Hotels slow or not responding to inquiries about room availability

Customer service in Europe is a bit different. Am are used to and demand instant response which is not always the case in Europe especially in non-English countries. If it is a small hotel, they may be busy, maybe the person who translates and responds to English e-mail is on vacation, or maybe the hotel is full and they don't need your business. What ever the reason I would consider other hotels.

My generally experience is that if they don't respond quickly they are probably full. And if they do respond be prepared for the room availability to change between the time they respond and your accept. My general practice to make inquiry of three or four hotels that I want to use and take the first response. General contact hotels directly but have used venere and a couple of others with no problems. And it is always a good idea to reconfirm.

I'd wait it out a week, George. Frank is right. Nearly always, in my experience, they get back to you. I've always had better luck emailing the hotel directly, not via a web form.

For our first trip to Italy, I did the planning and made the reservations through Venere.com It worked out well for us. I read lots of reviews. Now, all hotels get some bad or not so good reviews, I read those to see if what those people were complaining about was something important to me. And if those complaints were made by many people I skipped that hotel. As soon as we got the confirmation from Venere I printed it(took it with us) and contacted each hotel directly to confirm the reservation and any details. They all responded, gave us directions and answered any questions I had. It was a great trip. Sometimes now I read Venere & contact the hotel direct to look for a better rate. Sometimes it works and if not I go back to Venere & book it. Print every confirmation email, from Venere and the ones direct from the hotel & take them. Have a great trip.

Our experience is that most places will respond quickly. I wouldn't play around too much for a hotel or B&B that doesn't want to respond. We have used Venere.com and the experience was great. Once you make your reservation, you really don't see them again. Quite OK.

Hi George, I've lived in Italy for 3 years and want to help.

All of Italy is very busy w/Carnivale (not just Venice). If the hotel is open right now, most of the staff is on holiday. This is the "down" season as Carnivale is for the locals (as much as we would like it to be for torist). I would give it one more week. As another poster stated, the English speaking staff (usually only one) may be w/her family celebrating. If you still don't get a response, start looking for others options. I always look at reviews on tripadvisor.com then go to straight to the entity's web site and inquire from there. Best of luck!

Hi George ~

I had bad luck with responces when using the "click-on" contact us link from hotel's web-sites. Instead I would retype the hotel's address into an e-mail. I would usually hear back from the non-responsive hotel right away if did it that way. I would cut them some slack for carnaval but if you still don't get a responce then I would move on to your next choice.

Paula

Thanks for all of the great replies!

I finally called directly to the place in Venice only to discover that they had no more singles and doubles because a large group booked them all. :( Big disappointment. This was the one place on my trip that I really wanted and that I thought would be relatively easy to get. Oh well. Back to the search.

I'm still waiting to hear from the place in Florence while I continue my search there . . .

Thanks!

If I find that a hotel that I like is full I look at their ranking on tripadvisor.com (e.g. # 56 out of 342 in Town X) and start perusing the next-best ranked hotel. It may be much more expensive, so I keep going until I find a better place with a good price.

If that doesn't work because the prices are too high then I go the other direction, (starting at #57). This strategy keeps me in the same ballpark in terms of value for money and personal preferences for accomodations. (For example I don't like big hotels, or chains, I don't need televisions and elevators.)

Italian hotels notoriously do not reply if they have no rooms. Their reasoning is that they have no rooms so they have no information to communicate. It never occurs to them that you have no way of knowing they are full because it is the Italian custom to reply only when they do have a room available.

Since this website has become so argumentative let me add that I have confirmed this attitude many times by asking them that question in person.

No Charles, you are correct. That is also my experience but trying to be a bit softer when I stated that earlier.

Check your spam folder as well. Many times responses from outside of your home country will be routed as spam/junk mail. I have also heard customers with Comcast & Cox have trouble received e-mails that are not in their Contact list.

However as stated before many hotels simply do not respond if they do not have a room.

Success in Venice!

Thanks for all the great responses.

I just booked our stay at Hotel Anastasia with discounts of 50 euro off a single and 70 euro off a double. If this hotel lives up to the reviews at tripadvisor.com and venere.com we should have a very nice stay there. Now I can focus on Florence and Sorrento.

I received very quick responses from Hotel Anastasia and Pensione Guerrato in Venice (the latter booked solid, thanks RS?) and Sorelle di Santa Elisabetta Casa in Ferie in Florence. The latter has space for us and is extremely reasonably priced but a bit far away from the city center for us on this trip (2 nights). It looks like it would be a lovely place to stay if we had a couple more nights there.

Linda - I think yours is a great strategy, basically I follow it myself.

Charles - most website forums I frequent these days seem to have their share of argumentative and abusive members. I think it's just a sign of the times.

SamSn - yes, I check my spam folder several times a day to make sure a response isn't sitting there . . .

Thanks again everyone!

Edited - to correct Pensione Guerrero to Pensione Guerrato. Thanks Michael!

I think you mean Pensione Guerrato, not Guerrero. I mention that because I think it's helpful to future "site-searchers" to pull up your favorable comment about how responsive they were. We've stayed there twice and enjoyed it immensely both time.

As advice for others, in addition to no response if there are no rooms, some hotels will not respond if you are inquiring about rooms waaay in the future (a year, sometimes more than 6 months out) unless they are booking for weeklong holidays. This is more prevalent if you are trying to book a single (and they have rooms that could be a single or double) or if you are only trying to book a single night (or two). Basically, it is not in their interest to book a lower cost reservation when a higher dollar one might still come along.

George,

Regarding your original post, I do find that I get the fastest response by calling the properties on my "short list" directly, usually first thing in the morning in my time zone (though I have been known to stay up late and call during Italy's morning hours). In order not to break the bank on my phone bill, I use an 700-unit MCI calling card that I purchased last year at a great price. While it's a lot of numbers to dial for each call, each minute only costs me 4 units of time to Italy - roughly 13 cents a minute. I find I can usually get the basic availability and rate questions taken care of in a couple of minutes, but have the flexibility of a longer conversation for the promising leads. No additional cost to me since I already paid for the card! Something to consider...

Melissa

Update - Perhaps it was a Carnevale slowdown, but since my original post hotels have been much more responsive. Or maybe they all read this forum . . . :)

I booked our room in Florence after quick response from all hotels and so far I'm getting good response from hotels in Sorrento . . .

I just got my response from Al Sole in Venice within 24 hrs. They are quick. I have dealt with them earlier when I was booking and then had to cancel because I wasn't sure of when we'd be there. Their prices actually came down 13 euros. I'm getting a classic Double room for 120 euros now. They seem to have good reviews too. But the dialogue between us has been so nice. Here is their site
http://www.alsolehotels.com/en/description.htm
I needed somewhere near Piazzale Roma (bus stop) and they are a 5 minute walk.
I'm going March 25th.
Irene