April 25, 2006
THE MIDDLE SEAT
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY
The Wall Street Journal

When a Fare Is Too Good to Be True

Whether Booking Errors
Will Be Honored Depends
On the Firm and Fine Print
April 25, 2006 Page D5

Earlier this month Alitalia sold business-class seats across the Atlantic for $66 round-trip, an incredible bargain compared with the regular fare of more than $5,000. Just last week, Marriott was offering a Times Square hotel for $24.90 a night, one decimal place off what was supposed to be a $249-a-night rate.

Alitalia honored 509 reservations to Cypress at the mistaken price via travel agents and online services; Marriott (which sold the rooms off its own site and elsewhere) reneged, upping the price even though it offers a "best rate guarantee" on "all guestroom reservations."

[snip]

Marriott International Inc. says its mistake of posting a $24.90 rate in reservation systems, including its own Web site, for the Residence Inn at Times Square was an obvious error, so the company corrected it.

[snip]

Once mistakes do happen, the track record of hotels is mixed. Last year, an Amerisuites hotel in Charlotte, N.C., offered rooms at a penny per night. A computer mistake allowed customers to book the hotel's internal "complimentary rate." Amerisuites, a unit of Hyatt Corp., honored the rate, including the free breakfast.

Expedia found itself mistakenly offering rooms at two Hilton hotels in Japan for $3 a night last November instead of $300 a night. Expedia said Hilton honored reservations made for stays in November but not in later months.

Earlier this month, Travelocity offered executive rooms at the Hilton Osaka in Japan for about $3 a night. The error resulted from incorrect currency conversion at Travelocity's Web site, a spokesman said. Customers pounced, some posting on FlyerTalk that they booked rooms for the rest of the year since the rate was far cheaper than rent in Osaka.

Travelocity did honor $51 airline tickets to Fiji last year and says in its guarantee that "in those rare cases that we make a mistake you can count on us to take responsibility for it." But Dan Toporek, a Travelocity spokesman, says its guarantee didn't apply in the Osaka case because that fare was displayed correctly to buyers twice and incorrectly once. "The policy really is on a case-by-case basis," said Mr. Toporek. "The spirit of the guarantee really has more to do with making sure people have a great travel experience."

Write to Scott McCartney at [email protected]

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114591737970234543.html