Our good friend Amy over at NewYorkology wrote to us this morning to share some nerve-wracking, last-minute, unplanned changes to her travel plans to Prague.
It turns out the Alchymist Residence Nosticova has not completed its reconstruction, despite taking reservations on its website as recently as a week ago.
Since Amy booked through Tablet Hotels, the boutique hotel booking site is doing their best to relocate her. However, such a change the day before she's due to take off has not made for easy pre-trip organization.
Priceline has begun to cut out the cancellation and change fees for any "published price" reservation. These are reservations where you can pick a specific hotel to stay at rather than go through the blind booking process.
Name-your-price hotel bookings however are still iron-clad reservations meaning no refunds, no cancellations and no changes at all.
Additionally, the company said they would lower the booking fees on published-price reservations too. But Travel Weekly says be careful:
Because Priceline lumps hotel taxes and service fees together when displaying prices, the consumer cannot tell how much lower the booking fee is.
Dropping fees and charges is good to hear but just remember to always read the fine print when making any sort of reservation to see just what the cancellation or change policy is.
Now Hotels.com wants to pump you up. The booking site has announced its Summer Drive and Save program which gives bookers a $50 gas card for each booking of three nights or more.
But don't think Hotels.com is late to the game. This is the fourth consecutive summer that the site has offered a gas program.
To qualify, you must book a hotel stay before July 6, 2008. The stay must be for travel through September 1, 2008. Three nights minimum is required. There is no limit on the gas cards as long as the minimum stay requirement is met for each booking.
Jazz Fest begins next weekend (April 25-27) in New Orleans and HotWire just announced some more hotel deals in case you still need a place to spend the night or two or three.
Remember HotWire is a blind booking site so it's really for those you want a deal rather than say gain some loyalty program points (although depending on which hotel you get, that might work out for you.)
Some deals for the first Jazz Fest weekend:
· 4.5-star hotel in Downtown New Orleans for $183 per room per night
· 4-star hotel in Downtown New Orleans for $129 per room per night
· 3-star hotel in French Quarter for $159 per room per night
· 3-star hotel in New Orleans Intl Airport MSY for $73 per room per night
We did some research on Betterbidding.com to see what hotels these deals might be at. The 4.5-star was tricky but a lot of people on the board think it's the Le Pavillion Hotel. For the 4-star in Downtown, we're gonna guess the Intercontinental.
The 3-star hotel in the French Quarter could be the Holiday Inn and the 3-star near the airport is probably the Radisson.
Got any scientific or unscientific guesses as to which hotels these might be? Help your fellow travelers out by putting your suggestions in comments below.
We have spies all over the hotel industry who like to send various miscellaneous tips our way. Some of these are post-worthy, others are not much more than one sentence tid-bits. So here's the latest batch of whispers through the hotel grapevine.
We had a little surprise bit of Heard Around the Mexican Hotel World earlier this week and now we bring you our regularly scheduled programming.
· Britney Spears has reportedly been blacklisted from the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills after a paparazzi there got into a scuffle with a hotel security guard. Apparently, the Peninsula is not willing to sacrifice the peace and quiet of their swank hotel and their other high-profile guests for trainwreck that is Britney Spears.
· This has been a big week for Thompson Hotels. First we introduced a Thompson Hotels map, then we saw some sketches for the Beverly Hills property uniforms, and then Stephen Brandman defended his hotels' service reputation. In between all that, we heard that Thompson Hotels will announce a few more projects in early 2008. No word on where they will be but discussions are happening about a Vegas property which would include a Teddy's outpost.
· Ok this is not technically a piece of gossip, but we think you should hear it. Whist at the Viceroy Santa Monica is offering a Sunday New Year's brunch every Sunday in the month of January for just $20.08 a person. Get it? 2008...The brunch is usually $55 person and includes unlimited champagne, mimosas or bloody marys. So much for that "Drink Less" New Years Resolution.
· Care to spend your holiday in Minneapolis? That is where the hotel rates are the cheapest at around $83 a night, according to the CheapTickets.com Holiday Shopping Cheapometer.
· In some more holiday booking news, Booking.com was named the #1 hotel site in terms of room availability over Christmas.
· Lastly, the bitterness between residents and new management at the Hotel Chelsea still continues. Manager Glennon Travis has been called a "baby dictator" and a master of the annoying memo. While we certainly agree he is young at just 26 years of age, a dictator is stretching it. Afterall, isn't he just doing what BD Hotels tells him to? But since he is so proficient with the memos, we shall call him Baby Bill Lumbergh--"Did you get the memo?"
We must be operating on Bahamian-time still so our last post of the day will be an old-school, bland, photoless, colorless link dump. Consider it our New Yorker-style post for the day. Enjoy.
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by juliana
It's the season of 
We have spies all over the hotel industry who like to send various miscellaneous tips our way. Some of these are post-worthy, others are not much more than one sentence tid-bits. So here's the latest batch of whispers through the hotel grapevine.
