Good Afternoon Art of Backpackers! Everyone must be wondering where we have been for the past week. We apologize for our small leave of absence! In lieu of our love for travel, we at Art of Backpacking decided to participate in a Travel Competition, so to speak.
LastMinuteTravel.com, a third party travel booking site announced a contest for booking hotel rooms for $1 a night. Sounds too good to be true? Well, the catch is, there would be a 15 minute time period where these hotels would drop to $1, but the 15 minutes would be divided into time frames such as 3 five minute blocks or two 7.5 minute blocks. 
A time clock would then appear and you would make your reservation in this given time.
There were “clues” on the websites and in their videos that would help assist contestants to tune in to a certain time. Also, the hotels were “undercover”, which meant you would not know where you were staying until you booked the hotel. For many, by descriptions of the hotel, it was easy to distinguish hotel names with Google searches.
No one knew how big this contest would be. Week One began over 900 reservations booked through the site. Everyone was allowed to choose any hotel that popped up when the $1 reservations appeared. This meant if you could find a 5 star hotel in Nassau, Bahamas for $800/night, you were able to book it for $1. It was a dream come true for many young travelers, families and friends alike. The contest only ran Monday- Friday so we at AOB decided to research every nook and crannie of this competition last weekend, to book some trips for ourselves!
I decided to Google “Last Minute Travel clues” and stumbled upon www.slickdeals.net, a penny pincher’s dream to numerous forum threads and coupons to saving money. From your local pharmacy to plane tickets, there were deals on almost everything. For backpackers, its vital to research hotels or hostels and even equipment for your trip to save money. I found slickdeals.net to be one of my new favorite site when it comes to saving money (who doesn’t love to save money?)
I found numbers of threads corresponding to each day the contest ran. People gathered together while staying glued to their computers to join together and discuss their potential travel plans. Here is how week one went:
1/26 Day 1:
7:48amPST 10:48amEST -- (7.5 min)
1:27pmPST 4:27pmEST -- (7.5 min)
1/27 Day 2:
8:21amPST 11:21amEST -- (5 min)
5:42pmPST 8:42pmEST -- (5 min)
6:05pmPST 9:05pmEST -- (5 min)
1/28 Day 3:
3:43amPST 6:43amEST -- (7.5 min)
4:05amPST 7:05amEST -- (7.5 min)
1/29 Day 4:
5:18amPST 8:18amEST -- (5 min)
10:12pmPST 1:12amEST -- (5 min)
10:27pmPST 1:27amEST -- (5min)
1/30 Day 5:
5:47am EST -- (7.5 min)
6:41am EST -- (7.5 min)
These were the times hotels were sold for $1. From what we researched, some of the clues given by LMT did not correspond to the times. One good clue was a banner on the site for Cancun that featured a boat that had the name “127AM/EST”, which was one of the times where hotels were $1. One clue that many found strange was a video of Janice and Kevin, characters of LMT who were a married couple trying hard to book the $1/night hotel. One night, they slept from 12am-6am and the clue stated
“The World for $1 will only happen between specific hours. While Kevin and Janice sleep in their Manhattan apartment, you need not worry about missing your chance.”
Since Manhattan is in the EST, this meant to contestants that no bookings would occur during the middle of the night. Many began to realize this was untrue as many bookings were made at very late or very early hours in the middle of the night.
With all that said, we continued to research the threads and decided to give LMT a shot. Our journey began on Sunday February 1st, 2009 (We did not watch the Super Bowl either) and agreed to stay up the entire 24/hours, so we could not possibly miss our chance to get the world for $1.
<!--[endif]-->
After a nice Sunday in New York celebrating Chinese Lunar New Years (See our upcoming review!), Mike and I set up our laptops at about 6:00pm EST. We set up snacks, drinks and our air mattress in the living room to share intervals of nap time as the competition ran. Uneventful for the first few hours, as we continued to press f5 and refresh the page, we decided it would be optimal to choose our destination of choice.
At the time, we thought since it was one credit card number per trip, that Mike and I would be able to book separate trips. After looking at countless numbers of luxurious resorts, we decided on the Paradisus in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Our choice was set because it was an all inclusive resort, which meant less money spent on food and drinks and the flights from New York to the Dominican Republic were in our budget as well. There is nothing like a hotel for a dollar to accompany all inclusive meals and drinks. Mike needed a hotel in Beijing, China for his upcoming backpacking trip, so any 5 star hotels in Beijing would be his $1 deal.
