Rajasthan - booking hotels during busy season
 

As per the recommendations of many on this board I am working with a local Delhi travel agent (Castle & King) for my January trip to Rajasthan. My agent has just come back and told me that three of the hotels I wanted to stay in are not currently available and I am waitlisted. These are for stays at the Imperial in Delhi, Rajvilas in Jaipur and Udaivilas in Udaipur. Has anyone else had similar experiences? What is the likelihood that these will become available? The agent says that many people make fake bookings and the hotels release these after 90 days if they are not paid. I am just concerned as to whether or not these will end up coming through for me. I realize now that I probably should have been planning this a little bit earlier, but not much I can do about that now.

For those of you who have worked with an agent by email previously - did you ever check with the hotels directly to ensure that you were confirmed in all of the locations? I am just worried that I will show up in India and will have some problems with the reservations. Please let me know your thoughts.

Regards

my experience with arvind this past winter for next fall's booking was that the hotels do not release rooms to the agents until they feel that the direct booking of rooms has run its course....for one hotel i found that i was waitlisted for a couple of weeks (through castle) and then it cleared....i think it is a big game....for some hotels he told me they were not currently available but i was able to book them with their usa agent directly and/or on their website...he and i got into quite a tiff over this....in the end i think it is just the indian way of doing it...btw, he has allowed me to have some of my own bookings and use some of his...he does not seem to care....i got some fabulous rates on my own, way less than anything he was quoting, but not at the 5 star places---four star places like the sheraton in jaipur for $100 per nite in november on the exec. club floor---this was securred on the starwoods.com site...

hi chelsea,

We already traveled with Castle & king and we had the same problem in the Month of December. We booked the tour in Last November and then we were also waitlisted in Imperial as well as in Udaivilas, but he booked after two weeks and we stayed in the same hotel as we discussed with him. He never gave the false status what he had he told us.

We had very wonderful tour with his company. You can also try with starwood as rhkkmk mentioned.

Have a nice trip.
w

i should point out that i made the starwood (sheraton) res in jan or feb for november....the price the last time i looked was $250.

Hello there. I pretty much live in the top Hotels of India dur9ing the tourist season managing groups and the situation is often overwhelming, hotels running at overbooked capacity, shuffling rooms, waiting for no~shows, etc, etc. *The booking situation at the top properties in India is very tight these years, especially since there is now such a great demand for such a limtited amount of top rooms and there is such a great variety in the hotels pricing structures for room rates and so many factors at play! It can seem like pure chaos at times! That said, getting put on a waitlist while doing your hotel bookings with a reputable agent is a very common affair in India, and depending on the status of your agent, the hotel situation, the cancellations, relasing of rooms, overbookings, blocking of rooms, your room status certainly has a good liklihood of being confirmed..Worse case scenario ur agent will have to put u in a reasonable alternative. I do know that many big India tour Operators block huge numbers of rooms for the company or have a stronger chance of gettting confrimation as per their status. In terms of being put on a waitlist, nothing to worry about yet as the booking situation constantly changes as the season gets closer and positons shift all around. However, that said, there is occasionaly overbookings at top~hotels during the season so in that case it is good to have a local agent on hand to help u out. Anways, feel free to drop me a line with questions/reccos, etc. I am a American living in India. Happy to help. [email protected]

Thanks for the information everyone. So far I have been cleared at two of the three properties and am still waiting on the third to come through.

rhkkmk - did you pay a deposit to Castle & King? If so how did you do that - by credit card?