Chiang Dao full?

[femi fan]

Anybody know what's happening there this week? My favorite resort which usually has nobody else staying there is all booked up according to one of the booking internet sites, while many other resorts are almost full.

Most strange. I really wanted to take a spontaneous few days up there later in the week. Normally i don't even look online, i just go. Probably will do this, but not so keen if the town is overtaken with some huge grouping!

[pgrahmm]

Last minute crush before school?

[FolkGuitar]

I often use on-line booking services and am constantly surprised to see notices such as "Only 2 rooms left," "Last room at this price," or "4 people looking at this room right now," yet when I get to the hotels, find them only half full. I generally don't travel during holiday periods so this never made much sense to me. I just chalk it up to a marketing ploy.

[Chicog]

I often use on-line booking services and am constantly surprised to see notices such as "Only 2 rooms left," "Last room at this price," or "4 people looking at this room right now," yet when I get to the hotels, find them only half full. I generally don't travel during holiday periods so this never made much sense to me. I just chalk it up to a marketing ploy.

Each provider (e.g. Agoda.com, Booking.com, Hotels.com) only gets a certain amount of rooms.

[Sparkles]

Go direct to their own web sites after you have read reviews or know which one you want.They don't have to pay commission and you get a cheaper rate,well we do !

[elektrified]

Never seen Chiang Dao "full". Especially now when tourism has to be off by 50%. In 10 years now I've never seen so few tourists here for Songkran. The wife says where she works (which is extremely popular), occupancy has been at 60% since before Songkran.

[Ricardo]

Seems unlikely that they'd be busy during the burning-off season ?

[Sparkles]

I often use on-line booking services and am constantly surprised to see notices such as "Only 2 rooms left," "Last room at this price," or "4 people looking at this room right now," yet when I get to the hotels, find them only half full. I generally don't travel during holiday periods so this never made much sense to me. I just chalk it up to a marketing ploy.

It is only a marketing ploy and a pretty dishonest one at that.My daughter manages a GH in the Blue Mtns in Sydney and has had several problems with the 2 biggest online booking agents.

They are legtimate businesses but their policy of listing reviews,which are not verified, favourable and unfavourable, is a constant problem.One difficult guest out of a 100 can turn people away for a review that simply is a total fabrication by said person. It can take up to 4 weeks and paperwork to get that review removed.

I would very much doubt Chiang Dao is full.The Resort we stay at 3 weeks ago was very busy up until the end of February and then fell away,the constant smoke didn't help.

We will be back there in 10 days, with friends from OZ, and have just booked and were told its very quiet.

[LawrenceN]

Seems unlikely that they'd be busy during the burning-off season ?

Precisely! We were thinking of doing exactly what the OP planned to do. We called a guest house Sunday after choosing it online. The proprietor told my wife not to bother because the smoke is so bad. There was a forest fire clouding the area. The proprietor herself told us that she was planning to leave due to the smoke. So maybe many places are closed due to the off-season.

[SOUTHERNSTAR]

I often use on-line booking services and am constantly surprised to see notices such as "Only 2 rooms left," "Last room at this price," or "4 people looking at this room right now," yet when I get to the hotels, find them only half full. I generally don't travel during holiday periods so this never made much sense to me. I just chalk it up to a marketing ploy.

Booking sites get a certain number of rooms allocated. For resorts that list on multiple websites must limit the number of rooms allocated to avoid over booking. The number of rooms available reflects the number they have available not the total number of rooms available.

[FolkGuitar]

I often use on-line booking services and am constantly surprised to see notices such as "Only 2 rooms left," "Last room at this price," or "4 people looking at this room right now," yet when I get to the hotels, find them only half full. I generally don't travel during holiday periods so this never made much sense to me. I just chalk it up to a marketing ploy.

Booking sites get a certain number of rooms allocated. For resorts that list on multiple websites must limit the number of rooms allocated to avoid over booking. The number of rooms available reflects the number they have available not the total number of rooms available.

I can appreciate the fact that the sites only get a certain number of rooms they can sell. That's understandable.

What bothers me (bother being too strong a word, really) is that when I'm trying to book a room during the middle of the week in a very small not-touristy town out of season, and the site tells me that three other people are looking at this same room at the same time I am, I tend not to believe it. Had it been a tourist town during tourist season, I could see it happening. But a non-resort bedroom hotel in the middle of Fang on a Tuesday night during Burning Season... No... I don't think so... I have to believe that's just a sales pitch.

Edited April 19, 2016 by FolkGuitar

[jchfriis]

Just stayed at Chiang Dao Nest from Monday to Tuesday. It was about half full. Great place, but the smoke was bad.

