How long can I wait before making my reservation?
| Title: | How long can I wait before making my reservation? | |||||||
| Category: | Pre-Booking Questions | |||||||
| Author: | Daniele Pintaudi | Updated: | Jan 30, 2019 | Views: | 9,891 | |||
| Tags: | reservation detail | |||||||
All of our lives are filled with 'Calls to Action' in marketing with terms like "Hurry", "It won't last", "Get them before they're all gone", and "Act Now". We see these terms so frequently, that they have more or less lost their meaning in our daily lives. Because of this, we don't like to use these terms, but in some cases, we must. Not because it is a slick marketing term, but because it is a reality for us.
Two out of every Ten people that call or e-mail us, ready to reserve space, learn that the week they wanted has sold out by the time they made their decision.
A trip to Italy with one of our vacations is a large financial commitment; so many people take time in making their decision. This makes perfect sense. However, our vacations also have a finite amount of room, and except in the rarest of cases, our vacations all sell out to capacity.
Some people look at our calendar before our season starts and see lots of availability, causing them to think there is time. But when it is all said and done, it all sells out. Most years, we get close to selling out all of our vacations, and often that happens a year in advance!
With that in mind, every year we find ourselves in a position to give bad news to people we had been corresponding with for months. They call or e-mail, ready to book their space, only to hear us tell them it is sold out… while just a few days ago there was ample space.
We have had people make their decision on a week when there was space, then decide to get their airline tickets in order before reserving with us. Two days later, they had purchased their non-refundable tickets, but we had sold out the week they want in that time.
We had a week with SIX open spaces in it. Within a period of 5 days, not only did those six spaces sell out, but EIGHT more people tried to reserve the week, only to get the bad news that the week had sold out.
We have had weeks completely sell out more than a year in advance, while others have gotten down to the wire with ample space, only to sell out overnight at the last minute.
We have even had some weeks go from full availability to completely sold out in a single afternoon.
Because of this we strongly urge all guests to reserve their space as soon as they possibly can. It isn't about making more money for us. We know nearly all of our weeks will fill to capacity. We just don't like to see people we have been corresponding with over time see the week they had planned sell out before their eyes.
Also, keep in mind that we simply cannot hold space without a firm deposit. We would love to be able to do this for people, but we have been burned too many times. We have had to tell people weeks were sold out while we were holding space for people, only to later learn that they changed their minds or ran into some problem. In order to be fair to all, we must apply the same rules to everyone.