Call it a lesson in supply and demand.
The Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), an organization that represents luxury properties worldwide, made splashy headlines with its latest promotion: top-tier hotels going for $19.28 a night in honor of the LHW’s 80th anniversary.
The catch? That drop-dead rate was only available today for 80 minutes beginning at noon GMT (8 a.m. ET).
Still sounds too good to be true? Well, it was.
Turns out, LHW’s promotional efforts were a little too successful—demand was so high that their system crashed, leaving most would-be budget travelers empty-handed.
LHW just sent us their official statement:
Following an overwhelming response to its online 80th anniversary promotion today, The Leading Hotels of the World confirmed that the dedicated promotional website had failed. Despite efforts to carefully manage and plan for this worldwide promotion, the traffic exceeded many hundred times the volume per second than the norm. Even with significantly increased server capacity and upgraded infrastructure, the system was insufficiently prepared to cope with the demand. Technical difficulties ensued and the system was unable to take reservations.
The Leading Hotels of the World confirmed that every individual who pre-registered for the promotion is currently being contacted by email. With this apology and explanatory email, there will be a form which will allow them to re-attempt to secure reservations at the promotional USD $19.28 rate via email.
The Leading Hotels of the World would like to assure all pre-registered individuals that all email addresses collected for the purpose of this promotion will be deleted once the offer is completed.
Ted Teng, President & CEO, The Leading Hotels of the World stated: “Today we suffered a catastrophic technical failure, which is uncharacteristic for our highly respected brand. We should have been better prepared and we weren’t. We disappointed many people and I apologize for that. We intend on making every effort to restore our customers’ confidence.”