Our minds were flooded with images of white sandy beaches; taking a dip into the 80 degree translucent waters of Punta Cana and sunbathing in our swim up hotel luxury suite. The possibilities were endless, just imagining a well deserved and much needed tropical vacation. It was so easy to get carried away with the idea of winning this contest. Slickdeals.net had threads of winners boasting about their winnings. Some people booked luxury hotel rooms in Walt Disney World, Florida, Cancun, Mexico, Paris, France, even as far as Phucket, Thailand. The sky was the limit when it came to this contest.
Midnight struck and Day 1 of Week 2 of the World for $1 began with a boom. A chat room, by Chatango, was made for night crawlers looking for hotels to join together and announce when the sale hit. It was a silent chat room only meant for people to yell “GOOOOOOO” when it was time to book. Some may call it cheating, but at the time, it was a small group of people. Later that night, the chat was filled with 2000 people.
Hours later of staring mindlessly into the computer and changing our travel plans back and forth, it was creeping into the late hours of the early morning. In those few hours, we ate cereal, talked about our potential trip and cringed when anonymous jerks wanted to scare us all and pretend to say “GO” when nothing happened. Even with naps in between, it was getting very, very tiring.
Monday seemed to be the longest day ever. Daytime television accompanied us in our sluggish attempts to win the world for $1, but we still held on to hope that any minute now, the contest would begin. We opened notepad and typed our entire credit card information ready to copy and paste for booking. Domino’s pizza was the easiest thing to order; we were too scared to leave our computers to cook something and miss out.
The day lingered on and on and still no World for $1. We overlooked and analyzed the clues over and over again as it was getting closer to the end of Monday. This meant we were up for 45 hours (6pm Sunday to 6am Monday to 6pm Monday till 3:00am Tuesday morning when we finally gave up.)
It seemed like the entire universe was in on this contest. Facebook had an official LMT group dedicated to clues and information about the contest.
What happened Monday:
We were making good friends with people on Slickdeals.net who also wanted a piece of the prize. Around 2:30am, we knew we had work the next day and slept with our laptops at our face. Apparently, people were booking around this time, but we were still unable to get in. The chatroom was filled with 2000 people all wondering what was going on. Madness surfaced the internet with the forums boasting with questions of what was going on. With our retinas burning, our bodies’ sick of sitting at a computer and a messy house, we gave up and hoped to book the next day, since we had the entire week at our luxury to continue booking. For the entire day of Monday, from midnight to midnight, for many people, no video popped up which means there was no world for a dollar listing.
We were told that the rules were changed, not by the site, but by forum members calling customer service and emailing LMT. Although only a handful of people got to see the video, mainly there were many glitches during “Monday’s showing of the video and countdown” For many, it was deemed unfair for those who stayed up the entire day to get a chance to book a hotel, including us. A difficult endeavor indeed, we took our losses and tried to think about why this happened.
Our theory: The World for a Dollar blog made a post at the end of the week announcing over 900 reservations were booked:
After the diaster of Monday, LMT made a blog posting on Tuesday, announcing 955 reservations weremade.
So if you do the math, if 900 reservations were made in Week One, thats an average of about 200 winners a day. Meanwhile, on Day 1 of Week 2, after 2000 people were in a chatroom online awaiting the $1 promotion, only 55 people managed to book a reservation in a 24 hour period? That doesn’t sound like a lot of people made it through the site to book their trip. The numbers tell it all; it means the glitches and problems on the site made it VERY difficult for people to book rooms.
Perhaps too many people got into this competition and found sneaky ways to guarantee a hotel stay- such as using bots to auto fill information or c4c- a program used to show changes in a page. Or, many high class hotels were booked and it became very costly to the company. Their official Terms of Service does state that they are allowed to change the rules at any given moment, but in our book, it was never changed in the official terms, but only said verbally through customer services representatives that are based abroad.
To give our readers a visual of what happens when you’re about to get the world for a dollar, one contestant actually recorded his experience with the glitch that happened on the site as he tried to book.
