Intellectual Property Law

Hotel Error Advertises Room Rate in Italy for 1 Cent

By Kim Zetter

Word apparently spread quickly across the internet on Sunday night that a luxury hotel in Venice, Italy, was offering a special 1-cent rate.

Visitors to the online registration page of the luxury Crowne Plaza Venice East-Quarto d’Altino hotel discovered it wasn’t just a rumor and that instead of the standard room rate of $92 to $170, guests could book a room for 0.01 EUR for two nights, or about 1 cent.

During the six hours the promotional rate was on the site, the hotel received bookings from 228 guests for 1,400 nights at the deeply discounted rate.

The hotel, which is part of the InterContinental Hotels Group, told reporters in Italy that the rate change was made by a hacker who accessed the parent company’s network in Atlanta, Georgia, then spread the word after changing the rate.

Readers of a travel forum where the news was published doubted this claim and thought it was the hotel’s error.

ICHG spokeswoman Monica Smith confirmed their suspicions and says the rate change was the result of “human error.”

“We’re in the process of contacting all the guests who booked on this rate to offer them a heavily discounted rate of 55 EUR as well as some Priority Club Rewards points as a gesture of goodwill,” she said in a statement.

Smith said that because the issue was picked up by an online forum in the U.S., “a large number of bookings were generated in the U.S.” before the promotion was pulled down.

(Hat tip: Mikko Hypponen)

Full post as published by Threat Level on August 14, 2009 (boomark / email).