After many hours of reading the wonderful & informative reviews, I've selected a few hostals for reservations.

Some have returned email quite promptly and others have not responded after 2-3 days. Is the non-response 'normal'? Should I give up on email and call? One of non-responders is Hostal Adriano - which surprises me based on the many positive comments it has received.

And as far as providing credit card information to confirm the reservation. What is the recommend method for providing that info? Over the internet (in multiple messages?) over the telephone?

Thanks for your advice. We will be in Spain the latter part of March and I'm trying to finalize our lodging arrangements in various cities - then on to the transportation methods!

Hmmm..

I've enquired with a few hostals in Madrid. All were very prompt with their response. They were helpful as well.

My problems were with the hostals in Barcelona. Some of which didn't reply to me after 2 wks !

Well, I give up on emails & called them instead. Most would request for a fax with credit card details as a guarantee for your reservations.

No telling what happened with your reservation request at Hostal Adriano . (or those in Barcelona) Hostal Adriano is usually extremely fast. My only guess might be that what with the SPAM/VIRUS/WORM storm we've had these past couple days that either they haven't yet finished sorting through them or yours may have been deleted accidentally. You'll see the thread about this topic (the virus/worm/spam messages) in the "Non-Spain Discussion" forum. I'm getting hundreds upon hundreds - maybe 1,000 per day - of these and fear I'm accidentally deleting some personal emails no matter how careful I'm scanning their subject lines. If your email to them simply said HI or HELLO then it probably got deleted as this is one of the popular subject lines used by SPAMMERS and the current worm/virus that's going around these days.

You could always give them a call. Use that fantastic 10-10-987 service for $.39 to connect and $.03/minute for a call to Spain 24/7/365 for less than $1.00. Can't beat that. I use it exclusively when calling my ladyfriend in Madrid.

You may get slower responses from all hotels/hostels in Spain (if they have a website) because they're/we're all swimming through the same internet email mess these days.

Regarding security of your credit card number, more and more are requiring them to make a reservation but very very few establishments use a secure server where you enter your personal information. This is NOT secure - although chances are slim that anything bad will happen. If you enter your dates/name online on their website, in the Credit Card number box write something like "Will call by phone with Credit Card number" or just FAX it.

Keep us posted. Good luck! Saludos, MadridMan

As a follow-up, I've written to a few close contacts, owners of "hostales", in the past few days (2-4 days ago) and haven't heard from ANY of. I don't THINK I've fallen out of favor but more than likely they're sifting through the thousands of email SPAM/WORM messages they're getting these days. That must be REALLY infuriating for family businesses like "hostales" in particular. Give them a few more days for responding until this issue blows over. I did get a reply from another contact in Madrid who apologized for not having replied sooner but he too had several thousand of these SPAM/WORM emails in his INbox.

Saludos, MadridMan

We have used www.2abookings.com and found them to be very useful and easy to use the only problem is as yet they only cover the south.