Doing business with hotels

I can see that this is going to become one of my pet subjects. Why do hotels make it so difficult to do business with them?

Take my interaction with Crowne Plaza hotels today. I used Google to find a contact telephone number and I think we can probably assume that most people would do the same thing. So, we're talking about the main communication avanue between them and new business. I'm given an 0871 number and told that it will cost me 10p per minute. I haven't studied call charges for a while so I don't know if this is better or worse than normal rates, but I have the feeling something cynical is going on.

I telephoned them with one simple question: 'what is your day delegate rate?' After a fairly long message (at 10p per minute) going on about a customer satisfaction service that I'm not interested in I spoke to someone who told me I'd have to speak to the hotel and who gave me another 0871 number. I get this a lot, the sheer frustration of dealing with central reservations.

I then called the new number and was put through to an extension number that didn't answer. I was returned to the switchboard who put me through to someone else. Don't forget I'm feeling edgy because I know this is all costing me 10p per minute.

Finally I'm speaking to a person but they're reluctant to give me the rate I need to finish my proposal until they've taken my address, telephone number and email address. Even then I have to go through a whole discussion about how and why rates might change.

So, the event part of my proposal took me five minutes and the one piece of information from the hotel took me about 10 minutes to get and a whole load of frustration and stress.

I don't know how much these venues spend on marketing, exhibitions and whatever but why on earth do they make clients jump through hoops to get a fairly basic bit of key information?