shey

I've booked my hotels for our trip to Italy this summer through Venere.com. Does anyone know if the prices that are quoted include tax/vat?

kenderina

Yes, it is included.

Rastaguytoday

Venere is a very good site for getting opinions and finding hotels.

However, always contact the hotel directly if you can. There's always good will that builds up with you and the hotel if you book directly. You might even get a better price, or a better room for the same price as venere.

daveesl

Here is a problem with Venere. We booked a hotel through them. Due to my fault, I booked it near the wrong airport.

Venere only allows 24-48 from the time of booking to cancel the reservation. We booked over 2 months in advance. To cancel would have cost us about $100, so we ended up keeping what we had and stay 2 hrs away from the needed airport.

Most places will allow you to cancel a reservation 24-48 hours prior to scheduled arrival. I would never use Venere again to book a room, but would use it to locate a room.

dave

Jake1

Note that the cancellation policy at Venere.com varies by hotel. We've made a number of reservations through venere.com with all of them having cancellation from between 6 PM the day of arrival to 72 hours prior to day of arrival, depending on the hotel's policy.

kappa

Jake1 is right. Unlike what daveesl stated, cancellation policy varies depending on the hotel. Like Jake1, I have used venere many times (without problem - so I recommend it), and I have never booked a hotel with the cancellation policy that daveesl had. Unless you book 24-48 hrs before the check-in date, it was always 72 - 24 hrs before check-in = 0 % cancellation. You can see each hotel's cancellation policy before booking it. And cancelling online is fairly easy.

Back to OP's original question, tax/vat is usually included but some hotel's local tax (city tax, etc) could be charged additionally so if it's important to you it's better to check directly with the hotel but it is usually 1 or 2€ per adult, not much. I call the hotel anyway at least once even after having booked with the sites such as venere to check the booking and ask other eventual questions.

Basically I agree with rasta to book diretly with the hotels but often venere matched hotel's best rate (in this case I'd book direct for the resons rasta stated) and a few times venere's rates were better, that did surprise me so this depends too, I think.