I am looking to book two nights in Ischia for a girlfriends' getaway August 21 & 22. Venere indicates availability at a certain hotel, even different types of room (Standard, Superior, waterview and non) but when I called the hotel (which I did first) they said to call back in two weeks as something might open up, but right now there was only one room available, but without waterview.

Who to believe? If I booked through Venere would they email me and tell me "oops"? Was the hotel holding some rooms apart hoping for weekly rentals? Would the hotel be obligated to provide a waterview double room for two nights if Venere took my reservation for it? How do these things work?

A few years ago I went through this same scenario regarding a hotel in Lucca. I contacted the hotel first, for 3 nights, including September 13, a night of a special candlelight procession.

They could only give me 2 nights. Someone suggested I try Venere and I was able to get my 3 nights through them.

Wondering, as you are, whether or not I really had those 3 nights booked on Venere, I again contacted the hotel and found out that I did have those reserved.

Venere apparently contracts with the hotels and are allowed a certain amount of nights that the hotel itself cannot book. Seemed strange at the time, but it worked perfectly.

In my case Venere is about 30% more than the website indicates the price would be on their website(2nd night goes into mid-season, first night is high season). That's a significant difference (almost 100 Euros).

Venere is good in that you do not have to pay in advance. But they are quick to let you down if something goes wrong. Last summer I made a confirmed reservation through them on the internet. I printed out the confirmation number. Va bene. For some reason my credit card got bounced back. They never contacted me. When I got to the hotel there was not room for me and my family. I contacted Venere and they refused absolutely to take any responsibility, to assist me, to help me in any way. I learned my lesson.

I may call the hotel back in another week to see if they have a room available...then cancel Venere reservation, unless the price is the same, in which case I will just confirm the Venere reservation. Luckily I have a little time before mid-August.

My (scant) experience is this - I've used both Venere and Bookings. Both of the sites are convenient in that you just have to hand over a credit card number, and have comfortable cancellation policies. Both sites let me know (after reservation) if a particular hotel was becoming untrustworthy, and cancelled my reservation. They do indeed apparently have some sort of autonomous access to rooms that are outside the reach of the hotel management. The prices they state are the prices charged, and usually it's the hotel that has discrepancies about prices.

I didn't feel bad about booking an extra accommodation or two until I had done more research to make a final decision. Because we were a party of six people, I double-checked with the hotels to make sure that the reservations were confirmed. I also let them know a week in advance that our plans were unchanged and that we would be arriving as scheduled.

So my advice is to use Venere, they are reliable and convenient, but make sure things are how they appear through direct contact with the hotel. Joe

I have always booked directly with the hotel as I have a reluctance to book with Venere, Trip Advisor etc. That is because I don't have the confidence that the better or best rooms in a particular category will be those that would have been available if booked directly with the hotel. Normally I would do all the booking with a hotel over the telephone combined with emails. I think we all know that all hotels have some rooms in each of its categories that are not well located etc. I have assumed that these are the rooms that will be booked using the internet booking agencies.

Pictures and floor plans would be most helpful when booking rooms in a hotel.

Peter