unresponsive hotel

To establish a foundation of understanding: Are you writing to [email protected]? If yes, my experience is that when a hotel doesn't respond after a few attempts, it can be taken that they don't have any availability for the dates requested, and a non-response is their (odd) way of saying it. It's happened to me a couple times with hotels in Paris, and I just move on to my next in line. I was very annoyed once when I could not get a Paris hotel to send me a confirmation number for a cancellation. They simply didn't reply, but it all worked out OK. They did cancel and there were no unexpected billing surprises. I think it's bad business practice, but there isn't much anyone can do - except maybe post about your experience on Trip Advisor.

If they responded that certain dates were available, you needed to respond with a commitment to those dates; "please reserve a room for the dates....."
After that, you should get a real reservation and they should email you with that information. I have stayed there and don't remember a reservation number, but they did send a detailed reservation. Some hotels accept reservations a year in advance. If in doubt after trying to get confirmation, call them on the phone during their daytime hours (about 7am to 7pm Paris time). The desk personnel speak English fluently.

Many hotels in Europe will not answer if your booking request is outside their booking window---your asking for 11 months --they only book 6 months in advance or as others have said if they have no availability for your dates. An odd practice but not an uncommon one. Paul

I understood Val to mean that a request was made on June 6th of this year, not that he/she wants a room for June 6 of 2014, but now I'm confused. At any rate, why do business with a hotel that fails to respond in a timely manner? And it's no excuse to say something like, "Well, it's just a French or European way of doing things." BS. It may end up being an indication of the level of service one might expect to receive when lodging there. Paris is a big place with lots of competition...simply scratch this one off the list and move on to your next choice. Done.

If you have been trying to reach them for over a month by email with no response, I'd give up and move on to try another hotel. This experience could be a very good indication of the type of service you would receive going forward. Or, if you have your heart set on this hotel specifically, try what another poster suggested and call the hotel directly.

Help us, what was the automatic response? I have had hotels respond saying that the dates were available but when I sent the reservation in, the dates were taken by someone else. Remember it is first come, first served. And an inquiry is not a reservation.

I also read this like Michael did; about a month ago, on June 6th, the OP contacted the hotel and got some canned response (probably something along the lines of we are pleased to hear from you, we'll be back to you soon) and nothing after that. I doubt it was an automated response, BTW; those don't take 3 days to send, a computer kicks it back in seconds. The response after 3 days was probably sent by a clerk who sent out the canned response. If you have heard nothing it may be they don't have room. If they have room they let you know and ask for a credit card to hold it (usually they request a card, not always). Its unfortunate hotels don't always write to say so and leave you hanging, but that's just the way some of them do it. Or maybe their email is just down. Time to try the next hotel on the list. Actually what I do these days is send out a few requests so that I'm not in the game of requesting, waiting, moving on; this can drag on I've found from experience. Instead I request room at several hotels; some write back to say no room, some may have a room, some I never hear from. I then accept a room and email everyone else to thank them for their time and say I do not need the room.

just to throw this out there maybe you have the wrong email address. On a whim I did a search for "Hotel de Turenne rick steves" and sure enough the RS website for his guidebook has a change for that hotel. Apparently they have changed its name and its email. See http://www.ricksteves.com/books//bk-rs-par.htm So maybe, just maybe, if you were sending email to the email address from the RS 2013 guidebook (or an earlier edition) they never got it because they have stopped checking the old email address. And in a similar vein, check your folder that hold spam mail. Perhaps when they responded with prices and the like it matched some spam filter your service provider or mail software set up, even though the first message may not have.

Not sure if you are using a Yahoo email address or not, but they often go into the spam box. It could be that the hotel hasn't received your other emails or as the previous poster said, their emails to you went into your spam box. Try using a different email.

Or just give them a call ..

Val, You've asked for help and then disappeared - so we have the same feeling that you complained about in your post. Are you still here? Can you answer some of the helpers' questions so that we can better help you? Or have you had a resolution and left us hanging?

If poor Val was a first time poster the sarcastic first response she received may have sent her heading for the hills. Can't say I blame her. Hope that's not the case and she's just been too busy to check and respond to others' questions and advice.