LHW 1928 Luxury Hotel $19.28 Rooms Sale 10am Eastern Time Thursday, October 23

LHW 1928 Luxury Hotel $19.28 Rooms Sale 10am Eastern Time Thursday, October 23

Primary Details for Leading Hotels of the World $19.28 sale:

1.      The promotion will be held on Thursday, October 23 at 10 am Eastern time, 7 am Pacific time in the USA.

2.      The promotion will last for 80 minutes as originally planned through this website: http://www.lhw.com/1928status.

3.      The new promotional sale is open to everyone.  Earlier updates from LHW stated the promotion would only be available to persons who had initially registered for the October 1, 2008 sale.

4.      LHW will require submission of a reservation request form listing the properties you are interested in booking and dates.

5.      Promotional rate is still limited to one hotel stay with a maximum of two nights at the $19.28 rate.

6.      The promotional rate is only for 6,000 rooms, first-come, first-serve, and limited to one hotel stay per household.

Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) had a corporate promotion melt-down when trying to sell 6,000 rooms at the ultra-low price of $19.28 per night earlier this month.  The original promotion scheduled on October 1, 2008 for 80 minutes only was a total fiasco.  The terms of the promotion required registration and apparently 150,000 or so people trying to log into the LHW reservations simultaneously crashed the hardware capabilities of their system.

In our 21^st century environment of social media communication the realization that nobody was able to book rooms at the $19.28 price became apparent when hundreds of would-be poverty jet setters failed to even access the website during the 80 minutes promotion timeframe.

And social media with websites like FlyerTalk were used by LHW management to disseminate the message around the world that the promotion which had been widely publicized in the news and on the internet had been a technical failure in the implementation of distributing the $19.28 per night luxury hotel rooms. 

The email communications from LHW reached me concerning all the updates to the promotional sale through the email address I used for the initial promotion registration.  Apparently, according to reports on FlyerTalk, some of the other initial registrants have not been as fortunate to receive updates for the LHW promotion.

Please read through my first post regarding the LHW 1928 promotion for more details on the value of this opportunity.

At least this Thursday I won’t have to be setting my alarm clock so early as the October 1 sale which started at 5am in California.  7am is the normal start of my work-day.  I hope it is a lucky day.  And best of luck to everyone who wants a little bit of luxuriating on the cheap.  Loyalty Traveler makes a business on that sentiment.

Bernardus Lodge, Carmel Valley, California – Leading Hotels of the World member

Related Links:

Loyalty Traveler post Sep 28: Leading Hotels of the World $19.28 Promotion for 80 Minutes on Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Loyalty Traveler post Oct 1: LHW 1928 Sale – Computer Says No

Loyalty Traveler post Oct 2: LHW 1928 Promotion Saga – LHW Emails Respond to Promotion Disaster

Loyalty Traveler post Oct 12: Leading Hotels of the World – LHW1928 Update

Alex Bainbridge blog – Would your CEO apologise for a marketing mistake? [LHW 1928]:

Friday, October 3rd, 2008  

This is an interesting blog post with suggestions for how LHW should have improved communication with their post-promotion disaster customer relations.

Text of the latest email from LHW CEO and President Ted Teng:

“WELCOME TO THE 80th ANNIVERSARY USD 19.28 SALE STATUS PAGE

Thank you for your continued interest in The Leading Hotels of the World’s USD 19.28 Sale. We have created this dedicated site to keep you informed of all the latest developments relating to this 80th anniversary offer.

We are pleased to confirm that the USD 19.28 promotion will take place on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at www.lhw.com/1928. The sale will begin at 2:00 p.m. GMT (10 a.m. in New York, 7:00 a.m. in Los Angeles, 3:00 p.m. in London, and 11:00 p.m. in Tokyo) and will last for a total of 80 minutes. The above URL will become active 24 hours prior to the launch. Should you try to visit the URL before then, you will be redirected to this status page.

In order to help you prepare for the event, we would like to give you some helpful information on the format of the sale:

1. When you arrive at the dedicated site, you will not be asked to register or log-in. For legal reasons and in adherence to the original Terms & Conditions, we are unable to restrict any individuals from participating in this global offer.
2. Participants will be required to complete a travel request form, available exclusively at the dedicated site. Submission of this online form within the 80-minute promotion interval is the only way to potentially secure one of the 6,000 room nights that are available at the USD 19.28 rate.
3. Forms will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis. Your requests will be fulfilled based on availability. Please remember that rooms and available dates vary among participating hotels.
4. We will only accept and process one travel request form per household (rooms are based on double-occupancy); duplicate forms will be disqualified and discarded.
5. Within seven days, you will be notified via email whether or not your reservation request was fulfilled. If your reservation has been secured, you will receive an automatically-generated confirmation from The Leading Hotels of the World. Please print a copy of this confirmation as you will need to present it to reception upon your arrival at the hotel along with proof of identity.

Things To Know In Advance Of The Sale About The Travel Request Form:

• You will be asked for your contact information including name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address. At no point will you be asked to provide credit card information.
• You will have a chance to submit your top three hotel choices with two possible arrival dates for each. In order to familiarize yourself with the participating hotels, please peruse the list below.
• You will be required to review and accept the sale’s Terms & Conditions, highlighted prominently on the travel request form, prior to submitting your travel request.”