General booking conditions
of the City-Hotel Aschaffenburg

1.

Customer admission contract:
The customer admission contract is considered to be concluded as soon as the room is reserved and reservation of the room has been accepted, or as soon as the room is provided, if an acceptance of the reservation could not be given because of a very short delay.
Conclusion of the customer admission contract commits the contracting parties to fulfil the contract, without regards to the running period of the contract.

2.

Compensation: 
The hotel is obliged to compensate the customer for any damage that might occur in case of unavailability of the room on the arrival date.

3.

Check-in and Check-out:
Without contrary agreement earliest check-in time is 3 pm of the arrival date. Check-out time is before 11 am of the day of departure. Late check-out until 3 pm will be charged with 50% of the daily room-rate, after 3 pm we will charge full rate of the room.
Reserved rooms will be guaranteed until 6 pm. Special arrangements for a late check-in time after 6 pm are subject to prior agreement.

4.

Cancellation: 
We will charge the full agreed price of the room or the usual service rate in case of “no-show”, less the usual hotel running cost which did not occur. According to experience hotel running cost usually comes up to 20% of the room-rate.
The hotelkeeper is in good faith to do his utmost to sell the room to another customer in order to avoid the penalty that has to be charged for “no-show” if the contractual customer has not shown up by the latest check-in time on the arrival date. If the room cannot be sold to another customer, penalty has to be charged until the agreed date of departure.

5.

Cancellation of the reservation by the customer/hotel:
The following conditions are applied for cancellations of group reservations for more than 10 persons:

Without any charge within 60 days prior to arrival date
20% of the total amount within 40 days prior to arrival date
40% of the total amount within 20 days prior to arrival date
60% of the total amount within 8 days prior to arrival date
70% of the total amount within 2 days prior to arrival date

Cancellations coming in later than 2 days before date of arrival will be charged 80% of the full amount.

The hotel reserves the right to cancel the contract if the payment is not received by the agreed date of payment, and cannot be held responsible for any damage that might occur.

6.

Jurisdiction: 
All terms and conditions are subject to exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of Aschaffenburg/Main, Germany.

7.

Personal data protection:
We expressively point out that according to the German federal law of personal data protection the hotel is authorized to register and process personal data electronically, but these can in no case be handed over to any third parties.

For many good reasons a client may expect friendly service from any hotel and should feel hospitality which constitutes an essential part of any service in the hotel industry. Unfortunately, the relationship between customer and hotel sometimes gets severely affected by disagreements. We often forget that rules and laws which are set up for business and trade and which are daily applied in this domain are also applied without any limits in the hotel industry. The reservation of a hotel room is often misunderstood as a kind of “non-binding enquiry”, which engages the hotel to provide the room but that can be cancelled at any time and without any penalty by the customer.

Booking contract:

In German law, a booking contract is a legal contract including basic elements from rental law and components from at least one other type of contract, like a purchasing or a service contract. The contract is firm as soon as two parties agree verbally or written via offer and acceptance.

The customer’s willingness to make a reservation must not be misunderstood as a request to receive an offer on the initiative of the hotel. The fact to make the reservation should rather be understood as an offer from the customer to the hotelkeeper that he is willing to sign the booking contract. The booking contract then becomes binding upon acceptance by the hotelkeeper.

The contract is binding even if the parties have not yet agreed upon all essential details of the contract. The contractual agreement cannot fail if both parties are willing to conclude and decide to determine some details later or leave any contractual details to the other party.

The essential parts of the booking contract in German law are based on § 535 BGB. According to this law, the hotel is obliged to provide and reserve the room for the agreed period. The customer, on the other side, is obliged to pay the agreed price for the room.

The booking contract is to be considered like any other contract according to German civil law. Unless stated otherwise in the contract or in the general booking conditions (AGB), cancellation of the contract is subject to prior agreement of both contracting parties. There is no “right on cancelling” a reservation, irrespective of the delay or the good reasons for the cancelling. According to § 535 the reserved room which was provided by the hotel, is to be paid. This is also true if the customer could not, for any good reasons, use the room (no-show).

The penalty the customer has to pay in case of “no show” is often misunderstood as a cancellation fee. Unless stated otherwise in the contract or the general booking conditions (AGB), this cancellation fee is not be understood as a kind of fine for the cancellation.

The penalty is nothing else but the price of the room stated in the contract and which the customer has agreed to pay, less the usual hotel running cost which did not occur. In case of “no-show”, the amount of the usual hotel running cost cover for example general operating fees or expenses for providing the sheets, and have to be deduced from the room price according to § 552 - 2 BGB (German civil law). The exact amount of the cost varies according to the concrete circumstances of each individual case. German jurisdiction normally considers about 20% of the room price per night, including breakfast, to be an adequate amount. However, the parties of the booking contract are free to proof that there are less or more hotel running fees to be charged.

After all, the hotelkeeper has to deduce from the “no-show” penalty any profit he might obtain by selling the reserved room to another customer.

Though, there is no obligation at all for the hotelkeeper to look for a substitute customer in case of “no-show”. On the other hand, the hotelkeeper must not refuse any customers that would like to book the reserved and not used room.