CheshireTom

Quite.

They're the current European Champions and won all their games in achieving it. That's more like it. However, they blew it in 2008 after taking the French and Italians apart in the group stages.

LOL. Caught out bullshitting yet again. It's no wonder that The Alamo Hotel walked off with the Prize of Pattaya's Least Successful Business Venture.

All you did was discover, after all this time, that booking directly with the hotel is often cheaper than going through an agent. It speaks volumes about your so-called advice that you have just discovered that. In the case of the Sheraton, Marriott and Holiday Inn their cheapest advertised discount rates are all advance purchase which are available online to all and sundry as is the Royal Cliff clearance rate. All of those hotels can be booked though their reservations staff CRS. Contrary to what you claim, the further discount that you have been able to achieve on any of those freely-available, advertised rates is zero, nada, zilch. One has to assume that your oft repeated "contact five GMs" advice was no more than another Walter Mitty moment. I think we can safely file that under the Cambridge Chronicles.

I agree. The World Cup has been won on the back of some dodgy refereeing decisions in the past .... "But the bizarre sequence of incidents that has characterised England-Argentina matches only began in 1966, at the World Cup quarter-final at Wembley. Shortly before half-time, after endless fouls by Argentina, their captain Antonio Rattin and the German referee Kreitlein got into an argument though neither spoke each other's language. Kreitlein famously sent off Rattin "for the look on his face".

You didn't beat latestays, a last-minute booking agency, because you can't book the room for tomorrow, or even next week, at 4k. Your claim is that by contacting the GM direct you can achieve significant discounts on the lowest advertised price. You have beaten neither the rate freely availalble to anyone directly from the hotel or through booking agents. Your contact the GMs of five hotels directly nonsense is exactly that and piss poor advice to any newbies who are BMs.

In other words you weren't offered any discount at all on the hotel's rates by the GM, nor did you undercut the rate available through travel agents. What you did get was the hotel's advance purchase rate - which isn't comparable to latestays (a last minute booking site) but is availalble on Agoda, amongst other agents. So you didn't save anything at all.

Share the details with the other boardies. The general manager's e-mail address would be helpful starting point for other boardies wanting to repeat the deal.

The Marriott Royal Garden ceased to be many years ago. It's called the Marriott Resort and Spa these days.

I've gone for Holland. Easy qualifiers and I would fancy their chances against any of the other teams. Whether they have the strength in depth to cope with the schedule is a bit of a concern though.

4K for what? Are you going to share the details with the other BMs?

That was certainly the situation previously but I think since the internet companies have taken advantage of the recently opened AAG (Asia-America Gateway) that it hasn't been an issue, or rather, not to the extent it was before.

Shilo, I had similar issues when I first changed over to TT+T. However, when I moved house, I managed to grab the techie guy and he sorted me out. He reconfigured my modem (Linksys) at the shop (that appeared to cure the problems) and then came to my house to do the settings on my Mac. I've just done another speedtest and the numbers appear to be very stable.

I already predicted that. Available from whom? Latestays offers agents rates which are lower than the hotels own discounted rate based simply on the amount of business they do. And you're suggesting that the GM is going to be impressed with your 3 week stay and undercut his existing multi-million dollar contracts? Didn't you also have fanciful notions about getting BMs deep discounts on Thai Airways at one point? How did that turn out? Says who? Are you suggesting that the Reservations Manager in a 5* hotel doesn't have the authority to offer the best rates without reference to the GM? Your understanding of the commercial aspects of the hotel industry seems to be on a par with your understanding of the commercial operations of national airlines.

Here you go, Martin .... 3BB - Premier and the prices ....

I've just done another Speedtest using 10 mb pro. To SF my ping is 243 ms and download speed is 9.89 mb. Yesterday the numbers were 257 ms and 9.84 mb. The numbers suggest that's not the case.

It's offering it now.

You have a couple of choices with connections less than 2 hours.

Discounted rates that are available to everyone - no need to e-mail the GM of the hotel. Their CRS has all the information required. It's called yield management.

Shilo, I am on 3BB's 10 mb Pro service - there is also a 12 mb and 16 mb service available. I get everything it says except slightly slower upload speeds. I've just done two Speedtests; the first is to BKK (I am down south) and the second to SF. Whether it is worth it to you is really only something you can answer.

It's not infamous Thai pricing. Many of the hotels who won't budge very far on rates have ex-pat management.

He won't come up with any examples even though he said he does it successfully in BKK. Anyone who has a reasonable understanding of how hotel pricing works will tell you the reason why 4* and 5* places won't discount below a certain level is that its against their longer term interests to do so. "It takes one minute to cut rates but years to reverse your actions". It's a rule that was emphasised this week by, Bill Heinecke ... "Many tourism officials said they thought it would take about six months for the industry to recover as long as there was not more unrest. However the Minor Group's Heinecke said travellers looking for steep discounts would be disappointed. "For sure there will be deals around but if you think we're going to slash the rates of our hotels, I don't think that's going to occur," he said. "We learned long ago that if you take rates down, they're going to take a long time to go up." Of course, if you've got time on your hands, you can go digging around to try and find the personal e-mail addresses of the general managers of the Sheraton, Dusit, Royal Cliff, Centara etc. However, don't bother with The Marriot - Bill Heinecke has already made clear what your answer will be. FWIW, I spoke with the boss of Sabai Group around 2 months ago about pricing. The bottom line is that they had 3 pricing tiers previously - high, low and peak (Xmas/New Year). Now they have four or five so they can react quicker to the political events going on. The rates that are being promoted at the Sabai Hotels at the moment are pretty much rock bottom so any further discount is a bonus. I don't think that they'll worry very much that their policy differs from the opinions of BigD, whose only claim to fame on the subject is that he would be a leading contender for the title of Pattaya's least successful hotel owner ever.

See! Xenophobic protectionism.

The one in Pattaya is crap, the one in BKK makes for a good night out.

I agree.