I've been using this site Splendia to find hotel rooms for my guests and for myself over Christmas. It features unique, boutique style "Luxury and Character hotels" from all over the world and is a central bookings system. The rates are also quite good!!!!
What I like best about it is that the site only uses a selection of pre-screened hotels, and it allows you to enter in your dates and where you'd like to go and then it shows you what is available.
A word of warning : if you are booking in a hurry, skip the destinations that only allow you to send an "inquiry" to the hotel rather than ones which allow you to book immediately. In my experience this saves you a lot of run around.
There are a good selection of hotels in Rio & Buzios on the site - check it out! I highly recommend booking this way for people who don't speak Portuguese as it is possible to do it all in English.
Glad you liked Splendia while booking for Christmas! I definitly hope you will enjoy your stay. Where did you book?
Just one or two extra details about Splendia: If you're in a hurry, do not hesitate to give us a phone call, our customer service is available in 7 different languages (including Portuguese and English). Might be faster and easier than the "inquiry" form!
We still do not have so many hotels in South America. So if you know any nice and unique hotel(s) we are not proposing yet, do not hesitate to propose us new destinations, we would be glad to include them to our existing portfolio.
May I ask you what was your experience concerning our website, hotel pages, booking....? There are a lot of things to improve and we would love to get your insight about it!
Seasons greetings from Splendia.com
Posted by: antoinegrillon | December 10, 2008 at 07:06 AM
Actually Antoine, calling in was where I had a bit of trouble. I would recommend people use your online system as it is much less aggravating! (The issue for me was trying to book in at a specific resort, although it showed there was availability, every time I tried to book in, it would not let me. I ended up having to explain my very long story to several splendia agents which got very irritating.) In the end it all worked out and I am happy with my booking and think that the idea behind your service is great.
I especially like the idea that it is set up to show only properties which have vacancy at the time you want to book (even though in my experience it was not 100% accurate. But I think the concept is fantastic). Notice that I did not mention the problems I had in booking in my post until, well, you asked!
Again, I certainly would not say that that your customer service via phone is either easier or faster than online. (In my experience). If you would like feedback about anything else specific, let me know!
Posted by: Daily Rio Life | December 12, 2008 at 09:34 AM
Thx a lot for your feedback about problems you got while booking!
If I may say, mentioning problems you may have encountered on our website is the best way for us to solve them! (May I ask you on which property you got this booking problem? I will ask our IT team to have a look at it in order to find out where the problem may come from)
As for the customer service, well... we just opened a new office and are still working on solving some "setup bugs". It should get better real soon!
Posted by: antoinegrillon | December 15, 2008 at 11:53 AM
No problem! Like I said, all problems aside I still think it's a wonderful site.
The issue I had was with booking at the Santorini in Buzios, we ended up booking elsewhere.
I'll post again about where we are booked to stay after we've stayed there as I don't like to ever talk about "where I'm going" but rather "where I've been" - or, more accurately, my husband really prefers it that way!
Posted by: Daily Rio Life | December 17, 2008 at 12:49 PM