FYI - www.venere.com
 

www.venere.com is fantastic. Find and book Hotels, B&B's, Apartments. Extensive directory for almost all major tourist countries. The main page for austria includes 4 classifications; top cities, top destinations, city index and accomodation in the mountians. Searched through major cities. The Mountain Accomodations are listed by main mountian areas, e.g. Villacher Skiberge, Zillertal, Ötztal etc. with a map of the area indicating peaks, valleys, rivers, road network and towns. The map also indicates whether the town provides ski, trekk, spa or other activties. They also include list of places to stay that cannot be booked online but can be contacted otherwise with contact info. I havent done any reservations yet so I dont know about the rates and quality of transaction but its a great resource for planning trips anywhere. Sikki

The absolute best way to find accommodations in Germany is to find the town website, usually www .[town name].de and look for accommodations. I have used this method to find 17 places to stay in during 10 weeks of travel in Germany in the last 6 years. I spent a lot less than I would have with Venere. Never had a bad place.

Venere suffers from the same problem as all the other hotel booking sites, too few towns, too few accommodations (usually the more expensive ones) in the towns they have, rates more expensive than going direct. They only listed two towns I have ever stayed in. In one, my favorite place in Germany, I spend only about €66 per night for two with breakfast and dinner. There are scores (maybe hundreds) of places to stay in that town. Venere only listed one, which they would book for €118 per night for two with breakfast only. You can book the same room online with the hotel for €113 and get dinner as well.

Venere is the easy way out, but you will pay more and have a lot less selection.

I too found Venere more expensive when booking Eroupean hotels. I did a comparison of prices and one hotel in brno that i booked for 3 nights was £129 in total on otel.com but over £200 on Venere. I ended up booking 4 hotels in different locations in Europe over 3 different sites, the prices for the same hotels varied quite a bit.

Hi sik,

There is no one booking engine that is superior to all others at all times.

((I))

actually i am sure the sites will be more expensive. For that u give the hotel a call. I liked it because it gave maps of the various mountian areas/valleys. Nothing lese online has that kind of detail. For a complete listing of places to stay at i wud probably put more trust into the places people identify as meeting the criteria. Tried writing a long complicated message where i asked people to indicate towns in certian areas and suggestions for possible accomodations. I intend to do that once i have more info. I am sitting in the boonies of the world here man. My Austria travel guides will be here in a week and then I can really go at it.

Hi Sikki,

I used Venere for a trip to Italy in May and they were very, very good! I did a lot of research and checked different sites and they had the best prices ( taxes and breakfast included).
I like the infor mation they provide regarding location and the comments from other guests which are good and bad!

Speaking of Venere - this morning, just a few minutes ago, I just received a nasty surprise from them in my email box. They sent me an email saying that I had cancelled a reservation, that I made back in January, at this one hotel in Paris! I thought to myself, "Umm, no!!". Much hotel research was done back in January for my upcoming trip in September. Venere listed a good price for this hotel in the 7th arr. - a neighborhood I'm familiar with. Has anybody had a problem before with Venere? I'm a bit worried now. I emailed their customer service informing them that I did not cancel my reservation and that they needed to get it reinstated. Thing is, there are only 2 ways that I think it could have happened - a) someone at the hotel did it either by accident or on purpose (I've looked at the prices they are asking now and it is a great deal more than what I had reserved it for) b) someone at Venere did it on accident or on purpose (you just never know). Venere gives you a password to check on your booking and I'm the only one, probably aside from them, that knows it. Grr!