[EXPIRED] Leading Hotels of the World - $19.28 a night (reg $500-$2000)
Oct 1, 2008, 10:50 am
#827
Community Director Emerita
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Anywhere warm
Posts: 33,741
There are a lot of fairer ways to handle this than the one you chose, having already screwed this up. As an example, you could have had a random number generator assign random numbers to the registrants, then picked the winners by starting at the low end of the list until the rooms were gone. You could have allowed everyone to complete your form, given them a week to e-mail them in, and then used the random-number scenario above. Requiring participants to contact you a second time at a very inconvenient hour (5 AM on the U.S. west coast) is not good for public relations. If your server is unprepared for the onslaught (and it is, trust me), you will have convinced a great many people never to stay at your hotel chain. There is one benefit, however. You and LHW will become famous as a business school case study.
Further, it bothers me that those who use email programs that can be set to submit at a precise time have an advantage over those of us who do not use such programs.
Oct 1, 2008, 10:53 am
#828
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: LAX
Programs: Delta Plat, BMI Gold, Subway Sandwich Mustard and was UAL 1K for 2010, now 1K for 2011 too :)
Posts: 1,234
I am sure glad I forgot to get up 2 hours early and try for one of these rooms.....
This happens all the time , the IT dept. has no ideas how good a promo will work , so they only "buy" so much web bandwith ,
Well its 10-20 times more than expected and nothing works
lets see what they do to try and make it right
Rally
This happens all the time , the IT dept. has no ideas how good a promo will work , so they only "buy" so much web bandwith ,
Well its 10-20 times more than expected and nothing works
lets see what they do to try and make it right
Rally
Oct 1, 2008, 10:55 am
#829
Join Date: Jul 1999
Location: Washington
Posts: 1,173
I fully concur. I have visions of setting the alarm for 4:45am the second day in a row, only to have the LHW servers unable to accept the surge of incoming mail.
Further, it bothers me that those who use email programs that can be set to submit at a precise time have an advantage over those of us who do not use such programs.
Further, it bothers me that those who use email programs that can be set to submit at a precise time have an advantage over those of us who do not use such programs.
I also wonder if they realize they are asking a large percentage of people to wake up at insane hours. (a second time!)
This will be a disaster again.
rich
Oct 1, 2008, 10:57 am
#830
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: TUL
Programs: Skyteam Elite (DL Gold), HH Silver, SPG Gold
Posts: 12
I also can't believe I haven't received any emails, when it sounds as though many of you have received three. AND, I have to hope that mine will even be accepted, as I do not have MSOffice and can't save in that format...aaargh!
Oct 1, 2008, 11:04 am
#832
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 196
Quite frankly, LHW should have done this as a lottery/ prize draw - giving vouchers for $19.28 rooms as prizes to 6000 of the 150,000 entrants - but it looks like their marketing people thought that was too boring and got carried away with themselves. Hence this monster of a promotion for which they did not have the technical support or infrastructure.
Oct 1, 2008, 11:07 am
#833
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 7
There is no need to rename files. The most important thing is that it is sent to [email protected]. It must be received between 12:00 noon and 13:20 GMT in order to qualify. Any email received prior to or after this time span will not qualify for the promotion.
Good luck.
Good luck.
Oct 1, 2008, 11:11 am
#834
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: EWR
Programs: AA, Delta, NWA,HHonors, Hyatt BF
Posts: 1,762
Stop picking on Mr. Calder! He was nice enough to drop by and explain what happened to us - more than you can say for other promotions that went terribly wrong (Dockers free flight, for example) and he and his hotel are at least trying to fix it. I, for one, appreciate the promotion for what it is; a promotion, not a "gimmee". Ok, so I think it was kind of obvious that the overwhelming response to it was going to make it problematic at best to even log on to the site today, but I'm willing to take Mr. Calder up on the next promo and hope that a better plan is in place so that many of us can enjoy a very rare opportunity to experience one of the fine, luxurious hotels this chain has to offer. Thank you.
brownie points = 10+ !!!
brownie points = 10+ !!!
