£1 London Hotel Rooms

badmumof1

the travelodge rooms end up on there and you dont have to prove id when you turn up there

alison74

papeman wrote:

Ok, this is what I sent to Hoxtons......

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am aware that you will receive many emails about this offer, and so mine is of no greater importance to anyone elses, but I would still like to inform you of my experience with your website this afternoon.

As I am sure did many others, I was attempting to book a room through your offer for a particular couple of dates. Five times I was able to select the date that I wanted, along with the double room, and yet when I have finished inputting my details, I am told that there is an "invalid rate type". I could accept this happening once per date, but to then be able to choose the same date again, and get the same result is, I believe unacceptable. I do not wish to moan or grumble like many correspondants will inevitably do, but just to make you aware of my dissapointment at not being bale to sample your establishment, with a view to possible return business at full price regularly in the future.

I am sure there must be ways that the technical side of this process can be improved, perhaps with a look at TicketMaster's system of holding tickets for two minutes to complete the address and payment details input. Maybe this is something you can consider for the next time?

I hope that you find my comments constructive, and despite my not being able to stay with you this time around, I wish you all the best for the future.

Many thanks,

(Papeman)

I think the letter is constructive, but you have to remember that Ticketmaster crashes / doesn't work under pressure - Take That, George Michael, Killers etc and think of the system they have in place !

The Hoxton website works on a normal day so it wouldn't be business sense to spend money on upgrading it for an offer they put on twice a year when it works perfectly well at other times.

papeman

Well, I just meant in the way that a reservation can be held for a short period of time, not the whole TicketMaster (Shi**yMaster) Experience

lellie

Banjaxt wrote:

If it isn't a con, there's still dishonesty there anyway.

Oh, and it's not a loss leader offering hotel rooms for a pound. Hotel rooms that sit empty make nothing, people who stay even in free rooms invariably spend money on other services within the hotel. They don't lose anything on it.

Believe me when I stayed it was - I had 2 free newspapers and my breakfast and didn't spend an additional penny. It would have cost more than £1 for the newspapers!

Edit: also 20 minutes late is nothing - for radiohead tickets last year I had to wait refreshing the page for 7 hours before the site finally went live.. They had loads of problems and the tickets were available 7 hours after the original time. That made the hoxton seem easy in comparison.

alison74

papeman wrote:

Well, I just meant in the way that a reservation can be held for a short period of time, not the whole TicketMaster (Shi**yMaster) Experience

I know, it's not the best

Banjaxt

lellie wrote:

Believe me when I stayed it was - I had 2 free newspapers and my breakfast and didn't spend an additional penny. It would have cost more than £1 for the newspapers!

And, if you hadn't been there, then they wouldn't have had those newspapers in stock? Do you think they just pop out to the local corner shop and buy them whenever someone checks in?

marks7389

Banjaxt wrote:

If it isn't a con, there's still dishonesty there anyway.

It was quite apparent that the booking system didn't go live until almost 5.20pm.

Interesting that you say that. I was trying from 5pm but wasn't successful until about 20 mins later. I'm sure I'd already tried the date previously, so maybe there was a problem in the early stages.

Did anyone manage to get a cheap room earlier than about 5.20?

Patience is really the answer to all this. I can see why they'd gain from delaying the start in the hope that people would book more expensive rooms (not that I'm saying that is what happened), but then you don't have to buy one at the price you're offered.

I do agree that the booking interface is far from perfect. E.g. it wasn't clear that you had to go through the promotional bookings link on the HTML site to get the cheap room rates, though I suspect that you did.

papeman

alison74 wrote:

I know, it's not the best

Well, I'm just hoping that See and Aloud manage to hold up come Glastonbury ticket day!

*crosses fingers*

Snow-Munki

anyone got the cofirmation email yet ??

davidj01

Managed to book at 5.20 p.m. Not a con. Just needed to be patient. Suspect people did not scroll down page to see full availabity.