ESLPod.com's Free English Lessons: Daily English 110 - Hotel Reservations – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.hello I'm dr

2.Jeff McQuillan from ESL Tod com you're about to listen to a completely new way to improve your English from the most popular language podcast in the world over one point two seven million people have used our lessons to improve their English and now you can to start right now enjoy your listening to English as a second language podcast number 110 I'm your host dr

3.Jeff McQuillan from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles California today's podcast is called Hotel Reservations let's travel I just finished a huge project at work and I needed some downtime I decided to take a short vacation I like the idea of a long weekend out of town my friend Sarah offered to let me crash at her place in San Francisco but I decided to stay at a hotel instead Sarah has a couple of roommates and I thought it might be too crowded I called the toll-free reservation number for a major hotel chain the reservation agent was very helpful after I got through the long phone tree dozen hotels how may I help you today I wanted to check rates and availability for your San Francisco location certainly I can help you with that will that be the downtown or waterfront location the waterfront location what date do you play and to check in I'd like to check in on October 12 and check out the 15th okay let me see what we have for how many one and if possible I'm looking for a non-smoking room sure we have a non-smoking queen with an ocean view for $189 or a standard room with a courtyard view for a hundred and thirty nine dollars a night I'd like to book the standard room okay your last name Rama and your first name Jeff okay I have you booked in a standard non-smoking queen checking in on October 12th and departing the 15th what major credit card would you like to use to guarantee the reservation a Visa the number and expiration it's seven three eight eight two four two four three five three five one eight one eight and the expiration is oh five oh eight your confirmation number is P D 672 is there anything else I can help you with no that's all thanks have a nice day and thanks for calling Dutton hotels [Applause] [Music] in this podcast we are making reservations for a hotel I started by saying that I had just finished a huge or large project and I needed some down time down time two words means time to relax after you've worked hard or had a very stressful experience we say I need some down time time that I don't have to work so I made a call because my friend Sarah in San Francisco said I could crash at her place but I decided to go to a hotel instead to crash CRA SH here means to stay at someone else's house or apartment usually for a short period of time the verb to crash also can mean of course what would happen when you hit something like two cars have an accident and they crash but this is a completely different meaning of the verb to crash it's an informal use of the verb I call the toll-free reservation number of a major hotel chain toll-free tol l - fr EE as two words toll-free means that you are not charged for it it's a free call and in the United States numbers that begin with 808 six six and eight seven seven and eight eight eight all of those area codes if you will those are all toll-free numbers you don't have to pay to call them the company pays the for the call a hotel chain CH AI n just refers to a hotel that is part of a larger company where there are many hotels a chain of any company is a company that has lots of different locations McDonald's is a good example of a restaurant chain hotel chains in the United States would be things like Hilton and the Radisson and the Marriott these are all hotel chains there many different locations for the hotels in calling up the reservation number I got through a long phone tree a phone tree two words is when you call and you get an automatic voice message that asks you to press one if you want one place one department press two if you want this press 3 if you want that and they want you to press that number on the telephone now it's become common in big companies in the United States they have what's called voice recognition so you don't even have to press a number you just say the number and they recognize it the computer recognizes it speech recognition in any case a phone tree is often a pain in the neck meaning an inconvenience because you don't get to talk to anyone who is a real human being but I eventually in calling the hotel got a reservation agent and that is someone who takes the reservations for the company on the telephone I asked the first thing I asked is I wanted to check rates and availability rates of course are how much the hotel costs how much the room what the price of the rooms are availability means do you have rooms available free open for the dates that I want to go so it's common when you first call a reservation agent to say yes I want to check rates and availability the reason you would say that is you may not necessarily want to make a reservation if you want to make a reservation and you know you're going to make a reservation you say hi I'd like to I'm calling to make a reservation but if you say I'm calling to check rates and availability well you're just getting the information you may decide to make a reservation you may not the reservation agent asked me if I want the downtown or the waterfront location well downtown you know is the central part of the city usually where many businesses are located waterfront all one word waa ter fr om t is the area that's right next to a lake or an ocean so a waterfront hotel would usually have a view of the ocean I said I wanted the waterfront location and the agent asked me when I planned to check in of course to check in to words means to arrive at the hotel the opposite would be to check out which is to leave the hotel the agent said that they had available a non-smoking queen with an ocean view for 189 or a standard room with a courtyard view for 139 a night a queen of course is a size of the bed there are double beds which fit two people very but not very much room Queen bed is bigger a king bed is the biggest kind of bed and a queen bed is the second biggest a oceanview would of course be a room with a view or you can see the ocean from your room non-smoking in most American hotels there are rooms that are designated or are labeled non-smoking you can't smoke in the room [Music] the courtyard view Co you are T Y ard all one word a courtyard view would be a room that looks on two other rooms in the hotel into the center of the hotel a courtyard is when you have a building that has a space in the middle of the building and parts of the building go around a central area that we call the courtyard I decide to book the standard room to book the oh okay here means the same as to reserve or to make a reservation the standard room would be the normal usually the cheapest room in the hotel a standard room if you want more expensive room you can get a suite su ite those are usually bigger rooms the reservation agent asked me my name and I tell her then she says what major credit card would you like to use to guarantee the reservation a major credit card three words major here you well you know what a credit card is a major credit card would be from a from a big company and the two biggest are of course Visa and MasterCard in other countries there are for example in Japan there is the JCB card there's also the American Express card and there are a few others as well these are major credit cards to guarantee the reservation means that I have to put money they take my credit card number in case I don't cancel and I don't show up to the hotel they're going to charge me anyway so it's a way for the hotel to protect itself so it doesn't lose money I then give the woman my Visa credit card number of course that isn't actually my Visa credit card number that you heard in the dialog in fact that wasn't even a Visa credit card number it was just a made-up number I give the credit card number usually in groups of four numbers there are sixteen numbers on a credit card and I give the expiration date as oh five oh eight meaning May 2008 oh five for the month oh eight for the year the agent gives me a confirmation number and that's a number that the hotel computer gives her so that I can they can find my reservation if I have a problem now let's listen to the dialogue this time at a native rate of speech [Applause] [Music] I just finished a huge project at work and I needed some downtime I decided to take a short vacation I liked the idea of a long weekend out of town my friend Sarah offered to let me crash at her place in San Francisco but I decided to stay at a hotel instead Sarah has a couple of roommates and I thought it might be too crowded I called the toll-free reservation number of a major hotel chain the reservation agent was very helpful after I got through the long phone tree dozen hotel how may I help you today I wanted to check rates and availability for your San Francisco location certainly I can help you with that would that be the downtown or waterfront location the waterfront location what date do you plan to check in I'd like to check in on October 12th and check out the 15th okay let me see what we have for how many one and if possible I'm looking for a non-smoking room sure we have a non-smoking queen with an ocean view for $189 or a standard room with a courtyard view four hundred and thirty nine dollars a night I'd like to book the standard room okay your last name Rama and your first name Jeff okay I have you booked in a standard non-smoking queen checking in on October 12th and departing the 15th what major credit card would you like to use to guarantee the reservation a visa the number and expiration it's seven three eight eight two four two four three five three five one eight one eight and the expiration is oh five oh eight your confirmation number is P D 672 is there anything else I can help you with no that's all thanks have a nice day and thank you for calling Dutton hotels [Applause] that's it no tests no exercises no special software get what's worked for 1.2 7 million people in a hundred and eighty nine countries ESL pod comm log on to listen to the audio lessons and read the learning guides we have over 1500 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