Help over Bank transfer to pay hotel

Hi guys.
Please don't laugh. This is something I've not done before.
I'm staying in Haridar in March and the hotel I'm most interested in requires payment by cash transfer (Axis or ICICI). I've absolutly no idea how this works. What do I do?

From their website:
After you receive a tentative booking mail, you can deposit the mentioned amount by cash/cheque in favour of "Sumitra Enterprises a/c Hotel Teerth" in ICICI ATM/bank Account No. "xxxxxxxxxxxx". If your payment is not received within x days, your tentative booking will be cancelled. we shall send information of confirmed booking as soon as payments are received.
Note : Kindly send your payment details on email.

So let me get this straight. First I email them my room wanted & dates.
Then they say yes & send me their proper bank account details.
I go to my bank (HSBC) & just tell them to put £££ into the hotels account?
Then I email the hotel to say it's been done & they check?

Is this type of payment safe? Does it happen instantly?

Cheers

Spud
I've come across this once or twice when trying to book and to be honest I've gone somewhere else that has a secure credit card site for booking. I suspect that your UK bank will charge you a fortune if they are prepared to go ahead with this sort of transaction for you.

I now await a flood of posts from people who know a lot better.

You just need to tell your bank and the bank will directly transfer your cash to the account of the otehr person. As to how much money will be levied extra, you have to confirm with your bank.

i wouldnt know how this works outside india but in india it is completely safe and though mostly works instantly but could take upto a couple of hours.

I would be able to do this through my bank website or just submit a form at any branch of my bank authorizing them to debit my account and do the transfer to the account no provided. you would need to provide a bank/branch code.

I imagine it wouldn't be so simple for some one not in India as it obviously involves forex. I suppose there are icici / sbi branches in the UK where you could hand in a form and do the transfer and pay the required amount in cash in your currency? If i had to do that id find a place with a credit carp payment mechanism though...

You have internet banking? Use Money2India. It's like online shopping! Any fee will be quite small, and there is no visiting banks to fill in international-transfer forms.

1. Register with M2I.

2. Enter the payee details.

3. Set up the transaction on M2I. They will give their bank account details and a unique transaction ID.

4. Using your online banking facilities, make a payment to M2I, making sure that you use the unique transaction ID as reference. They will route it to the payee.

It is very easy, and I am a many-times happy customer. The only time I have used the bank international payments system direct was to transfer much more money than anyone would ever want to pay for a hotel booking!

We did one through the Internet bank. It was very efficient but we were charged more than half the amount for one night. So that was a one and only! One or two others tried to get us to do it, but we said no. Will investigate m2I ,sounds interesting. The trouble is we are nervous about carrying comparatively large sums of money, especially over Holi when banks are closed and we have several bills to pay. .

Zahondo
Are you taking a few travellers cheques. We found that we could change them quite easily in hotels at a pretty good rate and you have more safeguards than you would with cash.

We tried to get pounds and euros but are spanish residents and none of the banks here would do it.... So we are taking a selection of cards and hope they work , if not we will sign up for the currency transfer thing. Our uk bank won't supply them here either!

Hi guys
Thanks for all the responses, very helpful
Nick - I'll take a look at M2I but I'm tempted just to give the damn Hotel Teerth a wide berth. Honestly, I wonder if they loose customers over this? I've a good mind to email them and let them know they've lost one anyway.
Dave - did you say my bank wounld charge me a fortune? How does THIRTY QUID sound! More than a night's stay. >>shocked<<
I just wanted to stay 5 mins from the main ghat (in Haridwar) but I'll investigate other options and Nick's suggestion of M2I.
Thanks again everyone

Thirty quid sounds about right for an international transfer from a Brit High Street Bank.

M2I will be a fraction of that.

Spud -
While i second Nick's point about M2I being both cheap and reliable, I'd like to know your dates of arrival in Haridwar. If there's no major festival, there's little reason for them to insist (though most hotels in india have started doing that now). Often, its just their way of securing a booking - as you've already paid so you must show up, etc.
Usually, I've just talked hotels into keeping my reservation intact without paying anything (as recent as peak season - last week of december in areas like Bhubaneswar - which does attract its fair share of tourists).

Xoom.com, M2I etc will tranfer funds to India from UK, US etc for a very nominal fee but usually the exchange rates are not that favorable vs what you could potentially get at a bank buying rate. If it is a small amount, then you don't lose much in terms of exchange rates but a sizable sum could put a dent of several thousand Indian rupees.

I am also leery on transferring money to an unknown hotel far away. Any decent hotel should take credit cards and you have much better security with a cc than one of these wire transfers to them.

Intl wire transfers can run about $45-50 in the US or £25-35 in UK.

Hi guys
Vaibhav I'll be in Haridwar towards the end of my trip - 28th-30th March.
Just had an email from another Hotel called Har Ki Pauri (goodness me, they took their time to reply) 'sounds' like they are pretty close to the river, they offered a ganga facing room for R500 less than their website price...tempting. Still, suppose I could do as you suggest and ask Hotel Teerth if they would mind reserving me the room until I arrive... Will email and ask. Thanks for helping, everyone else too

I just returned from India a few days ago. I also encountered this with one place when making an online booking. All of my other bookings did not require a payment OR I was able to pay via cc on tripadvisor or secure website, in the case like yours I replied saying was it okay to pay upon arrival and they agreed. I just didn't feel comfortable paying via a bank transfer.