Anne

Hi My family will be spending five days in Sevilla, two in Granada, two in Rhonda and the final night back in Sevilla. I have been looking in guidebooks and seeking advice via this board and have narrowed down some hotels. Any advice on the best way to reserve. Should we deal directly with the hotels or deal with some of the hotel/tour websites. I don't know which is the most reliable, trustworthy way to go. When we went to Portugal three years ago we dealt strictly with a travel agent who handled everything including the rental car and transport to and from the airport.<BR><BR>As always thanks for your extremely helpful advice

Liz

Since I'm cheap...<BR>I like to deal with hotels that have e-mail addresses and contact them directly. When they send an agreement for a room, I print that out and snail-mail it to them with my CC number.

Ann

Do yourself a BIG favor and book directly with the hotel--either by email or phone. I just returned from Europe and had booked hotels on websites. I had to change my plans and one website charged me $20 for canceling and the other charged me $10. Everytime I travel I learn something. I guess that's what makes it interesting.

gail

Book directly with the hotels. Just send an email specifying the type of room that you need and how many beds per room. You can ask them other questions that concern you also. <BR><BR>If I had to choose which method is most trustworthy I would choose this method. If you deal with a middleman there may be miscommunication and as Ann pointed out, there are penalties (such as a cancellation fee) that you may overlook.

Christina

I've done it both ways and both have worked out fine. I wouldn't ever book on a website that charged a fee, though, so you do have to be careful about that. Generally, I do it directly with the hotel, email or FAX. I have used websites only a couple times when it appeared there was a discount or I thought they were reliable enough from having read others' experiences on here, and it was a convenient way to just do it immediately after checking all the listings, instead of going through the business of contacting the hotel (which can take longer, in my experience, sometimes they don't answer for a while). If there is no price advantage to the website, then I probably wouldn't do it that way as I agree adding another party only increases the change of something going wrong. I just booked a hotel through Londontown.com, for example, and I think I did that because it was a convenient website to get a list of good choices for my dates and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it (and I knew the price on there was good from prior research). I have no concerns about emailing someone my credit card number, actually, I live dangerously in that regard, although usually I think I FAX that (I would not mail it myself as that takes too long and can get lost). If I had special questions or requirements, I would definitely call or contact the hotel myself.