Oct 1, 2008, 11:12 am
#835
Join Date: Sep 2006
Programs: BA, LH, AF, TK
Posts: 213
"First comes first served" is a service policy that is great when, for example, people are queuing outside a shop or box office all night but not when a hundred thousand people arrive at the same time.
Randomly selecting "winners" as suggested earlier in this thread is a far better idea. Indeed, if the original promo had have worked and a controlled number of people were allowed onto the booking pages at a time, then most "winners" would have been "f5 hitters" getting lucky at random times as someone else checked out.
So how about any e-mail received during the promo period stands an equal chance of being selected. Less stress for the e-mail servers and no need to get up quite so early for those out West!
Randomly selecting "winners" as suggested earlier in this thread is a far better idea. Indeed, if the original promo had have worked and a controlled number of people were allowed onto the booking pages at a time, then most "winners" would have been "f5 hitters" getting lucky at random times as someone else checked out.
So how about any e-mail received during the promo period stands an equal chance of being selected. Less stress for the e-mail servers and no need to get up quite so early for those out West!
Oct 1, 2008, 11:15 am
#836
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Grazie Gold Lounge
Programs: UA-2MM; GalacticXpress-Irridium
Posts: 10,332
So we'll just wait for their mail server to crash tomorrow at 1201 GMT and the inevitable "sorry our IT department was not prepared for the influx of emails."
Oct 1, 2008, 11:16 am
#837
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 59
Today's incident with the web server and tomorrow's foreseeable incident with their email server will provide good material for a case study on information systems management!
"First comes first served" is a service policy that is great when, for example, people are queuing outside a shop or box office all night but not when a hundred thousand people arrive at the same time.
Randomly selecting "winners" as suggested earlier in this thread is a far better idea. Indeed, if the original promo had have worked and a controlled number of people were allowed onto the booking pages at a time, then most "winners" would have been "f5 hitters" getting lucky at random times as someone else checked out.
So how about any e-mail received during the promo period stands an equal chance of being selected. Less stress for the e-mail servers and no need to get up quite so early for those out West!
Randomly selecting "winners" as suggested earlier in this thread is a far better idea. Indeed, if the original promo had have worked and a controlled number of people were allowed onto the booking pages at a time, then most "winners" would have been "f5 hitters" getting lucky at random times as someone else checked out.
So how about any e-mail received during the promo period stands an equal chance of being selected. Less stress for the e-mail servers and no need to get up quite so early for those out West!
Oct 1, 2008, 11:16 am
#838
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Seattle, WA, USA
Programs: AS MVPG, Hyatt Diamond
Posts: 983
This is a Lose - Lose situation that LHW is in now. Bad planning, Bad preparation, Bad IT, Bad mitigation plan. This will be a PR nightmare. This plan going forward has many potential problems. Whomever is involved from the IT perspective is obviously way in over their heads.
Oct 1, 2008, 11:21 am
#839
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 59
Some ways by which the promotion will fail for a 2nd time:
1. Email server goes down
2. Inability to filter out repeated emails from the same persons but using different addresses
3. Difficulty in ensuring emails are from people who actually signed up for the promotion in the first place
4. IT security breaches - if 200,000 emails containing personal information gets intercepted by hackers... that's a potential lawsuit
5. Impossible to ensure timestamps are valid and not manipulated
6. Pissing off 200,000 people all over the world if anything goes wrong... or if they don't get their rooms after 2 days of waking up at 4am
1. Email server goes down
2. Inability to filter out repeated emails from the same persons but using different addresses
3. Difficulty in ensuring emails are from people who actually signed up for the promotion in the first place
4. IT security breaches - if 200,000 emails containing personal information gets intercepted by hackers... that's a potential lawsuit
5. Impossible to ensure timestamps are valid and not manipulated
6. Pissing off 200,000 people all over the world if anything goes wrong... or if they don't get their rooms after 2 days of waking up at 4am
Oct 1, 2008, 11:21 am
#840
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Programs: DL, HH, Bonvoy
Posts: 204
As much as I like the idea of random selection from the emails, part of me also likes the humorous mental image of their mail server literally bursting into flames tomorrow... so I'm torn.