Basically, what happens is as you are in your hotel search, the banner changes. Two banners that interchange are the previously mentioned “Cancun” ad, and another advertisement for Cocoa Beach. They change and say it is for $1. A video pops up and you are mandated to watch it. Upon completion of the video, you have a timer, this is your time to book your hotel and get the World for $1. Needless to say, I’ve watched these ads so many time, I cringe a bit when I see ads for Cancun or Cocoa Beach.
It took the rest of the week to recover from our sleep deprived night and early symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Perhaps it was that mixed in with feelings of confusion that led us to not try as hard during week 2 of the competition. The new rules stated that the time brackets would be divided into random periods of time, no clues or information given. From the few that were able to book during week 2, they mentioned less 5 star hotels listed or difficulty in computer glitches when it came to watching the video.
Mike himself actually came across the video that same Tuesday at work around 11:00am. The prices changed, the video played, but time ran out on his clock, on purpose. His original timer said 1:30 seconds, but as soon as he tried to book our resort getaway, the timer went down to 0. Many can attest to similar situations.
Fast forward to Friday February 6th, 2009, the last day of the competition. There seemed to be a pattern of bookings being made at very early times and very late times during the day. Either way, we tuned into the site throughout the week in hopes of our dream vacation to Punta Cana, but ladies and gentleman, we are sorry to announce that we did not win the world for $1. 11:59pm EST on Friday the 6th came and le
ft with no more chances to book rooms.
We congratulate all the winners who were able to get this great deal on hotels. We wish them safe travels and hope they will visit our site and tell us about their travels! We would love to interview you about your entire experience through your LMT journey. We’d also like to thank SlickDeals.net for their very informative forum and kind members who helped us try to win our dream vacation. We know one day, we will spoil ourselves and go on a crazy vacation like this, but until then, we’ll be your AOB guides.
Do we feel any resentment towards LMT? We were upset to have not won an extremely low travel luxury hotel, but we do have some suggestions.
We don’t want to be sore losers for not winning, but in our humble opinion, we feel that the rules should have been more clearly stated when they were indeed changed. We are thankful for the given opportunity at a chance for hotels for $1, but when it comes to a promotion from a travel company, it is imperative to keep abridged to your own terms and update it as needed to make sure everyone is fully aware of the changes. What made the contest unique was figuring out clues like a puzzle to figure out the times; it was entertaining, rather than random times with no information given. Also, I’m sure many people would appreciate an apology for the glitches that occurred on Monday and about the changes made to the contest. We feel the changes were not executed within fair reason.
Stated on a facebook group about LMT are the list of fraudulent activities that LMT participated in:
1. Stating there will be one “individual 15 minute” period, then splitting it up. Violating their own T&C.
2. Stating that all of their hotels will be available, when it was obvious from Day 1 they were not. Call up customer service, and they say yes they are certainly all available! But magically once the magic time started, 50% or more of the hotels disappear, then magically reappear after the time period is up.
3. Stating that the contest period will not occur while Janice and Kevin are sleeping. Then almost always putting the contest in the middle of the night.
4. Stating that clues will lead you to the times, then completely abandoning the clues in the 2nd week -- and again, no acknowledgment of this change.
5. Changing hotels after they have been booked and confirmed to different, cheaper hotels.
There is a lot of information about this contest; people who are angry about the changes made on Week 2. We would also love to hear from those who won, how they won and how their vacation goes when they do go.
We hope LastMinuteTravel.com understands our point of view and if they do decided to participate in another contest that they take our suggestions and others to heart. We would love the chance to join this contest again.
Here are some additional links with lots of information about the Last Minute Travel promotion:
Someones recorded attempt at winning the world for $1 promotion
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=545313&t=1127859- A long Slick Deals thread that lasted 2 weeks; the duration of the promotion.
http://tinyurl.com/anqk4y- A facebook group dedicated to angry contestants who are disappointed with the contest.
http://lmtsucks.com- Self explanatory
customer_support@lastminutetravel.com For those who want to email LMT.
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1153441- A list of the winners and where they are going thanks to LMT.
Teresa is the Co-Founder of ArtofBackpacking; Ms. Art of Backpacking. She is currently studying to be a Journalist at St. John’s University. Upon completion of her University studies, she will travel and see more of this beautiful world. If she is not online reading all the latest travel blogs, you can find her writing and taking pictures around NYC, her hometown.
Related posts:
