Hotel's rooms for one cent a night blunder costs thousands

It was an offer to lure even the most committed "staycationer" away from UK shores: a two-night stay at a four-star hotel near Venice for €0.01, or less than a penny.

Rooms at the Crown Plaza Venice East Quarto D'Altino normally cost between £90 and £150 a night, so when the deeply discounted rate started appearing on travel websites it prompted a sudden flurry of reservations.

More than 5,000 bookings were made within hours of the €0.01 promotional rate appearing on the Crown Plaza's website, filling the hotel until 2010, with some shrewd customers booking several rooms at once.



By the time hotel bosses had detected the error it appeared it was too late to backtrack on the deal. The 153-room hotel, 25 minutes from Venice, has pledged to honour the reservations, which were made last Sunday night. It stands to lose £90,000 as a result of the mistake.

Initially the hotel, part of the Intercontinental Hotels Group chain, claimed hackers had hijacked its bookings site to offer the fake deal.

But now sales manager Fulvio Danesin has conceded that the reason for the unexpectedly generous promotional rate was human error, making the reservations "formally valid".