Mr. Panagiotis Pantazopoulos, managing director of Trésor Hotels & Resorts, gives us tips for ideal and competitively priced winter getaways in www.news.gr.

* Interview to Vicky Vamiedaki

What should we take into account when booking at a small hotel or guest house for a short winter break?

In their majority, small hotels and guest houses are family businesses. This means that they will present us with either the greatest dosage of hospitality or with a great amount of risk taking for the end result. We usually come across mistakes yielded by negligence, absence of experience or even unawareness. Even though the personal contact of the owners with their clients may cover up the imperfections of the selected accommodation (who wouldn’t be happy with a large piece of handmade pie that just came out of the oven?), there are, nonetheless, a few things that we should take into account when choosing a small hotel or guest house beyond that initial “feeling” we might have when searching. Our research should definitely involve a personal phone call to the hotel or at least a visit at their website or, even better, at trip advisor.  From there on, we must get some of our questions answered before making our final choice: Is there autonomous heating in my room? Does the price include breakfast? Will I be charged extra for the use of wood in the fireplace? Will I have hot running water? Is the hotel easily accessible or will I need a jeep? How far are the central points of the area at large from my location?

How can we be sure that the hotelier will book for us the room that we have actually seen in the hotel website?

Well frankly, we can never be certain that they will. What hotels do through their website is to promote and convey a general idea about what the client will get, by showing only what they wish to transmit about the atmosphere and the concept of the rooms and the facilities. They will never really show you everything.  Besides, showing everything with a tag: “Room 1”, “Room 2” would further complicate the hotelier’s life. We must not forget that we rent the room...we don’t buy the room, therefore if we didn’t get what was shown and promised, we can disregard it next time we are in the area of even comment negatively about it for other travelers to see! To quarrel with Reception because the bathroom did not provide us with a view will not make things better for us. Relax & enjoy...What is important is who keeps us company and since our free time is so limited, why waste it?

Which are the ways to make the most appropriate selection for us and have an unforgettable vacation?

One of the criteria that has to be clarified in our head before we go, is what kind of experience we wish to have in our getaway. Relaxing in nature? Active recreation? A combination of the two above? Greece has numerous "treasures" to be discovered and hundreds of ways to have fun, so it is definitely worth the drive or the traveling process to get there. It goes without saying that the closest our treasure is to a city or town, the more expensive it will be. Nowadays, we do have at our disposal a few remarkable certification bodies which bind hotels to value for money offers, as well as, several accommodation assessment websites, which may not always be trustworthy though. It is in our habit here in Greece to rely a lot to the word of mouth and this is how we usually end up choosing our next destination.

Are there safe ways to research and book at the best possible price?

In our days, hotels use booking systems that airlines used to use many years ago and which would now be obsolete. This practically means that the prices which were determined -for example- 5 months ago would themselves indeed now be obsolete. Hotels definitely take a good advantage of those booking systems in a way that they can keep records of their statistics for any given period of time in previous years, hence, they can predict -to some extent- their upcoming demands and alter their prices even on a daily basis. This is precisely why we detect price swings for different week days or for any given weekend within the year. All I want to say in order to conclude my thought, is that demand will finally set the price and not the hotelier. We do of course have  booking.com and expedia.com to aid us in our quest of getting the best possible price, but the hotel websites offer competitive prices too. For me, the “last minute” phone call booking trick is the best method to negotiate the best possible price.

 Press here to access the interview as it was posted in news.gr

 

 

From: Eva Kanellopoulos

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