I'd rather pay the premium than calling :-/

Ah, the extra tax for the socially introverted

Same here... I'm one of those archetypical millennials that hate phone calls.

Over the year I have learned to overcome my aversion to calls when making one is beneficial, but a call to someone totally unknown, and not in my native language, is one of the cases where... yeah, I'd pay the premium too.

Can’t imagine the latency of playing phone tag with X hotels trying to find the lowest price at a particular date/# of nights/# of people

You can use email. Depending on what are you planning it doesn't need to get an answer immediately.

You search on a booking website, then call the hotel you find.

But how do you know you got the lowest price ?

What if another hotel was willing to go lower ?

Oh, that's great to know. Thank you both, I'll definitely try this!! :)