gre

Anyone ever rent a room through this site? It seems to have some exceptionally good rates on premium properties (e.g., I'm looking at the Le Merid. in Frankfurt).

Too good to be true?

jpdx

I just found Otel.com -- they seem to have exceptional rates, but I never heard of them before. Any experiences?

akdude

Just checked LAS&BKK and I'm not impressed.

Sweet Willie

got any examples or exceptional rates ?

Tenerife

I used Otel for the first time a year ago to book a hotel in Budapest - Corinthia Grand. The price was excellent - almost €40 less (€109 including fantastic breakfast buffet) than any other booking site and the service from Otel was perfectly in order. We were very happy with hotel, price and Otel They seem to be based in Istanbul - or at least their billing office is, as we spotted on our credit card billing.

jpdx

Are you insinuating that I'm spamming? I would find that a bit insulting, but I hope that I'm misreading your message.

To satisfy your curiosity, I found various "too good to be true" options listed as "Available -- immediate confirmation." The ones I was looking at for an upcoming trip were the Berjaya in Singapore, which came up for $113 all-in -- elsewhere it runs $165+ (and that "+" is fairly significant in Singapore), and the Hotel de la Paix in Siem Reap ($156 all-in for a "deluxe room king", $190+ on the hotel's own website, and more elsewhere). There also were some other Singapore hotels that I wouldn't consider staying at (HI Artrium, LeMeridien) that were significantly cheaper on Otel.com than elsewhere.

Tenerife, thanks for your feedback; I was specifically looking for information like yours, as I had never heard of Otel before, and wasn't sure they could be trusted.

Sweet Willie

relax please, I read your statement of "exceptional rates" on otel.com, so I was simply curious on what you found as exceptional rates, nothing more to read into my question.

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rkkwan

I have used otel.com and is satisfied. Sometimes they do have better rates than elsewhere, as while the reservations are usually cancelable, they do charge your credit card immediately. The charge is in USD, so no surcharge or exchange rate penalty from your credit card. But the charge will be from a company in Istanbul, Turkey.

carnutga

Beware of OTEL travel. Last November, I placed a room reservation with OTEL for my upcoming trip to Prague. The charge was immediately processed on my AMEX as I expected. Last week, I received a e mail from OTEL asking for a duplicate payment on Mastercharge. Their reason was they were having some problems with AMEX. I emailed back that any recent problems with AMEX shouldn't affect my reservation since it had been paid long ago. They said with out a second payment, my reservation would be cancelled. I read this morning, that Frontier airlines filed for bankruptcy because the credit card companies hold back a certain percentage of the prepaid charge until the trip has been taken. They recently uped that percentage which cut off cash from Frontier. It appears the same thing has happened with OTEL and I would expect it may have the same problems. So BEWARE of prepaying for anything on OTEL.

cjermain

I know, I'm bumping up a 2-year-old thread, but I found this thread helpful when I used otel.com this month, so I figured it might be useful to archive my own experiences for anyone else who runs into them.

Anyway, I found these guys on the web and their rates for a particular four-star hotel in Lyon, France were quite amazing ($200/night, refundable, w. breakfast, compared to $275/night non-refundable w. breakfast, which is the best rate I found elsewhere, including the hotel website). So I booked with them. Within 24 hours, they came back and said my room was confirmed, and they chaged my card. I printed out the voucher they sent, brought it to the hotel, and checked in and out with no problem.

Everything worked fine, the price was great, and I'll definitely use them again.

Ocn Vw 1K

Please follow the discussion as it moves to our Online booking and bidding forum. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

hauteboy

I've used them twice now for bookings without any problems; they had availability at some small hotels in St. Petersburg, Russia and San Andres, Colombia, places that weren't showing availability on other booking engines. You get the 5% 'rebate' that you can apply towards later bookings. They also have a price match guarantee that I used on one hotel .

My bookings showed up as : OTEL.COM NEW YORK

The booking interface looks similar to gtahotels.com, indeed the phone # is registered to GTA Hotels (Gulliver's Travel) in New York

whistler

I noticed that the prices on otel.com and gtahotels.com where the same. I look at gtahotels.com first when I book a Canadian hotel, usually Toronto. They seem to have good rates on the Strathcona in Toronto and a excellent rate for the Fairmount Waterfront in Vancouver($131/night 3rd night free).

Flaviom

otel.com and gtahotels.com are owned by the same company. There are some complaints about otels.com if you scour the internet.

I am taking a vacation to Agadir with my GF. The prices for the Palais de Roses were about $40 lower per night ($1XX vs $154) than hotels.com for the dates we booked.

GB

I had to make a last minute reservation for a trip to Rio. I used Otel and booked a room for $293 for one night. I made the booking very late at night and realized the next day that I had made it for one day later than I needed. I immediately called Otel and explained the situation and requested they change the date to one day earlier as I needed the room. Their customer service came back with the answer they cannot change it and changes are only allowed up to four days prior to my request (even though I only booked it 12 hours before). I asked for a supervisor and they refused. I was told I had to make my request through their website link. I received a stock response quoting the allowable days for changes. They also said in their reply that I was a no-show at the hotel even though I pro-actively called and requested a date change or a refund to book another property on their site.
I won't make this mistake again with Otel. Granted, this was entirely a booking mistake by me, but for $293, there was no wiggle room, no cancellation fee, no re-booking allowance. Basically, nothing. I am going to dispute with my credit card company, but what a waste.