pwrshift

Dear xmxmxmxm,

Thank you so much for your continued patience with The Leading Hotels of the World. We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the USD 19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed.

Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing. In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a USD 19.28 rate.

In view of this, please do not email your form tomorrow. You will most likely receive an error message we have put in place as a safety mechanism.

We are sincerely committed to restoring your faith in our brand and do not want to risk disappointing you again. We are working tirelessly to develop a solution that will be fair for you and all registered participants. We will email you next week with further details.

Sincerely,

Ted Teng
President & CEO
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.

LTTravel

Did you try to get on at 8 AM? I tried starting 7:50 AM and was unable to get onto the site. I am sure they were swamped as they say they were. I first received an email to look at an attachment (which wasn't attached) and then a second email with a link to the form and now a third message. They have to realize that when they offer something that cheap, they will get swamped. Kinda like the original American Express promotions (can't remember what it was called, one where you could buy a BMW for $5000) Impossible to get on. After the first two attempts, I didn't waste my time anymore and actually gave a bitter taste rather than promoting Amex. Don't these marketing guys do their homework? Probably went to the same schools as the recent batch of Wall Street guys.

Kagehitokiri

its a marketing alliance, not a management company.

they put out an initial response 1 hour and 50 minutes after the promo was scheduled to end.

now they have decided to think more about a real solution.

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=863668
http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=871627

re amex, their flash promo sites have seemed the best to me. normally i prefer no flash content, but it works great for live promos etc.

caribbeansun

Well the Leading Hotels of the World 1928 promotion sure got ugly quickly.

Before they did this I wondered if their servers could handle the traffic of people banging away trying to secure reservations for $19.28 a night - answer - nope

Then the apologetic followup with the bad idea of emailing responses - first thought - their mail server is going to crash.

Then the embarrassing followup to the followup - wait a couple weeks because we really don't know what we are doing.

Somewhat to their credit they actually figured out sometime in the four hours or so between emails just how bad their followup plan was and emailed their admission they don't have a clue.

I found their final sentence on their web posting particularly amusing "In the meantime, please rest assured that we will not be saving your email address in our database for any future solicitations."

No doubt one of the worst thought out promotions ever with abysmal results - so how many people do you think lost their jobs over this one? Should Quintess remove the ",LRW" from their name?

The company's final posting

GregGH

This should be a Harvard Business School case ... how to make a good company look very bad with Marketing

Really dumb ... really dumb ...

Then you get a cryptic reply to the e-mail the participants had to send the day afterwards ... there is no common sense seen here

I can ONLY IMAGINE what the flyertalk message board is saying ( will check it out latter )

Greg

NorCal62

The only redeeming factor in the whole mess was that they owned up to their mistakes and sent a sincere apology. You don't see that everyday.

GregGH

And maybe a voucher for a $19 room --then I would be happy --- when you screw up that big -- a "gee I stupid and sorry" won't cut it. They are a HI CLASS outfit - they can't afford to be stupid and cheap.

To make matters worse -I didn't read their - DON'T send IT e-mail until today ( it was received last night at approx 8:00 pm est ) ...so we crashed their e-mail server as well ... :-)

All those IT guys - well - they will have practice filling out their resume's

Greg

DC4MS

I moved this tread out the the Quintess, LRW to the Public Lounge as the 19.28 promotion is limited to "The Leading Hotels of the World" not "The Leading Resorts of the World"

I know that LRW is a brand extension of LHW, but they appear to be very different products and probably two different divisions. This would be like blaming the Ritz-Carlton for a bad Marriott timeshare promotion.

If LHW screws up a promotion, then Quintess, LRW should not be dragged into the mess (IMHO).

Kagehitokiri

LRW = LHW (member properties, not LHW itself) + Cendant

(IIRC)

caribbeansun

Actually I checked the Quintess site before posting on that board and it's linked directly to the same site that ran the promotion which is LHW. Same company, same "proud" partner.

Copy/pasted from Quintess' web site:

Maybe they should remove the word "proud"?