Wanna pick some people's brains here. I've never booked a block of hotel rooms before and wanted to know if my experience here is the norm.
Our wedding venue is about an hour outside the city, so we wanted to have rooms available at a nearby hotel in case people wanted to stay in town near the venue.
I called a hotel, and asked them to explain how it works. She explained the ins and outs of it and then said "is that what you want to do?" and I said yes. Then she said she needed my credit card information for the booking. Is that normal? When I asked her why she would need my credit card, she said as insurance for them. But that doesn't make any sense to me because if guests book a room there, and end up being no shows...wouldn't that guest's card be charged for the room because they will have given that info at the time of booking?
And, if the rooms aren't booked a month before the date, they're released and available for anybody to book, so I don't really understand under what circumstances they would need to ever charge my card.
I'm also sketched out because they said they'd email me information with how guests book and receive a discount, and they never did. So I emailed them, but never heard back. I'm going to call them this afternoon because its been a few weeks now.
Has anybody had a similar experience? Is that normal procedure for booking a hotel block? Or is this as weird as I think it is?
