Tripaddiction Travel Blog

Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) $19.28 promo bombs.

As we said in our post on Sunday, LHW was offering a limited number of rooms on a first-come, first-served basis for just $19.28. Those who wanted to participate were instructed to pre-register at an LHW microsite and then revisit the web site on October 1 at 8AM ET.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to predict that the huge amount of traffic pouring in simultaneously would crash their server - which it did.

Okay. Honest mistake. No harm, no foul.

But then LHW sent all the registered participants an email asking them to email their requests on October 2 at 8AM ET. Why they thought that would work is a mystery to me.

Someone, probably in IT, realized the risk, and participants received yet another email telling them not to email after all.

The LHW marketing department, or their agency, came up with a fantastic idea for a promotion that would generate a lot of buzz, and capture the email addresses of 150,000 people who are interested in their product. Imagine what that could mean for your business. Lots of successful companies have email addresses for fewer than 20% of their customers.

Sadly, because LHW didn't get the technology right, a company with a well-respected, well-established brand came across as backwards and amateurish -- not an image a category leader wants to convey.

Our hearts go out to LHW. Goodness knows, since launching our site in 2001, we've been bedeviled by technological problems.

So here's hoping they handle the situation in a way that will generates good will. Our suggestion: take the 150,000 people who registered, throw their names in a hat, draw the number of rooms available, and let them work out the dates with their chosen property.