2006-08-23
lots of fun information about booking a hotel room over the internet
Well, I survived the 3-11 shift. The phone only rang twice between 10 and 11 so I didn't really have to do anything. Today I learned that if your phone access is set to "local only" because you didn't give a credit card on check in you can't call the operator.
The guy who was "on call" for maintenance issues "forgot" (heavy use of quotes denoting the fact that I don't think he really forgot) to take the on call cell phone so it's a lucky thing that there weren't any emergencies like the 30$ dvd players that we bought 2 years ago dying or anything.
It's just silly things really, that are annoying. For example, we don't have telephone books in the guest rooms so guests have to call the front desk to have us look up phone numbers for them. It's not that I mind doing this, but why don't they have phone books in the rooms??
This point can also be illustrated with the story that a few years ago they bought 100 cheapo corkscrews to put in the rooms. About a year later, they found that they had all been stolen or had broken (because they cost about 1$). Instead of thinking "we need to buy more of those" they just..didn't. The thought process stopped at "we're out of cork screws" and never made it to "we should buy more". Also, our match books aren't personalized. Which I think is just lame.
With all due respect, it must be frustrating for management too, because they can only do so much as far as the owner being (apperently) crazy and unwilling to spend money on the resort. I also heard through the rumour mill that anyone who bought the resort would have to open a golf course on the property within 5 years of purchase or it would void the sale. I say that they should go for mini-putt.
The other issue I have is that management basically doesn't realise that they are missing out on a huge market by not taking their internet business seriously. For example, they use some internet booking system that has a military rate that can't be altered or removed (or so they claim) and results in people getting 300$ rooms for 105$.
A lady came in today who booked for today last night on the internet at like 10pm or something. Let's take a minute to talk about how internet reservations work at resort X.
There are 2 ways to book online. You can use the resort website directly or you can use a travel agent website where it lists a bunch of hotels.
A resort's website will always be something like "www.resortx.com" or "www.bighotelchaintowhichtheresortbelongs.com/resortx" it will not be something like "www.hotelsforcheap.com/resortx".
There may be a fairly convincing run down of the resort's facilities at the www.hotelsforcheap.com site but that is just information submitted from the resort to the site, it is NOT the actual resort's website.
These third party sites (aka "hotelsforcheap.com") might charge you for booking with them. So even if they tell you that the rate for your hotel room is 129$ the hotel might charge you 149$ because they have to pay www.hotelsforcheap.com a 20$ fee for doing the booking. Also, for reasons too complicated to go into here (but let me know if you're interested) the different hotel listing sites often have different prices. Shop around people!
Regardless of with whom you book, what happens is that their systems sends an email to our once you have booked with the details of your reservation. At resort X there are only 2 people who know how to do the internet reservations and one of them is on vacation for a week. So, theoretically, if person #2 wasn't in that morning to check the e-mails the lady's booking never would have been entered into our system.
Now, the catch is that resort X is careless with details. For example, if you call the resort we will tell you that we have a 3 night minimum stay policy on long weekends. But if you book online then it will let you stay for only 2 nights. And, if you're a nice lady who called and who I told that I could only give her a 3 night stay but she was perfectly welcome to book 2 nights on the internet and then call me to see if I could move her into a better room that was still within the class of room she had booked, then you have truely manipulated the system and congradulations are in order.
Let's just conclude by saying that I always prefer to call and book directly with the hotel or resort after having looked around on the internet and gotten an idea of their average prices. If the person on the phone can't match the internet price, then book online. But if you talk to a real person you can ask questions and get opinions.
moi at 10:27 a.m.
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