the express purpose of reselling the rooms and tickets bundled together as an Olympic package but at a highly inflated price. Said one Turin hotelier whose inn was block-booked by a US tour company, "I think they're selling packages including a room here for a few nights and tickets to one Olympic event for $5,000 or something. Ridiculous."

I'd steer clear of such profiteers and instead go directly to CoSport — if only because it's the firm handling official ticket sales in North America, so its ticket markup is already figured into the price. However, even at that, its "Olympic Hospitality" packages don't come cheaply, starting at $2,329.75 per person in a double room, and all that buys you is four nights in a Turin hotel and a pair of tickets to a single event. Packages including admission to three or four events run $4,025 to $5,340.75 — not including transportation (neither airfare to Italy, nor shuttle buses and trains to get to the events).

MORE FROM TRAVEL

Travel Section Front

Recalibrating the calculus of holiday travel Top 10 Thanksgiving destinations Gallery: Your snapshots of winter's arrival Tokyo crowned gourmet capital of the world On-the-go gadgets to make travel easier Stay sane while traveling with kids Top budget resorts in the U.S. A holiday travel survival guide Dad to baby: Happy 1st birthday, world traveler Family travel isn't always kid stuff Travel Section Front   Add Travel headlines to your news reader: