Free Night at Radisson
 

Posting this as an FYI, with the recent Mexico City Hilton fiasco in mind:

I was scheduled to be in Portland, OR last night. Had a free room at a Starwood property booked, using SPG points, for several weeks. As I usually do, I checked out prices a few days prior to arrival at the chains I frequent - Starwood and Radisson.

Well, on the Radisson web site, up came several prices for the one night I was looking at. A AAA rate, a Govt. rate, etc.. The Corporate rate was listed at "$0.00". Figured I'd give it a try. Well, it confirmed me at that rate and I got an additional e-mail confirmation that listed a phone number if I had any questions. I called it and was transferred to "Distribution Services". There,the woman, upon seeing the rate, put me on hold to enquire. When she got back she stated, "It looks like you won!". She said that they were obligated to honor it. Also, she advised me not to make any changes to the reservation, otherwise I'd lose the rate.

I immediately went back online to check out the same property for the same date. The Corporate rate was now $89 for the night I wanted.

Of course, I didn't believe it until I checked in. But, lo and behold, I checked in and the clerk mentioned the "computer error" and said that I had a rate of $0.00

Checked out this morning and my bill included only my breakfast. (I felt obligated to eat at least one meal there!)

The point of this post is obviously not to tell people of a terrific opportunity in Portland. It is more to tell of the experience that I had so that if someone comes upon this it IS possible that it will be honored.

I'm pretty certain that it helped that Radisson was informed of this error right away, AND that I didn't book the rest of May and all of June at their hotel.


Aloha

Good for you, however, I don't know of any law or statute that says that they are obligated to honor it. It is good that you called first to confirm. I think that it is a wise thing to do.

I concur that it was appropriate for you to have had a meal there. Again good for you!

Thanks for the info and update! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Radisson was quite nice to you too! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

With the confirmation they entered a binding contract, which they must honor.
The necessary steps are:
1. The hotel offers you a rate (anthing larger $1)
2. You offer the hotel to book at that rate
3. The hotel confirms the booking at that rate

[This message has been edited by peter42 (edited 05-22-2001).]

We've covered this ground before, but there is no binding contract without consideration (i.e. payment or something else tangible) from both parties. They probably just honored it because they believe in taking responibility for their own mistakes.

I'm pretty sure that they have a disclaimer on their website that says they are not responsible for honoring typographical errors and the like. But it's nice that they went ahead and did it for you.

I wonder how many lashes the web producer got for doing that!

Even other systems have a lot of errors in their reservation systems.
Last week I wanted to book a rental car with ALAMO for Germany on the Internet. All prices for shown cars where around DM 600.00 to DM 900.00. However, a Standard car a had pricetag of DM 88,000.00!
Again and again, even when I started the search again, this one car came always with the high price.