On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:05:36 -0800, Jay Honeck wrote:
I don't believe that's going to be true much longer. EVERYONE in the US
either books on-line, or searches on-line, nowadays.

Personally, I use the internet to find a hotel, and then I call them.
(Don't EVER stay at a hotel/motel that doesn't list their *local*
telephone number, by the way. Those national reservation call centers
are a clue that you are dealing with McSuites.)

You can always, always, ALWAYS drive a better price by talking to the
manager or owner, than you can get on-line, because he (like me) would
much rather give YOU the 15% that we have to pay the on-line booking
agencies.

I went to Florida for a 2 week dive trip last year... I made no
reservations beforehand since I was planning on just winging it...
Wherever I happened to be that day, I would just find a hotel for the
night... I encountered hotels who would not give me the same rate that I
could get via booking their room via one of the online sites... So, I
drove around the neighborhood, found an open wireless internet connection
and booked it... In one case, the online site brought up a competitor that
was an even better deal, so the hotel actually lost my business... Maybe I
wasn't speaking to the owner or manager, but since they appeared to be
Indian, I at least had a good reason to assume that they were... grin