To the @#%Q^!! morons who run small hotels and guest houses

Now look, you are supposed to be trying to sell your stupid guest house/bungalow/hotel, right?

Why can't you have a website with your contact numbers? Surely you know that there are no telephone directories around now, how are people to know how to contact you? If you don't want to spend money, have a blog site, its free.

Ok, you are listed on a booking site, but why not take what traffic you can direct? Especially when the damn booking site does not answer the phone either?

Its very frustrating, one has to trawl the web looking for numbers, hoping that some past visitor put the number somewhere on the web. With older places there is a fair chance of picking up a number, with new ones its hopeless.

A few places do have websites with phone numbers. On more than one occasion I have found the number is listed incorrectly.

Having tracked down the number with difficulty, when calling I tell them that the number is wrong. The standard response I get is: oh we only changed the number a month/couple of months ago so the website is not updated.....or a variant: we don't update the website very often.

Another friend related a story where he had bumped into the owner of a place he had tried to contact unsuccessfully. The phone was not working. When he mentioned this the owner said "oh I don't use that number anymore. Lots of people kept calling and it was such a hassle I switched it off"!!! Can you beat that for customer service? 

As far as the upcoming weekend is concerned I gave up trying after a few desultory efforts. There is hardly any time anyway so I've decided to visit friend's estate for a night, enjoy some traditional cooking and spend the rest of the time at home.