[Konini]

Definitely a sales trick - just like only one room left. Agoda as I were told by a hotel person are allocated a certain number of rooms. Guaranteed money for the owner but not very much money for the rooms. They often have flash sales with 50% or more off if there is a short time left and they have a lot of allocated rooms that they have to pay for.

I don't like to prebook and will only do so for 1 night if we will be arriving somewhere late. I like to have a look at the hotel and lift back the sheets to see how clean the bed is before making my decision. If the room we book for the night is good, we stay on paying the same rate as we paid Agoda (if they try to charge more we look elsewhere because that's just being greedy - by paying them direct they are getting the full amount rather than the peanuts they get from Agoda).

[FolkGuitar]

Definitely a sales trick - just like only one room left. Agoda as I were told by a hotel person are allocated a certain number of rooms. Guaranteed money for the owner but not very much money for the rooms. They often have flash sales with 50% or more off if there is a short time left and they have a lot of allocated rooms that they have to pay for.

I don't like to prebook and will only do so for 1 night if we will be arriving somewhere late. I like to have a look at the hotel and lift back the sheets to see how clean the bed is before making my decision. If the room we book for the night is good, we stay on paying the same rate as we paid Agoda (if they try to charge more we look elsewhere because that's just being greedy - by paying them direct they are getting the full amount rather than the peanuts they get from Agoda).

Each year I stay at a hotel mid-way between the two Bangkok airports. It's a five-minute walk to the venue for a major three-day international fencing tournament held by the Royal Thai Navy. Last year, a Swiss fellow I knew from the tournament needed to book a room and asked me where I was staying. He walked over with me after the day's events and went to book a room at the front desk. They were charging more than double what I paid through Agoda. He came back to my room, logged onto Agoda with my iPad, booked his room for the same price I was paying, and went back to the desk, showed them the on-line voucher, and got his room. The price differences can be outrageous!

[Somnambulist]

Definitely a sales trick - just like only one room left. Agoda as I were told by a hotel person are allocated a certain number of rooms. Guaranteed money for the owner but not very much money for the rooms. They often have flash sales with 50% or more off if there is a short time left and they have a lot of allocated rooms that they have to pay for.

I don't like to prebook and will only do so for 1 night if we will be arriving somewhere late. I like to have a look at the hotel and lift back the sheets to see how clean the bed is before making my decision. If the room we book for the night is good, we stay on paying the same rate as we paid Agoda (if they try to charge more we look elsewhere because that's just being greedy - by paying them direct they are getting the full amount rather than the peanuts they get from Agoda).

Each year I stay at a hotel mid-way between the two Bangkok airports. It's a five-minute walk to the venue for a major three-day international fencing tournament held by the Royal Thai Navy. Last year, a Swiss fellow I knew from the tournament needed to book a room and asked me where I was staying. He walked over with me after the day's events and went to book a room at the front desk. They were charging more than double what I paid through Agoda. He came back to my room, logged onto Agoda with my iPad, booked his room for the same price I was paying, and went back to the desk, showed them the on-line voucher, and got his room. The price differences can be outrageous!

Yes, I think this is more common that the opposite. If you walk in they must assume you are too desperate to look around or too tired or whatever. I've never had much luck getting hotel staff to budge on the walk-in rate.

[Somnambulist]

But as someone already said, if you want to extend past the nights you have booked, it is standard policy at many hotels to give you the price you got from the agency

[Konini]

Yes, I think this is more common that the opposite. If you walk in they must assume you are too desperate to look around or too tired or whatever. I've never had much luck getting hotel staff to budge on the walk-in rate.

When we were travelling around full time we developed a system. We'd look on Trip Adviser and Agoda to get a rough price of the hotels with good reviews. Whenever we arrived in a new place, we took it in turns for one of us to sit at a coffee shop with all the bags and the other to stroll into the hotel and ask to look a rooms and almost always managed to negotiate better prices than on Agoda. This was for hotels in the $15 -$25 a night range. Act uninterested and unimpressed, pull back the sheets on the bed to check how clean they are, say it's OK, but I'll have a look at some places and they would drop the price almost every time - we were basically the oldest backpackers in the world for somewhere between 2 and 3 years, so that's a lot of hotels.

If you turn up with your bags, they think you're desperate and won't negotiate on price. If you just walk in off the street with your hands in your pockets carry nothing, they know that you're serious about looking around at other places. As I said, it almost always worked in Thailand, Cambo, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and not so much in Malaysia. We stayed very cheaply in some very nice places, some for up to 2 weeks (negotiated further discount of course for a longer stay).