Travelers Check in Euros

Find another hotel.

I agree with Norma and Bets. I am not a world traveler, but my husband and I have been going to Europe annually since 2009. I have never heard of anything like this. Credit card number to hold the reservation, yes. Prepay by CC, yes. Prepay deposit by wire transfer or CC, yes. But traveler's check, no way.

Please tell us what hotel it is so we know to avoid it!

Please do find another hotel if they cannot accept a credit card & charge it in euros. (Let your bank know there will be a charge from Paris & hotel should you do this.) To me that hotel's policy is cow manure.

You may be able to get Travelers Checks in euros from your bank, and it would be unwise to do so.

Why? The exchange rate is not in your favor; it is in your bank's favor on this side of the pond. A good rule of thumb is to do monetary exchanges in the country you visit & not before.

I personally will use a debit card @ an ATM outside a bank when I travel.

Just My 2-Cents Worth

There is another financial instrument that some banks can issue in foreign denominations. Its not a travelers check but more like a money order. I'll come up with the name and post. Maybe that's what they meant.

edit: Bank Draft is what I was thinking of. May have other names. Sent one in pounds sterling to a cousin a few years ago. filled out with a payee's name and traceable, like a personal check.

That's one of the stranger things I've heard...I would find somewhere else to stay that doesn't want something so unusual or out of the ordinary. It may be a sign of even more policy oddities you'll encounter in a hotel like that? Not worth the hassle...there are plenty of good hotels in Paris that will take a simple credit card as a hold for a room.

That is the most scammy thing I have ever heard. CHANGE HOTELS.

I have stayed in at least 15 different hotels in Paris and all accepted a Credit Card for room deposit.. usually just to secure room , so for a no show, .. not for a deposit

Ann .. what hotel are you staying at please.. this sounds so very odd.

Agree, choose another hotel. There are many to choose from.

I'm renting an apartment in Paris next month. The owner/manager requested a check as a deposit, to be returned to me when we pay cash on arrival. I sent him a personal check for $200 (not €) many months ago. He is a man of his word. The check has never been cashed. It was worth the risk of $200 to secure the apartment. My last apartment rental in Paris I had to do a bank transfer for the deposit. Never again!

Drop that place like a bad habit and go to Hotels.com or Booking.com or Venere.com and find a real hotel. This just screams scam. If it were a private party renting out an apartment, it might be reasonable but not a hotel.

That's not the way I would want to do things. It just raises so many questions. I'm glad that asked your question.

This method of paying a deposit as an option was not uncommon ten years ago with hotels that don't take cards.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have had Americans in the past insisting that they can't pay a deposit by bank transfer and coming up with the travellers cheque deposit instead as a cheaper way of doing it. Bank transfer costs can be considerably more from the USA - which is a fault of the banking system I guess.

Hmm more then ten years ago and perhaps maybe more b@b and not hotels, I have been giving a cc guarantee in Paris for decades!

Perhaps this was common in London at low cost hotels that didn't take credit cards, but it has never been common in Paris, not ten years ago, not fifty years ago.

ann,

I have to agree with the others. The hotel sounds like it's still operating in the stone age (financially speaking). Who uses archaic T.C.'s these days? If a hotel asked me to provide Euro Traveller's Cheques to secure a room, they'd be told to "take a hike" in a big hurry and they'd never see a nickel of my money.

I'd suggest checking the France or Paris guidebooks or Trip Advisor in order to find a more "modern" hotel in the area of Paris that you want to stay.

Good luck and Bon Voyage!

Hello

Thanks to all for the advise. I've actually stayed at the hotel twice. It's family-owned and caters primarily to French travelers. They don't charge anything it one gets there before 1:00 pm which we won't (hence the deposit request).
I've actually found another hotel and will stay there.

ann

it is good to get ... the rest if the story...

as a famous journalist once said.

If you have stayed there happily enough to want to return for a third time it must be pretty good. Perhaps they were simply trying to accommodate you and save you the wire costs.

Bank transfer is pretty common in Europe. Here in the UK that's all we ever do. Businesses and individuals provide us their banking details and we transfer them money on a computer, or they take our bank details and tap the account for the amount due each month.

We write about 2 cheques every 5 years, and our business takes about 1 every three months and we never write business cheques.

I'm sort of surprised that as a regular customer they did not make extra efforts to keep you.

I think that the full story comes across a bit different to the Original Post which sounded like they wanted something very strange indeed.