In Reply to: Padangbai. posted by mavismb on Monday, 23. July 2007 at 11:36 Bali Time:
Actually we found it very helpful to research internet rates online before going. We didn't want to book in advance in order to be more flexible but we did make contact with several hotels which looked interesting. We received internet quotes via email and printed the emails which we brought with us. When we got to a destination and if we liked the hotel we asked about prices and if the offer was not as good as the internet quote, we pulled out our emails. In two cases the internet quote was much lower than the best offer given on site. As for the Mustika Sari in Padangbai, we didn't know the internet price and were just offered the 300,000 rate. We had been to the other two hotels with pools in Padangbai first, so we had an idea of what the prices were like. The Mustika was best value for price, we thought. We never really haggled prices on hotels but when the first offer seemed high we merely went to our internet price quote and were able to get a much better deal. I guess it will also depend on vacancy rates at the time you are enquiring. If the hotel is pretty full and pre booked, you will probably have less negotiating power. Hope this helps. All the best.