Making Reservations

I have a special card I only use for such circumstances...... overseas travel, overseas reservations etc. I have the alerts set up to tell me of any purchases on my card..... I use it so infrequently that most of the time I get nothing in my e-mail from them. But fraudulent use would immediately notify me. So I usually send the hotel the info in 3 parts..... part 1, my name, arrival dates, etc. Part 2, the actual credit card number and part 3 the expiration date and SC code. I usually send part 1 a day before I send parts 2 and 3. If someone has hacked their e-mail can they get my info....yes. But it isn't low hanging fruit. Also, because of my other precautions, it would be hard to misuse my card. About 7 or 8 years ago, I returned from Spain and started getting notices...... someone in Miami was making small purchases: $15 in gas, $12 at McDonalds etc, But I quickly reported it and got a new number. So far, this has worked well for me. You may also fax your info which is great provided the person stealing your info doesn't work at the hotel.

See this recent thread on the same topic: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/sending-credit-card-numbers-to-hotels.

Also, a fair number of hotels either have secure online booking of their own or accept bookings through intermediaries like booking.com.

I did this last week for our upcoming RS tours to Portugal and London. I booked by email. They sent me the confirmation, asking for credit card info. I faxed it asking they let me know if the got it. They did the next day, done. If you don't have a fax at home FedEx/ Kinko's will send it for you. More secure than email.

I booked online and had no issues. I would try the booking.com suggestion. If you can post on this forum I think you can book the hotels online too. Many hotels sent an email confirmation afterwards too.

Many thanks to all! I greatly appreciate your thoughts and sharing your experiences. I'm going to give email a shot because I can notify the CC company if there are strange charges made to my account.

Janima, what tours are you taking?

Jane, we will be taking the Sicily and Southern Italy tours.

The Sicily tour is great. We haven't done Southern Italy with RSE, but we've been to many of the places the tour goes. It should be wonderful.

I asked because we're doing Village Italy this summer. I thought we might have found a tour mate!

When are you doing these? We are doing the both in April, first Sicily then southern Italy.

We will be taking these tours in October.