Hi. We are travelling to Prague, Budapest and Amsterdam in 3 weeks. We booked all of our hotels online and communicated back & forth by email only. Should I confirm my resverations? I have all the emails saved with info (rates etc.). Should I fax the hotels??? Has anyone ever booked by email only? Thanks!

You should have a printed fax from the hotel stating date in/out ,price,type of accomodation,cost and cxl policy--IN WRITING --NOT an email-- <BR>emails are not worth the paper they are printed on-- <BR>You need something with HOTELS LOGO on top--FROM THEM....................

Last year I booked all our B&Bs in England via e-mails, printed their response/confirmation and took them along--no problems. <BR> <BR>A few years earlier I booked all our hotels in Italy via fax with their fax confirmations printed out and taken along--no problems (except a faxed map that was impossible to read so the hotel was farther from the train station than we thought and we had to ask directions once we got to that town).

It's sort of a toss up as others have pointed out. <BR> <BR>I've made reservations via email, and gotten faxes with reservation #s and confirmations. The room was there. <BR> <BR>I've made reservations via email, and gotten emails with reservation #s and confirmations. The room was there. <BR> <BR>I've made reservations via fax, and gotten faxes with reservation #s and confirmations. The room was there. <BR> <BR>The important thing is to RECONFIRM about a week before you leave, whether by phone, fax or email. Especially with so many people cancelling trips, the hotels might be assuming you are too. Send an email or fax to let them know "we're still coming", and save the response.

If you have email directly from someone at the hotel (reservations head or something) and the email address is clearly that of the hotel itself, I wouldn't worry about it myself. I've done that and had no problem as email is just a quicker way than regular mail as far as I'm concerned, it's still a letter with prices and dates. I don't think it makes any difference if the hotel's logo is on a FAX or not if it comes from a responsible, efficient reservations clerk. People can refuse you a reservation with a FAX just as easily as an email (and they have from what I've read on Fodors). I aboslutely would NOT be satisfied if I only had an email from a reservations web site, not the hotel personally itself, and would make phone call or demand FAX of confirmation. Anyway, I've booked hotels by email quite a bit, but not exactly online really -- I wrote them an email with request and we confirmed by email. Some hotels will actually respond to email more than FAXes nowadays in Europe, as I've changed my habits in that regard within the last year when I was discovering that (I used to only FAX thinking it was more personal and would get better attention and service) -- they don't want to spend the money to send a FAX when they can email for free, I found out. I can't really blame them, but it was a bit disconcerting when I'd FAX several times and they would just not respond at all (this usually meant they were full but just wouldn't tell me, sometimes it meant they just didn't care). Given the current travel climate, I suppose I might FAX them to make sure and re-confirm.

We travel extensively to Australia, New Zealand and Europe from the US. Make our hotel reservations on line. Never had a problem with the email confirmation.

good advice already but I would email them about a week before restating all the info (room, rate, etc) to be safe. I've done this in italy had it was fine.

I am leaving for Europe next week, and emailed the 3 hotels we're reserved at to confirm that we plan to come, and to make sure we are still reserved. In all cases, I received a confirmation via email within an hour or so. In light of everything that's happened, it made sense to me to take this precaution, although there don't seem to be any problems with my reservations.