Booking Hotel Suites Online: The Good, The Bad & The Solution
Why don’t hotels allow online booking of luxury suites?
So you’ve found the perfect honeymoon suite — your dream suite! Sure it’s a splurge but the occasion demands it! Great!
But wait! That suite is not available for online booking. OK, so you look for the next best option — nope, not bookable online. You can call or email to reserve.
So you email them. And you also decide to call the number — only to be met with a polite voice that needs you to prove your VIP status, or an annoying negotiation of suite rates, or worse, put on hold. A week later, and you still haven’t heard from them about your email.
Ever wondered why hotels make booking suites online so tiresome and difficult? The policy seems to make little sense. Clearly for consumers, it is a huge inconvenience. And don’t hotels stand to lose potential customers who just do not want to waste time waiting around, especially when there are so many online options available?
Presidential Guests for Presidential Suites
When it comes to filling their most exclusive suites, hotels want to know who is booking them and why. They want to make sure that all booking requests are real and not a just a way to access the hotel’s pricing details or their copyright material like high-quality photographs. To that end, hotels usually require a guest’s name and email address prior to reserving a suite. This is also why many third-party booking sites, including Suiteness, require customers to sign up for an account. (To learn more about this and more information on Suiteness, click here.)
But that’s not to say that hotels aren’t interested in attracting good clients. They are, and they design their booking process in a way that maximizes their chances of drawing in such guests. For example, withholding or restricting online booking of a few suites is a great way for hotels to make sure that their most exclusive suites are available whenever a major celebrity is in town (you might have noticed that for some luxury hotels only the very best, or most expensive suites are not available online).
Instant Booking Means Instant Pricing
Everyone is familiar with hotel room and suite rates being subject to availability, day of the week, time of the month, holiday of the year… and so on. Unfortunately, when it comes to suites, there are even more variables that determine rates. When pricing their suites, luxury hotels might also consider local or regional events that might affect demand. For eg: does it make sense to reserve the best suites for casino guests? The complexity of examining these granular details means that many luxury hotels are unwilling to provide guests with instant pricing required for booking hotel suites online.
Hotel Haggling
And the fact that rates are not predetermined means that there is room for negotiation. The kind of negotiation that can be stressful, with no guarantee of success, and for most people looking forward to a fun trip, an experience they definitely do not want to go through.
Suiteness Solution — Beyond Booking Hotel Suites Online
Why Suiteness? You mean, apart from the fact that we take the stress out of luxury travel by providing a simple, easy and transparent way for booking hotel suites online — a solution to all the problems above?
Rest assured, you get the best prices on Suiteness. If you find a lower price anywhere else, we’ll match it.
Suiteness is the only service that allows online booking of suites with connecting rooms: a great option for big groups that don’t want to pay for multiple suites.
Booking with Suiteness gives you instant access to our complimentary personal concierge who will take care of all your trip needs.
Find your dream suite on Suiteness.com
Originally published at blog.suiteness.com on June 6, 2016.
