Fodorites, please help. I'm trying to plan a trip to Tamil Nadu and Kerala beginning Jan 25, 2009 for about 2 weeks and am finding just about every hotel fully booked. Any suggestions?

What hotels have you tried and what is your routing ???

I think it's because they're hedging their bets for 2009. If you're getting the "fully booked" by their web page I suspect it really means they are not accepting reservtions just yet.

-- Just a thought.

Centavo

What are the places u r going to visit in Kerala.I am from Alappuzha district of Kerala.I can help u

I would send faxes or e-mails to the hotels, they may be using commerical booking sites that don't work, or just the software is messed up (are you putting in date European or US style? e.g. in India it would be day, month and year, not month, day, year). I usually have better luck just contacting hotels directly.

Hi Skiski6

Yeh - send direct messages to hotels. Even though your reservations may be on wait-list for the moment - it shall get cleared over time.

The issue here is that most of the hotels get bulk group bookings from agents at the start of the year - specially for Jan, Feb etc which is the high peak season. However over time the participation in groups dilutes and extra rooms thus released get passed on to the wait-listed bookings.

There is lot of time to Feb, 2009- so I am sure you shall get the rooms.

It is not a bad idea to contact operators also - since most of them hold some rooms at hotels all through the season and besides they are able to pull strings and get confirmnations due to their realtionships with hotel groups.

Sorry but some family and work issues had us putting aside responding. However, we're now back on track and want to thank all of you for being so helpful. We're working on an itinerary and will post it, hopefully, by the end of this weekend and would appreciate comments.

Again thank you.