Communicating with hotels directly

I’d probably try emailing the hotel directly if they don’t have booking on their website. It’s been a while since I’ve seen no booking ability on a website.

But I also have no problem booking thru booking .com. As a Genius Level 4 I get good discounts and often lower rates than direct with hotel.
When you book with Booking.com you are dealing with the actual hotel.
I like having all my bookings in one place

Do these hotels offer online bookng on their website? If yes, use it.

Even the smallest of hotels can add a booking platform onto their websites very easily these days.

But there is nothing wrong with using Booking.com. I would stay away from the others.

For one of our stays, I tried to send an email directly, and did not receive a response. So, I used a prepaid calling card from many, many years ago that still had minutes left so I didn't have to get on any international plan to call them directly from the U.S. I was able to get someone on the line and get answers immediately. Good luck!

I prefer to book directly with the hotel. The monastery I’m staying at in Rome does not have their own booking site. I used their contact form to book direct. I got better cancellation terms than booking through monasterystays.com. The small Venice B&B was booked by email without problem.
In the past I have booked additional days at the beginning RS tour hotels via email without problems.
The only times I booked through Booking.com I chose cancellable, no deposit rooms.
If you have not gotten a response I would email again.
Was your no response to book or for confirmation? If conformation, I’d definitely call.
When are you going to Italy? If it’s soon, I wonder if the hotel is booked and ignoring reservation requests. Just a thought. I’ve never had that happen but I book months in advance.

I always like to book directly with the hotels, and typically use their websites to arrange bookings. The Rick Steves guidebooks usually provide good advice on how to book the hotels they list in the books.

I'm contacting them to inquire about booking in advance for peak season in 2025, which is a holy year, as I've already seen some places get booked up when we wanted to be there and don't want to take chances. I've used the website contact form for one place and emailed another but no reply to either yet. I've read about instances where people have used booking.com and then arrived to find no rooms available. Traveling at such a crazy time, we don't want to end up with no place to stay.

If you are asking about using the contact page on a hotel website vs emailing the hotel
directly, well, usually those are the same thing. You can often discern the email address
the contact form is using by looking at the web page source code.

As for booking.com, they are using an online schedule to tell you what's available, so
there is some remote possibility that their schedule is out of synch with the hotel. But
that will normally get handled when the hotel receives the reservation from booking.com.

Considering the time of season it is, hotels in resort areas may be closed right now, as it
is kind of in-between winter and summer. Maybe that accounts for why some hotels
have not responded, especially if they are small, family-run hotels.

We have always contacted the hotels directly versus using booking.com for anything other than looking up where hotels are and reviews. They generally tell you how they would prefer you to book the room as many now are using online booking formats within their websites. Also, we have been told, the hotels pay a fee for rooms booked thru Expedia, etc., so most of the time would prefer you book directly thru them. As for no response, make sure you have the correct email.

I've experienced your issue, and sometimes sending a message through What's App works. I have no idea why. Also, sometimes when the internet goes down in parts of Italy, it can take a week for service to be resumed by the provider. I have had b&b's and hotels often complain about their providers. I hope it all works out for you. Good luck!

We have always emailed hotels directly and have never had a problem with not getting a response. We have also just telephoned them directly. The cost is really not that much compared to the cost of the trip. Of course times do change, and some may only do things now via their web site, hence no reply to emails.

Most hotels in Italy, even small ones, can be booked directly on the hotel’s official website. There will be a button “book” or “prenotazione” if the site is only in Italian. Often this will send you to a separate secure booking site they contract with to handle their bookings. Most often I have seen “simple booking.it” used, but also “booking.slope.it” or “booking.bedazzle.it”. But these are all legitimate, and the method selected by the hotel for booking. You are still booking “directly” with the hotel.

I have also encountered very small places that let booking.com handle all their booking; they do not even have a way to book on their website. And when I tried to get around that by emailing to reserve, they asked for a bank transfer for the deposit—-they do not take credit cards—-unless the booking goes through booking.com. So I had to go that route anyway.

