TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Booking via internet

First off, you guys rock! This forum is an outstanding source of information!

Question on booking via internet: I have submitted several requests for car rental and other excursions but have had almost no response. Is it standard practice? Is it the season? Do I keep trying with the same or try another company?

Here is an example
Scooby Doo

Says there is no availability ever, does not respond when I contact them, but if I look at Trip Advisor, there are ratings from July/August.

Any insight would be appreciated!

People on SXM seem to take vacation for Sept/Oct, but it seems crazy for a business completely unresponsive leading up to high season.

Personally, I would communicate via email or by a phone call and not rely on internet booking.

Can't say much about the "no response" but a lot of automated booking sites don't look further out than 6 months. Check a hypothetical date sooner and see if you get the same "no availability" response.

For several years I have booked Empress through their website. I receive automated confirmation and have never had a problem.

I’m another who prefers to communicate via email, but I will also suggest you check your spam file to see if any responses ended up there, as they sometimes do.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If at first you do succeed, remember the internet is much faster than island time.

My ISP blocks all email from SXM. When they block a email, I get nothing. I use a Gmail account so I can get replies.

There are several rental companies listed on this website under TTOL Sponsors, listed at top of the page. We use Kennys and I sent email right from the website listed here and got a reply. Sometimes replies might go to your "junk mail file" so check there.

All,
Thanks for your responses! Good idea on checking the Junk email folder.

To date, only Hertz has responded to my emails/online enquiries, so we are going with them. I will keep trying some of the activity companies. Luckily there is so much choice, I’m sure we will get a hit somewhere.

We are going over Christmas week, so due to it being high season, I’m trying to jump on bookings early.

If its a car or hotel we only book via there own website or call the 800 number , never via third party etc bookings.com Expedia. If we ever have a issue we can go back to them directly without having involve someone else. Much quicker plus you can often get a better rate by going direct as the hotel or car rental pays a pretty big commission. I agree sometimes you find slow response or lack of urgency to reply or answer that darn phone! We have booked already for the winter at Marys Boon and glad we do as already our preferred room was booked and the hotel they said was about 75% sold out for January 2020.

When I have booked online for hotels I have looked at comparative pricing from different 3rd party vendors and then call directly to that hotel and they usually match the price.