Venice Forum: "OTEL.com" website? Too good to be true.

Thanks for your help. I am looking at the Hotel Panorama....any insight?

A lot of the cheaper hotels on this list are in Mestre on the mainland, when you get to the better known popular hotels the prices are on a par with other sitesHotel Panorama is on the Lido

Sorry to be dumb about this, but I really don't know a whole lot...... Is the Lido a bad thing?

Well, the Lido is certainly not Venice. Much more modern buildings, traffic in the streets etc. It is about 12/15 minutes by water bus from San Marco so not an impossible journey. But the Lido has a very different atmosphere, fewer tourists, a good thing no doubt , but simply not the unique charm of Venice.

The magic moments in Venice are often at night, when the day trippers have departed, and it is a much quieter place. The floodlights twinkle across the canals and in wamr weather, you can sit outside a bar and have a quiet drink.

Hi,

I'm sorry to tell you that our only experience with otel.com was not a positive one ..........

We tried to book a hotel in Rome through them and it showed as available when we entered our request, so we carried on and entered credit card details but when we completed the booking, it was suddenly 'not available for the dates you requested' (or similar message). Thinking that we must have done something wrong, we tried again and the exact same thing happened. My husband decided to contact them by telephone (we are in the UK - they are in the US) and after explaining the problem, the lady said she'd look into it and ring us back. Well, that was about 12 months ago, and she still hasn't rang back!! Needless to say, after a day or so, we gave up on them and booked a different hotel through a UK company: hotelconnect, who were absolutely BRILLIANT. We watched our bank statement carefully to make sure no money was taken by otel.com - and it wasn't. However, after that little fiasco, we'd never consider using them again - they are on our little 'black list'!!!

i also found a great deal for a hotel in Paris with otel.com and was wondering if they were legit. If you have had a good experience with t them ,please respond.

We went to venice and stayed at the Monaco Grand Canal. The location was fabulous. The room was OK. The hotel switched us to a better room when we complained it was too small for us for 4 days. If you cannot stay in Venice proper, then your experience will not be quite the same.

Some friends recently went on their first trip to Venice & stayed on the Lido. Being the winter & for the reasons Robert explained this spoiled the trip for them ranging from 'somewhat' (for her) & 'totally' (for him). Tabby.

In possible defence of the Otel website, what can happen with large booking agencies (and often does, especially with flights), is that, in the time it takes to fill out the necessary personal information, credit card details etc, the one room that may have been available is taken by someone else. When you consider how many people may be trying to book a room (just like you) and someone else may be just seconds ahead of you.

I had the same problem once, booking flights over the telephone with a travel agent. There were 5 seats available at the beginning of our conversation and by the time she actually clicked on her computer to book them, there were only 2 left, fortunately we only needed two.

I thought this may be worth mentioning because Otel.com may be excellent so give them the benefit of the doubt.