Ani Zerounian, spokesperson for Leading Hotels of the World, has spent her day fielding angry e-mails from disapppointed consumers who tried to book the $19.28 deal. As anyone who tried to book knows, the website failed; Zerounian says she doesn't believe any of the 6,000 rooms actually were booked...and they've got a plan for trying to make it right. If you preregistered you should be getting an e-mail about it soon.
The group has just released a statement. Here it is:
Following an overwhelming response to its online 80th anniversary promotion today, he 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.”
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