My friend told me about a Leading Hotels of the World promotion where you can reserve $500+/night rooms for $19.98/night (the hotel claims 6000 rooms are available at this rate). You sign up on their website and then from 8am-9:30am the next day you go on the website and try to book a room. A great deal and great publicity for the fancy hotel chain. Of course, on your first shot the website says their busy. BEFORE the internet, a company could get away without selling a single cheap room and just turn all of the phone lines to busy. Today, with the internet, I was following the saga in real time on flyertalk, a frequent traveler bulletin board. Not a single flyertalk user was able to book a room. Turns out the website did not work at all. Now there is talk of suing the company (ridiculous), but more importantly there are now over 100,000 dissatisfied customers/potential customers.
Here's a quick chronology of the event with appropriate snippets from the flyertalk forum. The swiftness of everything (including the company's response) is fast and furious:
8am EST: Customers try to get the deal on Leading's website. Right away the site returns the following error on all pages:
Sorry! Due to the overwhelming number of consumers currently trying to access this promotion, your request is being delayed momentarily. Please be patient, don’t get discouraged, and retry in a few seconds by clicking here, or by going back to http://www.lhw.com/1928.
Users respond within 180 seconds. One user (rightly) predicts:
This might end up giving them more negative publicity than they intended, makes you wonder if they will end up coming out ahead....
Like everyone else, I keep getting the errors too.
Ninety minutes later and not more then one or two users who were able to get the promotion, management responds on the bulletin board:
Unfortunately, we've had to suspend the sale due to overwhelming demand.
Although we were aware of the traffic volume and made preparations ahead
of time to accommodate it, the volume of traffic nonetheless outstripped
our enhanced capacity. In lieu of the online process, we will be running
an alternative email based sale shortly, as most of the inventory is
still unsold.
You should be receiving an email from us shortly describing the
specifics, but the details you've provided in terms of your intentions
are exactly what we are going to be asking of our consumers. With this
in mind, I'll try to get your request into the queue.
With sincere apologies for your inconvenience,
Robert Cantave
Director of Marketing Technology
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.
Now that management has engaged the users by posting on the bulletin board, it becomes an endless back and forth between management and users. At first, management decides to redo the contest via e-mail. Then after enough complaints, the president says this:
Dear Joshua Kowitt,
Thank you so much for your continued patience with The Leading Hotels of the World. We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the USD 19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed.
Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing. In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a USD 19.28 rate.
In view of this, please do not email your form tomorrow. You will most likely receive an error message we have put in place as a safety mechanism.
We are sincerely committed to restoring your faith in our brand and do not want to risk disappointing you again. We are working tirelessly to develop a solution that will be fair for you and all registered participants. We will email you next week with further details.
Sincerely,
Ted Teng
President & CEO
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.
This is really wild. Think about it. You give away 6000 nights at $20 (these rooms typically go for $500+/night). You get your users very excited about the fancy hotels, your brand, and a great promotion. THEN YOU BLOW IT! Might I remind you to deliver on the promise even on a giveaway. Hey, they're the same customers as the ones that pay, right?
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