A travel-savvy friend, just returned from London, used the word “breathtaking” to describe the hotel rates he encountered there. His comment reminded us that hotel room costs are an important consideration when it comes to deciding which cities and countries in Europe to visit. Our friend’s remarks spurred us to do some analysis on the prices of European hotel rooms. To get a better fix on the relative cost of accommodations, we devised a simple index.

This low-tech cost comparison method uses rates published in the Michelin’s Main Cities Red Guide to create a table that shows average prices for double rooms in the better three-star hotels in 11 major European cities.

Michelin uses the outline of a building to symbolize the various hotel categories it rates. One with five roof peaks is top of the line, five-star, while double and single roof symbols usually denote three-star accommodations. Within those categories, the guide lists the properties in order of preference. Seeking an index that would reflect the cost of mid-range hotels, we chose the first six hotels with two roof peaks listed in Michelin for each of the 11 cities. If there were fewer than six, we added hotels with the single roof peak symbol.

Of the top six, we tossed out the highest and lowest priced hotels and averaged the lowest double room price for the remaining four.

Since there is usually a strong price correlation among hotel categories, the list is probably a decent indicator of the relative costs of all levels of accommodations among the cities. In other words, if the rates for leading three-star hotels in city A are 20 percent higher than in city B, it is fairly safe to conclude that city A will also have proportionally higher prices for both simpler and more luxurious accommodations.

Here are the results in price order starting with the most expensive: