Guest house bookings

wanderin_star

Made e-mail booking with small guest house in mamallapuram for January - they will also pick me up from Chennai airport. Obviously gave no credit card as guarantee, as small guesthouse, and had to send another e mail to get confirmation. Has anyone had experience of email/phone booking with smaller hotels and has this been reliable or has anyone been let down. Obviously will send them reminder few days before travel.

jarman_ah

I remember that we booked the Hotel Sheela in Agra by ringing them from Australia; it was a bizarre conversation, as the caller just answered with "hello", and I wasn't even sure, for a while, that I had the right number. To everything else I asked he just said, "Yes", and, when I put the phone down, I wondered whether I had wasted my time. But when we arrived at the Sheela a month later, there we were, in their reservations book.....

However, that doesn't really help you, does it? A foul-up occurs just when you least expect it, and it can happen in the best of places. Our personal foul-up experience was with, of all people, Walt Disney World in Orlando! We booked by phone, got an email confirmation, but when we arrived there, they'd never heard of us, and the receptionist looked at us, with two young and sleepy children (it was almost midnight) in tow, and said, "I'm sorry, we have nothing for you, the resort's full!" I must say that Disney treated us very well, subsequently, to "atone" for that unfortunate comment.