Want a room? Sure, we have a room available — click here. Psych! No, no rooms available. Nyahhh!

That’s pretty much what Hilton told me on their site. This isn’t the first time it’s happened to me. As a Hilton HHonors cardholder, I use credit card points for hotel rooms quite a bit. But it’s beyond frustrating to go to their site, log into my account, search for a hotel, choose a hotel, enter my reservation, be told that a room is available (that’s that green checkmark in the graphic above; the text says, “Standard Hotel Reward Available”), and then, at the end of that entire process, be told — oops! Sorry, we made a mistake. No rooms available.

Something’s not right in Hilton database land, and it ought to be fixed.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re going to tell someone that product X is available by clicking here, don’t have them click here only to be told product X isn’t available … unless, of course, you want to build frustration and resentment among your customers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 6:00 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways.