Where to stay in Jordan

Where you actually sleep

• Amman: Jabal Amman and Jabal Weibdeh for character and walkable evenings, Abdali and Shmeisani for business hotels. Downtown is cheap and loud.
• Wadi Musa is the town outside Petra and exists entirely for it. Ask how far the hotel is from the gate - some are a stiff uphill kilometre.
• Wadi Rum camps run from bedouin tents with shared bathrooms to bubble domes with air conditioning, JOD 25 to JOD 150 per person with dinner and breakfast.
• Dead Sea resorts are the expensive strip, and the alternative is Madaba, half an hour up the hill and half the price.
• Aqaba is hotels along the shore and a town behind them.

Booking

• March to May and September to November are peak. Petra hotels fill and prices double.
• Book the Wadi Rum camp ahead and confirm whether the price includes the jeep tour, because it usually does not.
• July and August are brutally hot in Petra, Wadi Rum and at the Dead Sea, which is 430 m below sea level. Prices drop for a reason.
• Ramadan changes everything: restaurants closed by day, hotels quieter, and a very different evening.

Practical

• Breakfast is nearly always included and is generous.
• Heating in winter is not a given in Wadi Musa, which sits at 1,000 m and gets genuinely cold at night.
• Desert camps run on generators that go off at some point in the evening. Charge everything at dinner.
• A night in the desert is cold from October to April. The camp gives you blankets; bring layers anyway.
• Flash floods close the Petra siq and the wadis after rain, November to March. If a camp cancels on you in winter, this is why.