French reservation etiquette
 

My husband & I are currently planning our first trip to France this fall (Paris, then on to Provence). I am trying to learn French, but am still in the basics stages, so I've targeted the places with multi-lingual websites. Because of major time differences, I rely on email communication for all preliminary lodging arrangements.
After a month of searches & inquiries, I'm baffled by the responses of many of the establishments. So far, communication with Provence small hotels & chambre d'hotes has been productive & educational, but I'm having a devil of a time with places in Burgundy (en route from Paris to Provence). Many of my inquiries were ignored completely (I assume they were fully booked so saw no reason to respond?). The one place that did respond and have availability, now does not respond (to 2 emails over a week ago) for confirmation of the booking. I'm probably saying something wrong in my emails (I really do try to be polite), and I don't expect you fellow post-ers to know what my faux pas is. My question is, do I try to follow up with a phone call at this point or assume they're hoping I just go away? It's to the point where I'm thinking of omitting the Burgundy part of this trip (save that for another time, when I know French a little better).
I also want to thank everyone for all past posts that helped make our visits to Greece & Italy dream trips.

This is probably not the answer as to why your emails are "ignored", but I did learn that it's proper etiquette, as well as polite, (and overall nice)-- to greet the person, prior to asking a question.
Example: Bonjour Monsieur or madamoseille-then ask your question. ;;)

Hi OP,

It's been my experience that you get better communication via fax or phone than email.

On our recent visit, one of our hotels had their email system down for three weeks. At another, they were to busy to answer email.

Where are you planning on stopping in Burgundy?

((I))

It can't hurt to make a phone call and find out if your booking went through.

I don't think following up will do any good. I suspect they don't have any availabilities, so don't want to spend the time to tell you that. I would call to the one you made a reservation, for the confirmation. I've never had that happen (not get a confirmation of a reservation), but I've had plenty of French hotels not respond to inquiries about booking. When I finally pestered one (as I really wanted to stay there, and it was in an area in Provence without a lot of options), they did finally respond to tell me they didn't have anything, that's why they had not replied.

This is an unusual idea to me, to not respond when someone inquires, but I am not suprised by it anymore with hotels. I've had it happen quite a bit with some hotels I'm trying to book in Switzerland, also, although some have been polite to respond and say they had no rooms.

IN both France and Switzerland, it has been the small, family-run hotels who do this; the bigger, more professional hotels have responded, even if to tell me they have no availabilities.

I can't imagine what you are saying wrong (and suspect nothing, but who knows), but I would make your inquiry clear and short and to-the-point. If you are writing in English, which I guess you are, do not use slang, idioms, or incorrect grammar which can be confusing to a non-native speaker.

I haven't tried Burgundy, so don't know about that, but I had some of your experience in Provence, so the fact that you've had good luck there is encouraging.

Thanks for the responses, I do try to use proper English & salutations. I was also beginning to think my "short & direct" body copy was being perceived as rude.
We were looking for a place northwest of Lyon in the Beaujolais region, as that's our favorite wine.

"It's to the point where I'm thinking of omitting the Burgundy part of this trip"

and THAT, IMO, would be a major mistake <b>until you know for certain</b> that there is no availability.

I would not assume anything. Get on the phone and call them. Faxes are JUSt as easy to ignore as are e-mails.

If they don't answer the phone, that's something else again.

Opie I'm sooo sorry for you and angry with the Burgundians who didn't answer.X-(
Even if they don't speak a word of English (They shouldn't make a bilingual website then) they can read your dates and learn how to say &quot;sorry we are fully booked&quot;.
The answer can also come from your email address. Someone called to say he had sent me an email after his first call to book and I realized it was in the spam box (hotmail address). You should call them, for sure!
Good luck and I hope you will not miss Burgundy. :-)

Hello, Coco, ( I enjoy your posts) and I'm not angry with Burgundians, mainly confused. I will try to call the one place that did respond to my earlier emails.
Hello, Dukey, I'm mainly considering omitting Burgundy because my husband would rather continue on to the riviera after provence &amp; saw our reservation problems as a 'sign'. Also, I want to devote more time to Burgundy than this trip allows, so it's definitely on the 'to see' list if this time doesn't work out.

One of the problems with small establishments in France (&quot;most visited country in the world&quot;) is that when they are fully booked, they do not see the need to worry about the disappointed potential customers. If one's restaurant or hotel is always full, who cares about those people still knocking at the door?

It is an unfortunate attitude.

Can't help on the etiquette, but I've had similar e-mail issues and it was because of my spam blocker at home. They were responding but I wasn't seeing the e-mail. When I sent an e-mail from my work account, I got a response. You might want to check your spam folder or resend using a different e-mail service and see if that helps.

As for my email address, it's not hotmail (or other type of freebie mail), and I didn't have any problems with any of the Paris sites I communicated with, so I don't think think it's my spam filters or e-address.
Having worked in the customer service/marketing arena for several years, I'm always baffled whenever I have encounter this attitude. I was just trying to determine if it was a regional thing, which it seems to be. I recently tried to book a place in Amsterdam when everything was full (from a convention I didn't know about). Not only did I receive &quot;sorry, we're full&quot; from dozens of inquiries, but even got (unsolicited) recommendations for other places.
I understand &amp; appreciate cultural differences, &amp; am thoroughly looking forward to experiencing France!

I had this happen, as I said, and it had nothing to do with spam blockers (which just put them in another folder, anyway, which you can check). I also don't use public email addresses for this (ie, hotmail), and it still happened. I'm not saying that isn't possible for you, but it's not the reason this happens and is easy to check.

I've had French and small Swiss hotels ignore FAXes. I think if they ignore an email, they will definitely ignore a FAX, as it will cost them to reply. YOu do kind of know they got it more (maybe), if you note if it went through, but you still never really know.

Most of the emails I get from French hotels are very short and to-the-point, so I don't think they are perceiving that as rude or not. In fact, they may respond in a sentence or two when I've written several lovely paragraphs about how much I want to stay there, like the area, their hotel appears charming and has a good reputation etc (and I am writing in French), with the proper French salutations and closings, etc. They don't care much about that, and never refer to it much (one Swiss hotelier did respond and thank me for my kind letter and nice comments, but most don't even reference them even when I had a question in them). I had a very nice letter from a guy in a 2* hotel in Provence that was more old-fashioned and flowery, but that's rare.

So don't worry about that part, I'm sure that's not it. In fact, some of the emails I've gotten from these folks strike me as a bit rude due to the abruptness (i.e., &quot;we have no rooms&quot; -- that's the sum total of the email). But I'm just glad to get one telling me what's going on and they are on business time whereas I'm on my own time, so I don't care really.

I would imagine that when they have 20 or 30 requests and no availability, it limits their desire of creativity in the reply.

I have had several instances where my emails went unanswered. Then I would fax them and hear right back. Sometimes it would just be a copy of my fax with &quot;Complete&quot; written across it(That means they're booked)or sometimes a letter.

Now I don't bother with email at all. I go straight to the fax.

I have 3 or 4 different templates, I just copy &amp; paste and change the names, date, etc. I know it's not perfect French, but they know I'm American and at least I'm trying. Here's one I used:


Alain Chapel
Reservations


Cher Mssr;

Je voudrais savoir si vous avez une grande chambre libre “au grande lit” pour deux personnes pour arriver le 10 Octobre, 2003, departer le 11 Octobre.

Si cela est possible, nous voudrions reserver une table pour le diner.

S’il vous plait repondez par FAX a xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Nous vous remercions de votre considerations et vous prions d’agreer l’assurance de nos salutations distinguees.

John and Mary Doe
123 Main St
New York, N.Y.

Tel: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx

About that closing...I know it sounds syrupy and stupid but in France this is their version of &quot;Regards&quot;. Even the power company uses it (or words to that effect when they write to tell you they're cutting off your power if you don't pay the bill.

If it were a real simple road house, I probably wouldn't be that formal.

Linda, don't bother with the last sentence. You can simply use &quot;Meilleures salutations&quot; or even shorter &quot;Cordialement&quot;.

