A Word of Caution about Online Booking & Packages

Here are a couple notes of caution about booking online or taking advantage of packages. First, online booking. I love what the internet has to offer by way of making your trip planning decisions easier and offering a plethora of options. There are lots of web sites for booking hotel rooms and some offer all kinds of information and photos, as wells a maps, proximity to sites, etc. I don't call overseas and make my reservations. I book online. That said, there are some issues that could arise as a result.

My word of caution here is that you want to keep things simple. You want to be organized when you book your hotel and know specifically what your plans are. If you plan to arrive in London, check into a hotel, complete your stay and check back out, then no problem. Where things get tricky is if you want to use London as a home-base but spend nights out of the city. I DO recommend doing this, but I've learned the hard way that for online booking services this can be confusing UNLESS you treat each segment of your stay as a separate entity.

I'll give you an example. On my last trip, I found an EXCELLENT (very affordable) room rate, at a 4 star hotel in Bloomsbury, about 3 blocks from the British Museum. It was almost 3 months before our trip so we knew where we wanted to go but hadn't finalized exactly when we were going to take our overnight trips to Bath, England and Paris, France. I knew I needed to jump on the hotel offering because we needed multiple rooms and this rate was spectacular. The site even had a 800# to call to speak someone in the US. So, I called and told the customer service agent what date we would arrive from the US and what date we would fly back to US. I explained that we wanted to stay at this hotel for all the nights we would be in London but that for two nights, yet to be determined, we would not be staying in London. I asked whether I could book this hotel for all the nights so as to be assured of having a room on any of the nights, but could I call back in a couple of weeks and cancel out the two nights we would be gone. She was very friendly and strongly recommended that I do because I would then guarantee this great rate, and be assured they wouldn't fill up for any of the nights we wanted to be in London. This was exactly what I hoped for and wanted.

We figured out our plans, we booked our travel and hotel rooms in Bath and Paris, and therefore, we were covered in those locations. I then called back to cancel out the second night of our stay so we could go to Bath, and the 6th night when we would be in Paris. I was immediately told by a different customer service person that this was impossible. They could cancel some night(s) off the front or back end but they could not cancel out two nights mid-stay. The hotel had since filled up on some of the nights we wanted to stay, so rebooking either the first night or the last two after our return from Paris wasn't possible because the "system" now showed them fully booked (even though two of those rooms were being held for my party.) If I cancelled my original reservation, someone else might be able to rebook into them before my replacement reservations were made. It was a catch-22. Also, the "excellent" room rate would not apply to the new reservations.

In the end, it turned out that the site I had gone to backed into Hotels.com and my reservation was actually managed by Expedia.com. I finally was able to work with a Customer Service Supervisor from Expedia. She ultimately worked it ALL out and what I had originally been assured could be done, WAS done. We checked in and out of the hotel 3 times. We got the original rate. I can't say anything bad EXCEPT that it was a tremendous hassle to get it worked out & for awhile it looked like we might have to spend considerably more for some of our nights than we had planned and even change our London hotel on one of the occasions.

The same principle applies to packages. As I mentioned in my last post about English hotels, one of the more cost efficient options is a package. An organized tour is a package but not what I'm speaking of here. In this case, I merely mean a deal where you get several elements of the trip for one price, usually the flight and hotel, usually representing a significant savings. I mentioned flight/hotel packages from the major airlines and travel sites. I recommend these wholeheartedly, provided what you are wanting falls strictly within the package guidelines. If booking online that means that your hotel reservation will exactly coincide with your flight arrival and departure dates. If you want to try to fly in early or late and go somewhere else on either end, you might be able to make these arrangements by calling their customer service department. If they tell you that it can be done, I would tell them you'll think about it and call again to make sure you get the same assurance from more than one agent. If you still get that answer, then go for it. But as a rule, either take it the way they offer, or just don't buy a package. Definitely don't try to break your trip into segments and expect them to work out all the details. It's not that they maybe CAN'T, but if they screw it up, you could really pay a lot more and the value of the package would be lost.

Lastly, if you do deal with live customer service people, make sure you take notes on what number you called & the URL for the site where you located the deal, get the name of customer service agent, get and take all the documentation with you on the trip, and lastly, get an international phone number to call them back if there are any issues. Outside the US, 800 #'s don't work, so the number you called from home, is not viable.