question about hotel reservations

yea well... we will be three travelling and for one, there are not as many tripel rooms as singles or doubles. Plus, alot of the hotels I was interested in were already booked up! so I thought I should get that done now.

thanks for the info. I will be calling all hotels, just not quite yet.

It's odd that you did not get a confirming e-mail.

If it were me, I would not wait until a week or two before departure to find out whether you have a reservation--but you still have plenty of time to get this confirmed, but not if they won't respond to your e-mails.

What gets my attention is that your experience is the opposite of the general practice of European accommodations, which is to send a confirming e-mail but not provide a confirmation number on a website. The exception to this is the big chain European accommodations, which generally follow the US hotel practice of providing both a confirmation number on the website and sending a confirming e-mail.

If they have your credit card number, this gets more complicated because if you really do have a reservation and don't show they'll probably charge your card for one night.

Hi Kent. your statement here: "Having said that, if it were me, I would not wait until 1 or 2 weeks before my departure to find out whether I had a reservation, because if you don't by then you'll be forced to find something at the last minute." is exactly what I am afraid of! but, yes, the hotel gave me a confirmation number. I was just surprised that I never got the same information in an email like I did for all the other hotels that I booked.

yea, I realize that noone here can tell me one way or the other. I was looking for opinions so I thank you very much for yours. Invaluable! and I think I will try to call them soon!

I thank you so much :)

incidentally....this hotel comes highly recommended at trip advisor and is #13 out of 586 hotel listings for Barcelona. and is a big reason I chose it. that and it's not near Las Ramblas. For Barcelona I decided I didn't want to stay near the "action".

here's their website in case anyone is interested:

https://www.condadohotel.com/index.asp

Yes, to me the peace of mind gained would justify the cost of the phone call, during business hours their time. You do have plenty of time to do this but maybe now is a good time while it's on your mind.

Good luck on this. I went to the website, it looks like a nice place--the chances are it's fine but it's strange that they didn't respond to 2 emails from you. Not your spam filter, is it?

thanks again Kent. I agree with your peace of mind statement there. I do speak Spanish so that is not an issue. and yep, am aware of the time difference too.

I had another thought too. To book this same hotel via expedia and see what happens, see if I get a confirmation email. the copy/paste of the confirmation that I have does say I can cancel up to 48 hours before check in. so, if the booking at expedia works, then I can cancel the other one. OR, call them soon :)

yep, I wondered the same thing about the spam filter and I don't find anything in that folder. I had a similar experience with a hotel in Madrid (recommended by Rick Steves' and other guide books: Hotel Europa). This was before I learned about triple rooms and simply had a question about accommodating 3 people. anyway, no reply to my first email. looked at Rick's listing in his 2008 book and he had a slightly different email addy so I tried that one. no reply. then I sent it in Spanish, still no reply! I decided to not stay there after all...

oh yea, sorry, meant to say that yes, they do have my credit card info. yea, it does look like a grand place doesn't it? I really do want to stay there and it's likely that everything is fine and my "paranoid meter" is set too high? :D

aha! Steve, you're a genius! just plugged in my name and reservation number and lo and behold, it is there! Okay, not gonna worry any longer. thanks so much!