&gt;Je voudrais savoir si vous avez une grande chambre libre “au grande lit” pour deux personnes pour arriver le 10 Octobre, 2003, departer le 11 Octobre.&lt; You can shorten it with &quot;Avez vous une chambre avec un lit double (or un grand lit) pour 2 personnes pour la nuit du 10 au 11 Octobre (or pour les nuits du 10 au 12 octobre)?
departer is not French ;-) it is &quot;d&eacute;part&quot;.

Hope this helps! :-)
coco former receptionist

I loved those flowery closings when I was doing translations at a per-word rate.

Hi Jean :-), With my closings it wouldn't be so profitable for you now!

Coco...do you mind if I borrow your phrasing? I will give you credit for it of course ;-)

Of course Linda, I did it on purpose and no need of credit for me.
I'm glad you're happy with it, some people could be offended when they are corrected, but this is just for help, not to make fun of them. I can't help it anyway! :-d

When I had the e-mail problem of not receiving e-mails from hotels, it was not across the board. Some came through and some did not. I thought it was strange but it did happen to me (I was using AOL).

I think some hotels are better than others at checking their email. The last place we stayed, we had exchanged several emails and they were all answered promptly.

When we got there, I noticed that the desk person had a computer screen up &amp; running every time we went through the lobby. I guess some hotels just don't have one as easily accessable and checking email is more of a pain.

And Coco, no offense was taken because I knew that none was intended. I learn something new every time I log on here and that's what keeps me coming back.

We encountered a similar thing in the last couple of months, trying to book this summer's trip to Paris, Provence and the Cote d'Azur. What we ended up doing was going to babble fish http://world.altavista.com/ and typing in what we wanted to say in English, then translating it into French. Then, we'd cut and paste both the English and the French into the body of the email and send it. This worked most of the time and we were - for the most part - understood. There was one instance where the hotel proprietor didn't get back to us and we didn't know if we had a confirmed booking or not. So we went to the hotel website, found a phone number and called it. We spoke to the owner and it turned out his English was about as poor as our French! However, in just a couple of minutes, we ironed everything out and soon got our a confirmation email.

So happy to finally be able to add something to the discussion instead of asking a question!

Annie

Thanks, Linda &amp; Coco for the written French. I've used simple sentences from my learning books, but I like seeing the complete letter setup. I've used Babelfish to translate responses from the Provence people and would get the main thread of their reply. In the past when I used babelfish (I understand a little more Italian than French), I found it very choppy, so haven't trusted to use its French translations (to send).

bdm

I agree with Ira, with France small hotels, I always call first. Then confirm by fax sending the card number.
Usually the grab something in my fax, like confirmed and send it back to me.

what's 'bdm'?

I think she meant to type &quot;bkm&quot;, her abbreviation for BooKMarking. It's the same as &quot;topping&quot;.

Some people do this so that when they click on thier ID, it will bring up only threads that they have posted to.

I am sorry I wrote that French hotels use to&quot; grab &quot;something in my fax and send it back to me, ....I meant
that they usually scrabble something, meaning tshey are
Confirming the reservation and send it back.

Hi,
I've been to France many, many times and never had the problem you mentioned until this weekend... I am going to a wedding in a small town, 1 hr away from Lyon.
I have sent the recommended hotel many emails and faxes and asked to get a confirmation. They never did. I actually just phoned them and they have my reservation
Other than the fact that they could not be bothered to reply I think that alot has to do with them being a very small hotel.
In my experience with French hotels, those that are big (or more well known) do reply.
Now, be aware that many of the very small places have charm but they may not be very helpful when it comes to booking restaurants or providing advice and you may miss on what the region has to offer.
And BTW Burgundy is a lovely, lovely region.
I hope you are really into wine.
Wine and good food.
And it is full of English tourists.

I know what Graziella means, some hotels have done that to me and it makes a lot of sense -- they just write &quot;confirmed&quot; across the FAX which probably states the prices and that you are making a reservation, and they FAX that back to you.

