Is Kotor expensive?

Not by the standard of Dubrovnik, a couple of hours up the coast, and more than the rest of Montenegro. Money here collects in three places: rooms in or beside the walls during summer, anything that puts you on a boat, and the terraces facing the cruise berth. Away from those, eating and getting about price like a small Balkan town that happens to use the euro.

The ships set the price of a day

The old town's busiest hours are written into a cruise schedule. With ships in, the lanes and the terraces in front of the gate fill from mid-morning, and the boat trips and taxis waiting at the harbour are priced for people with a single afternoon to spend. With none in, the same town is quiet and the same table is easier to get. The port publishes its calendar, and choosing which days to spend inside the walls costs nothing.

What each line of the bill buys

A room is priced by its distance from the walls and its month. July and August push everything up; May, June, September and October bring it down without closing much. Eating is cheapest one street back from the water, in a konoba serving grilled meat, fish and local wine, and dearest on the square with a view of the people eating on the square. Buses run along the bay and to the open coast for little. A hire car is worth a day or two for the serpentine road and the mountains behind the town, and not worth parking in Kotor for the rest of the week. The walls and the cathedral both charge for entry, a cost visitors tend to forget.

Where to stay

Splurge

HUMA Kotor Bay Hotel and Villas, on the waterfront at Dobrota, is where the money buys the bay itself. A spa, a private beach area and an outdoor pool in season mean the hot hours are spent at the water rather than on a crowded public beach, and the old town is still a walk away. What you are paying for is space and quiet, which this town has little of.

Mid-range

Hotel Vardar charges for position rather than square metres. It sits on Trg od Oružja just inside the main gate, so nothing needs a taxi and the town is yours early and late. A sauna and a hammam are part of the stay. The saving is everything you do not spend on getting about.

Good value

Viktor Rooms, on Marovina a short walk north of the walls, is where the savings start to compound. A shared kitchen turns the green market into breakfast and lunch, a terrace replaces a hotel bar, and the old town is close enough that the room never has to be more than a bed.

Is the boat worth it?

On the water is where a careful budget tends to break. The shared speedboat on Kotor: Perast & Our Lady of the Rocks Island - Every 2 Hours goes across the bay to the islet church and Perast with a licensed skipper who also acts as guide, and it gives most of what a private charter does for a fraction of the outlay. For the old town itself, the Kotor Old Town Walking Tour is a short guided walk from the Square of Arms; entry to the cathedral and the walls is extra.

Comparing current stay and experience options across your exact dates is worth doing before anything is booked, because the gap between a ship day in August and a quiet week in October is wide.