A lot of the cheaper hotels in Thailand can't be booked by travel agents,
so if you want to make a reservation you have to do so directly using email,
fax or the telephone. Unfortunately, many lack staff with sufficient English
skills and so you may have a very hard time getting a successful reservation
out of your telephone call. Emails (if they are able to accept them, which
many aren't) and/or faxes written only in English may simply be ignored if
the person reading them is unable to understand them. Thankfully, the more
expensive places (1000B+) are generally better staffed and you shouldn't have
too many problems using only English when making a reservation with any of
them.
To help with the cheaper places, we have made a couple of forms in Thai and
English that should get you a much better response than if you used English
alone - one can be used for making a reservation, the other for enquiring
about prices and availability. Obviously, they are generic forms and if you
wish to add to them it will have to be in English alone, but it does minimize
the amount of English the recipient has to understand. Both contain instructions
to the recipient to reply to you only in English, which is not normally a
problem for any hotel even if they would struggle to understand a request
written in English. We are very interested in getting any feedback on them
- if you use them please let us know if you had any success by using the Contact
form or at
. If you do manage to make a reservation, be aware that the hotel may sometimes
make it under your first name rather than your surname.
The forms are in .doc format, click on the link below to download them.