I don't understand why small hotels won't reply, they should have a lot more time to do so -- but I did finally just get an email reply from a small Swiss hotel where I had inquired about a room several weeks ago (this is in Swiss Romande, or the French portion, so maybe they have some similar patterns). I had emailed them a room request based on the email address they give for that on their website (which is quite sophisticated, actuallty). Then, I emailed them to follow-up when I didn't hear from them for several days. Than I FAXed them to say I had emailed them a few days before, did they get that?

After 7-10 days, they responded to my FAX, but by email (which they had had all along, of course), that they didn't have any available rooms for those dates. This email reply which cost them nothing (and wouldn't have cost them anything if they'd responded so in the first place) probably took them about one minute to write and send, and yet they didn't do it unless really prodded.

Luckily, I had given up on them and got a nice room elsewhere, anyway.b this was not some rural pokey place, either, but a hotel in a major ski resort area (Verbier) which has a website to attract customers, has many international clients, and is somewhat expensive. It is small, though.

I would call more for reservations, I suppose, at least you know immediately, but with the time difference and language differences, I think it is so much easier and clearer (for both parties) to have things in writing. Besides, even if I made a reservation by phone, I'd want something in writing sent to me. This Swiss hotel has a fancy website with their email address all over it, asking you to email for information or reservations, so it's not like they aren't proposing that as a valid method of contacting them.

we are french and living on the french riviera. we have been walking to santiago de compostella twice (one time from home - more than one thousand miles following Camino frances- and the second time following Camino del Norte-)We actually met the same prblm in Spain you are facing in France. Small hotels rarely read their mails and of course do not respond.
My recommendation would be to make reservations, in France, in hotels members of a known or reknown network ((best western, relais et chateaux, chateaux et hotels, etc...)and use network reservation system instead of sending mails.
Otherwise, yes, others members are right.
Give them a call and when booking is made, send a mail to confirm asking for a written (mail) confirmation from their part.

Hi all,

Yesterday, I sent out 4 emails regarding reservations to France and Germany.

One French and one German site replied almost immediately.

I'm giving the other two a few days before I call them.

On our recent trip, I learned from one of our hotels that their eml had been down for 3 months and they didn't know it.

((I))

It's easy and not expensive to call them from U.S.....either an international program with your long distance carrier (just a few dollars a month and it can be stopped after your trip) OR a phone card purchased at WalMart, Sams, Costco etc !/
I think it is always a good idea to have a written confirmation in hand when you check in to a hotel....so I would certainly ask them to email you this information. (or mail, or fax)
One has to trust people,,,however they could easily &quot;give&quot; your reservation away and when you get there you would have no proof.
Yes, in some places their internet and email might be down~~~~and other places it might be the &quot;custom&quot; not to reply if they are full. Perhaps just a cultural thing, and that is OK. WE might do it differently.

In my experience, faxes are almost as easy to ignore as emails.

Unless we absolutely MUST stay in a place if they ignore e-mails I either call them on the phone (hopefully they don;t ignore that, too) or look elsewhere.

Well, I have emailed a place in southern France 3 times in the past 2 weeks and I have not heard. I read that this place is run and owned by an American now living in France. So the lack of response does not confine to the locals or their culture.

s

I always had good luck calling by phone, at a reasonaable time. For instances I do not call at noon when people are busy checking our guests. I try like mid morning or around 6 PM

My experience with email has been mixed. Several reservations went smoothly. One reservation I never received a confirmation for and had to call to get a faxed confirmation. One confirmation ended in my spam catcher by mistake. Bottm line, don't give up, give them a phone call. A fax can follow for the actual written confirmation. Most places working with the public has someone who speaks English, you'll both just have to speak slowly and clearly to eachother. Bonne chance!

&quot;Ira&quot;...I have to ask...are you by any chance the author of &quot;A Month of Sundays&quot;? You were so helpful to me when I planned our trip to Provence and Cote d'Azure last year. This past week I read the above referenced book to recall my wonderful memories and saw that the book's author and subject of the book was named &quot;Ira&quot;...so I immediately thought about you!