Making Motel Reservations in Mexico - April, 2002

It was very interesting (and sometimes frustrating) trying to make hotel / motel reservations in Mexico.

I had two sources of motel information; AAA (American Automobile Association.), and an internet site, "Hotelguide.com".  What I found out, in the process of making reservations, was that neither could be trusted for room rates, or, maybe that the Mexican motels paid no attention to published room rates anyway!  The price was always higher, naturally.

I had decided at the outset that for telephone calling into Mexico, I would do what the Mexican people living in the USA do, and that is to buy "Prepaid Phone Cards" for calling from the USA into Mexico.  I found them in - what else, - a Mexican food restaurant.

Since we were going to stay mostly in medium to large cities, AAA had hotels listed in all but one of our cities.  However, their listings did not have telephone numbers.  So, when I wanted to make reservations at one of their listings, I had to dial the ATT International Directory Service and get the phone number, by having them connect to a Mexican operator, and give city, Mexican state, and motel name.  Most of the time the number given was correct, but I got one which was not correct, and my Spanish was not good enough to really know whom I had reached, and another which gave me a Spanish recording that said "El numero no existe".

With the given number, I had to dial an 11-digit 800-number to get to the telephone carrier of the Phone Card, then a 10-digit code to show I'd paid for the card itself, and then a 15-digit number to perform the access to international calling, the country code, the city code, and the telephone number I wanted.  Lots of chance for error in 36-digits - Phew!!

Then when I reached the motel, they swore that they didn't know any AAA, and their price was always significantly higher than the AAA listing.  All of this while I was trying to use my reasonable but not fluent Spanish and the motel clerk had very limited knowledge of English - kind of stressful, but very challenging!

With the Internet site "Hotel.com" (headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland), from 2 to 30 hotels or motels were listed in the various cities, with the ability to reserve a limited number of them "Online" and a large number of them "Offline".  Also, for many, but not all, of the hotels the room prices were listed.  Upon trying to book a room, I found that only ONE of the supposedly low and available room rates were really available.  In all other cases, when one worked through several web pages of detailed information, the room rates were always significantly above the "Come-On" rates. - Really frustrating!!!

I did book one "Online" hotel (which worked fine) and one "Offline" hotel.  Usually the method of booking "Offline" was to send an e:mail to the hotel, which they didn't answer.  I tried composing these in both Spanish and English, and it worked one time only.

Well, finally I got reservations made in 10 Mexican towns or cities for 13 nights - quite an experience!!

With the difficulty I was having with the last 3, Alex and I decided to just select a good looking motel as we arrived, and take our chances - we'll see! 

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