primary Paris hotel booking

["George, Wes" <[e-mail]>]

Happy New Year, it's time for our triannual hotel complaint thread.
I hate to do it, but I think that there are people who haven't looked at this yet, and I'm hoping that we can perhaps rectify it before the majority of folks try to book:

 "Instructions for making reservations at Hotel Concorde:
Please fill out the reservations form and fax it directly to the hotel at: [phone] or email it to [e-mail]"

It's 2012, but the IETF and this hotel chain expects us to book reservations at the main conference hotel by (international) FAX or by *emailing* a form which includes a credit card number so that the hotel can hold the room and implement its relatively bizarre prepay/anti-cancellation policy.
Would it be trolling to ask whether anyone verified that "cmasson" has support for PGP encrypted-email and a proper method of securely storing (and then destroying after use) the several hundred credit card numbers they are about to receive?

What person or rate code should we ask for when booking our rooms over the phone? (hey if I'm going old school, I'm doing it all the way!) Though, given the above, I'm relatively worried that my credit card number will simply end up on an unprotected spreadsheet on a PC somewhere in their office even if I call to book.

More practically, the hotel blocks at the primary hotel typically fill up quite fast once registration is opened, especially since the overflow hotel is actually more expensive than the primary. Does the hotel fax/call us back to tell us that they have no more rooms available for our requested dates, or is the block open-ended such that they will keep selling rooms in it until the cutoff regardless of the number?

Evidently "ability to book group rate rooms online" is something that should be added to our list of hotel requirements. I'm stunned that it's not there already.

Wes George



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