In Reply to: here now posted by Lynelliston on Monday, 26. May 2008 at 18:09 Bali Time:
Jist a bit of information which may help:
Asia Rooms are now part of the TUI Group one of the largest (if not the largest) and most respected Travel Group in Europe. In the UK for example Thompsons Holidays.
If you contact a hotel direct they may indeed tell you they do not have a contract with Asia Rooms. Asia Rooms along with numerous other Room Agents do not deal direct with every hotel that they offer rooms. (it would be impossible) They will get an allocation of rooms from the best/cheapest/biggest room wholesaler in the country in which the hotel is situated. Therefore if you book a room through Asia Rooms it could have been booked by a third party. Have a look on your voucher, the name of the agent is often shown on the voucher. All this is common place and to the customers benefit. If every Hotel Agent were to book direct and sign contracts with every hotel then the number of bookings they could generate for each hotel would be relatively small and therefore the discounts they received would reflect this. So reputable Agents/Companies will get together with a local Agent/Company and together they can guarantee the hotel a lot of guaranteed business. This is great for the hotel and ultimately great for you and I who can receive good discounts. Just imagine if you are a hotel owner and someone offers to guarantee to pay for between 10/20% of your rooms for 52 weeks what sort of discount you would offer.
This is not always the case of course. In many larger, popular hotels they may deal direct and have there own contract.
Becauase Asia Rooms have a guaranteed number of rooms allocated it does not matter who is in that room so in the majority of cases they (their local agent) will not tell the hotel the names of the occupants until approx 48 hours before you are due to arrive. It makes it much easier if clients have to cancel. My experience is that normally the Asia Room voucher normally expains this. My advice if you have any special requests is to email the hotel and explain that you have booked thro Asia rooms and they may not have been informed of your name.
In any case and no matter who you have booked through (even the hotel direct) it is a good idea to email the hotel about 24 hours before you are due to arrive to confirm your time of arrival. If there is an admin error at least it gives them a wake up call.
Finally I have booked a lot of rooms with Asia Rooms with no problems and dont forget the hotel/airline will rarely admit they have made a mistake. They will always try and blame the Travel Agent, Booking Agent etc etc first
Hope this helps.