I'm not impressed with the conference hotel so far. Here's a summary of my interactions with them:

Feb-6: I send an email to reservierungen@nh-hotels.com with the keyword D-Conf in the subject line, as indicated in the conference page. I ask for a reservation between 30-04-2018 and 6-05-2018 (6 nights), since it was cheaper to stay an extra night, as the plane ticket that day was less expensive.

Feb-9: I get an email asking to which hotel I would like to reserve. I hadn't notice it was a chain of hotels, but I'm surprised the special keyword didn't let them determine that automatically. I reply that I want a reservation for the NH München Messe, with the DConf conference special rate.

Feb-13: I send them an email saying I continue to await their reply.

Feb-14: They reply with a proposal. They have a different rate for 30.04.2018, because that's not included in the conference special. Fine. Here I had some other expenses on my credit card, so I decide to wait some days for that to sort out.

Feb-20: They reply again with a seemingly similar email (not really! more on that later).

Feb-21: I reply to confirm that I want to book. I send them my CC number and name, and ask if they need the CVV too.

Feb-23: They say they need the expiry date. (why didn't they just say what CC details they needed in the original email?...). I reply with the needed data.

Mar-1: I ask if my reservation has been made

Mar-2: They confirm my reservation. Unfortunately, it seems that on the Feb-20 email they had changed the reservation dates to "From 01.05.2018 to 05.05.2018 and from 05.05.2018 to 06.05.2018". I hadn't noticed that. So one night is missing. I reply to them explaining the situation and asking for a change.

Mar-9: I send them an email saying I continue to await a correction to my reservation.

On Friday, March 09, 2018 15:26:24 Luís Marques via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> I'm not impressed with the conference hotel so far. Here's a summary of my interactions with them:
>
> Feb-6: I send an email to reservierungen@nh-hotels.com with the keyword D-Conf in the subject line, as indicated in the conference page. I ask for a reservation between 30-04-2018 and 6-05-2018 (6 nights), since it was cheaper to stay an extra night, as the plane ticket that day was less expensive.
>
> Feb-9: I get an email asking to which hotel I would like to reserve. I hadn't notice it was a chain of hotels, but I'm surprised the special keyword didn't let them determine that automatically. I reply that I want a reservation for the NH München Messe, with the DConf conference special rate.
>
> Feb-13: I send them an email saying I continue to await their reply.
>
> Feb-14: They reply with a proposal. They have a different rate for 30.04.2018, because that's not included in the conference special. Fine. Here I had some other expenses on my credit card, so I decide to wait some days for that to sort out.
>
> Feb-20: They reply again with a seemingly similar email (not
> really! more on that later).
>
> Feb-21: I reply to confirm that I want to book. I send them my CC number and name, and ask if they need the CVV too.
>
> Feb-23: They say they need the expiry date. (why didn't they just say what CC details they needed in the original email?...). I reply with the needed data.
>
> Mar-1: I ask if my reservation has been made
>
> Mar-2: They confirm my reservation. Unfortunately, it seems that on the Feb-20 email they had changed the reservation dates to "From 01.05.2018 to 05.05.2018 and from 05.05.2018 to 06.05.2018". I hadn't noticed that. So one night is missing. I reply to them explaining the situation and asking for a change.
>
> Mar-9: I send them an email saying I continue to await a correction to my reservation.

I had similar problems (though they never asked for my CC number via e-mail, and I don't know what I would have done if they had, since I won't give that via e-mail). After I _finally_ got an e-mail with a reservation number, and they'd screwed up the dates, rather than play more e-mail tag, I called one of the numbers listed in that e-mail and (after getting passed around a fair bit) managed to talk to someone who could speak and English and fix my reservation - and who I could ask how I was supposed to pay, since they'd never asked for any form of money in any of the e-mails i got sent (so I gave my CC number over the phone). I don't know what their normal rates are, so I don't know how much money going through this process saved me, but I suspect that it would have been far easier to just book the room through their website and pay the extra money than deal with playing e-mail tag and then getting passed around on the phone until I managed to get to the right person to fix my reservation. I did finally get it all sorted out though.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 17:07:50 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> I had similar problems

How do these people stay in business??

On Friday, March 09, 2018 17:12:31 Luís Marques via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 17:07:50 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > I had similar problems
>
> How do these people stay in business??

Probably by normally having folks use their website rather than e-mail them, and if it's rare enough for folks to e-mail in like this, they don't have to actually handle it well to stay in business. Personally, I think that it's quite weird to be e-mailing in to make reservations. My guess is that we were told to e-mail in, because their website probably doesn't have a way to indicate that you want a special rate like this. Still, I was quite surprised at how slow they were in responding to e-mails, and I was just about to give up on getting a reservation that way when I finally got the e-mail saying that they'd made one (with the wrong dates though).

I was also surprised that I had as much trouble getting to someone on the phone who could help me as I did. Given that they're an international hotel chain, I would have expected more of their folks on the phone to speak English. That problem would be more understandable if they were just in Germany, but they're not.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 03/09/2018 07:26 AM, Luís Marques wrote:
> conference hotel

Somewhat related, I booked my room at the same hotel through Expedia for a cheaper price than DConf price. I'm sure it could go lower if I seached on other booking sites. (Expedia did increase the price about $3 while I was clicking through with the BS "the fare has just went up; this happens sometimes". :) )

Off topic, booking all legs of your flight individually may be much much cheaper at least on Expedia. They first quoted I think $1800 for the multi-city San Francisco - Istanbul - Munich and back. The same trip was about $1100 when I booked everything individually, still on Expedia. (I am being approximate on the prices but the difference was very large like that.)

Ali

On Friday, March 09, 2018 10:08:58 Ali Çehreli via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 03/09/2018 07:26 AM, Luís Marques wrote:
>  > conference hotel
>
> Somewhat related, I booked my room at the same hotel through Expedia for a cheaper price than DConf price. I'm sure it could go lower if I seached on other booking sites. (Expedia did increase the price about $3 while I was clicking through with the BS "the fare has just went up; this happens sometimes". :) )

If that's the case, I'd suggest not even bothering with e-mailing the hotel, since it clearly doesn't work very well.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 3/9/2018 9:12 AM, Luís Marques wrote:
> On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 17:07:50 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> I had similar problems
> 
> How do these people stay in business??

I wonder that every time I deal with a business that makes it hard to send them my money.

I just now booked it through Expedia. Didn't have any problems.

I booked online. I need a different room than the Conference Rate. But while I was there I did notice that the online rate for the conference room was the same as quoted on the conference site (89EUR).

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
import quiet.dlang.dev;

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 04:24:49 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> I booked online. I need a different room than the Conference Rate. But while I was there I did notice that the online rate for the conference room was the same as quoted on the conference site (89EUR).

I booked via nh-hotels.com, signed up for a membership, and paid in advance for 2 adults in a standard room (no breakfast) at ~69EUR.