Just a penny for a stay near Venice?
Whoops! Last week, a four-star hotel near Venice, Italy, accidentally posted a shockingly reduced rate for future room stays, and travelers quick to the punch swooped in to take advantage.
Over a couple of hours on Sunday, Aug. 9, word spread on the Web that the Crowne Plaza Venice East-Quarto d’Altino had rooms going for one Euro cent. This wasn’t an intentional offer. The deal on the Intercontinental Hotels Group website was actually supposed to be for half off of a two-night stay.
Not a hacking job, the posted penny rate, for stays from October through 2010, was due to “human error” at the Hotels Group offices, reported the Associated Press.
Though some forum members of FlyerTalk speculated that their reservations would be invalidated, the hotel group has reportedly committed to honor all of the bookings. The error may have caused the hotel to lose $129,000.
Almost 230 people who reserved an average of over six nights each, according to a BBC report, benefited from this Crowne Plaza blip.
The hotel is situated 20 minutes by train from Venice. If you missed the 1-cent deal, its site offers other discounts with rooms as low as €63 ($90) per night, pre-tax. But that somehow doesn’t sound so great now, does it?
- Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Photo: This canal near St. Barnaba, nor any other Venice city sites, won’t be far away for the lucky bookers of the 1-cent deal. Credit: Susan Spano / Los Angeles Times
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August 16th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
This is definitely Karma! I booked four rooms at this hotel last November to coincide with a cruise that I took last month. I accidently double-booked the rooms on the same night that our ship was overnighting in Venice, We were flying out the next morning. I pleaded with the manager to at least credit me back a partial refund, or at least give me a voucher for a local Crowne Plaza, since I couldn’t use the rooms. I asked him months in advance and told him he could re-book the rooms for even more money! The headquarters in Atlanta were very nice and pleaded my case as well. The manager was a complete jerk and wouldn’t budge. This mistake of mine wound up costing me $1000. ($500 in rooms and $500 on an airport shuttle from my cruiseship)All I can say is “what goes around, comes around!” I guess my piddly $500 won’t put a dent in his $129,000 loss! HAHA!!!!!