I just tried a number of small hotels scattered around Italy for reservations next year (2025) in the spring. All had rooms available for next March, April (I used a date after Easter) and into May, up to the 21st. In other words, they are accepting bookings up to a year in advance. If you want to book for later in the summer or fall of 2025, you can just wait and book when they open up reservations. I think it would be unusual for them to accept a “pre-booking” request by email, and they may simply not respond, especially if the email is in English. And if they do accept a reservation by email, you could run into problems, like the one I described above.

Their failure to answer may be because they do not want to deal with emails in English. I recently had a problem with a reservation I made with a small boutique hotel in Fiumicino (near the Rome airport). I booked directly on the booking site for the hotel, with my email, credit card, etc. and received a confirmation on the website. I took a screenshot of that. But I never received the emailed confirmation, because I had make a mistake in my email address. I tried emailing them several times to correct that error, using the dates, confirmation, etc. of our reservation. They never responded. Then I had to cancel our trip and needed to cancel that reservation, but was unable to do so until I asked my husband to email them in Italian (he is a serious student of the language). Bingo! They responded right away and sent confirmation that our reservations was canceled, and they hoped to see us another time.

So I suggest that you make sure you are on the hotel’s official website, and use their “book now” button to make your reservations for 2025. From what I have seen so far (in planning for our April-May 2025 visit), the hotels are not already filled up. If they show “no availability” on the hotel’s own website, most likely it is because they have not yet opened up reservations for your dates in 2025.

There are a lot of businesses (travel and otherwise ... ) that are simply unwilling or unable to devote the resources necessary to return email communications in the volume that would be necessary. I don't find that to be a trigger to use booking dot com, because I prefer to have a direct relationship with the hotel. So I use their online booking facility, even if it is done with a third party chosen by the hotel. It's entirely possible that this sometimes does not produce the lowest cost, but if my plans change, or I get a room that I hate when I check in, I prefer to be a customer of the hotel. Same with air tickets.

In one case, this resulted in the (Polish) hotel choosing DCC to process my deposit, which cost me an extra 3.5%. This was neither disclosed in the booking, nor permissioned by me. But these things happen sometimes when you "travel local."

I have heard enough bad stories about booking dot com that I am wary of most consolidation services. It's not directly relevant, but it was annoying to discover that when Expedia offers you "CDW" for your Expedia car booking, it turns out, after you buy it, to be a FOURTH-party product, entirely sold by Expedia, and unrelated to the car rental company.

In my recent booking I booked most hotels through their websites. One that was a family run restaurant with a few rooms above it did not respond have website booking and would not respond to my emails. I had to call them early in the morning (my time) to catch them between lunch and dinner services, but it worked. Another family run hotel with a few rooms to rent had to be booked on booking.com.

We found and booked a cooking class at a farmhouse in the hills above Bologna on viator. Our host told us that for each booking through Viator, Viator took 50 euros!! Always try to book direct, but it's not always available.

Scott

"I have also encountered very small places that let booking.com handle all their booking"

Thank you, Lola, that appears to be the issue and is apparently becoming more of a thing. When I tried on booking.com, I got a confirmation and a message from the owners to confirm the date, so we're all set now.

Another poster commented some places can't be bothered with English messages. After seeing the behavior of some tourists in the news lately, can't say I blame them. However, I was careful to write my emails in Italian with a bit of help from Google translate and then state again in English with apologies, hoping that making the effort would pay off. The fact that they replied on booking.com but not directly makes me wonder if it's just the way of business these days, or if they just can't ignore you on that platform.

Thanks everyone for all the helpful replies!

Just speculating; but perhaps some smaller hotels are not set up to handle reservations a year in advance. I also suspect that outside of Rome, there will be the usual crowds; but the fact that 2025 is a jubilee year will not generate more than the usual high season crowds (which are bad enough!).