I got in on the deal--7 nights in Europe--at a four star hotel...$1 a nite! Got my reservation confirmed and even received a phone call from LMT congratulating me on being able to book the deal. London here I come!

Posted By Melissa on January 29, 2009, 2:01 PM

Go to: http://savingwithshellie.com/2009/01/28/get-hotel-rooms-for-1-per-night/

She tells you exactly how to do it! I got 5 nights in NYC this morning after doing her step-by-step.

Posted By Michelle on January 29, 2009, 2:03 PM

Oh yeah this was a great promotion, booked a $4,000 hotel week in the Caribbean on the first day. Lastminutetravels promotion was great and I will definitely use their services in the future. No complaints here, just be ready to type fast lol.

Posted By Dayo on January 29, 2009, 2:30 PM

I'm curious, do you have to pay taxes and fees on top of the $1/night fee? Or is the rate truly $1/night? Congrats to those who made it!

Posted By Megan on January 29, 2009, 5:51 PM

I managed to snag one this morning...mine shows up on the confirmation as a free trip!

Posted By Beechbaby on January 30, 2009, 6:03 AM

Received this confirmation from Last Minute Travel’s legal team, below! Hope this helps:

Fees: When you successfully book during The World for $1 sale, you will receive a hotel stay per your specifications as found on the confirmation voucher. This does not include any fees incurred at the hotel or during your vacation (example: resort fees, phone charges, transportation, etc.).

Taxes: The value of hotel rooms purchased during the World for $1 sale may be taxable as income. Individuals are solely responsible for the payment of all federal, state and local income or excise taxes on prize. Depending on the value of the rooms, you may be required to provide a social security number for 1099/income tax filing purposes. If required, Last Minute Travel will send you the appropriate documentation for tax filing. You are not responsible for hotel taxes.

Posted By Blog Editor on January 30, 2009, 10:52 AM

I checked this morning and the website has removed the instructions. anyone want to tell me how they did it?

Posted By Reg on January 30, 2009, 12:49 PM

Reg
See how some other travelers have tried to improve their odds of winning using some free Web software in this forum at Slick Deals.

--Sean
Blog editor at Budget Travel

Posted By Sean on January 30, 2009, 1:08 PM

Sean-
A heads up that something seems amiss with the Terms of Service for this promotion. As of Friday, they changed their terms of service removing the line that this was not a "lottery or contest"....
Check out the people chatting about it over here: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1127859&page=88

People are wondering if this is the ole' bait and switch....

Posted By Tina on February 1, 2009, 2:44 PM

I was able to get one of the rooms on Thursday, purely by accident. I was up early and on the site searching when the promotion came up. I will say that no matter what they say about being able to book 5 star properties, etc., they are limiting the selection during the contest. I had been searching for hotels in the bahamas and had seen about 8 options, including 3 all-inclusives, minutes before the contest started. Once the contest started, and I searched, there were 0 properties available. I ended up with a Florida hotel--3 star because I had to think fast for an alternate city to chose. While I am happy I have a free room for a week, I do think they are not being honest about what they are offering. They have also changed their contest rules at least once a day since the promotion started.

Posted By Callie on February 2, 2009, 2:40 PM

I did manage to get a room on the third day of the promotion because I just happened to be up before daylight searching their site for a hotel for mine and hubby's vacation this year. All of the rooms that I had looked at were completely gone when the promotion started that morning, so like a previous poster I too had to do some quick thinking and choose and alternate city.

This seems like a great promotion to trump up business to Last Minute Travel,but what I don't understand is WHY they keep changing the rules to their promotion.It seems that lastminutetravel.com has completely changed the terms and conditions since this promotion started.

Posted By Confused on February 3, 2009, 7:42 AM

I got a 7 night stay at a 2 bedroom suite in the 5 star Mona Lisa Suites Hotel. It was worth staying up all night. I saved over $1500 in hotel fees. I think the earlier you got into the campaign, the more hotels they had. This is awesome. I am taking a vacation I hadn't planned on and this is going to be so much cheaper than ever. Disney here we come!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted By LisaGotTheHotel!! on February 3, 2009, 8:13 AM

I was up from 2-3am also, but didn't see any of the video's some people did. I will definitely join that boycott of LAST MINUTE TRAVEL. I'm certainly not one who cries for things I did not get, however LMT set up the rules for their own promotion and did not follow them. That is grounds for a class action suit. Although, they could have canceled the promo anytime they liked under their terms, instead they made it impossible to achieve the goal.

Running the clock after 11pm is unethical, but not running individual 15 minute segments each day is against how they set the rules up. It is just as bad to me as when McDonalds ram the Monopoly contest and didn't have winning pieces available. For those that say they may have had technical trouble, it is still their responsibility to communicate that to us. They certainly have all of our email addresses and we saw nothing. It's obvious to me they gave away some 900 rooms earlier than expected and instead of handling the situation with class, they resorted to unfair practices.

LMT was very impressed with the 1700 people in the chat room and the power they held to keep us looking at their site. Let's show them what those 1700+ people can do when treated unfair.

Posted By The Cleveland Kid on February 3, 2009, 8:18 AM

To elaborate on what the Cleaveland Kid said:

Yesterday, 2/3, there was no specific time period of 5/10/15 minutes where the promotion was running. Instead it was intermittent...where one person would see the deal and call up a friend and say "It's going on now!" and the friend would try, and the promo would not be running for them... some of the problems were as follows:
1.) People using firefox are no longer seeing videos (which are required to view to get the deal) For some reason it now seems to be I.e. only.
2.) The timer is inconsistent for those who do see it. (There are several reports of starting a page with 4 min on the timer, but then after clicking submit and progressing to the next page, their time is cut short to 15 sedconds.)
3.) For some individuals a room search is showing up as "0 points"? No one knows if this means it's a free room, it has nothing about points noted in the terms of the campaign...
4.) For some individuals who got to the final confirmation page, there is a security image box with a randomized passcode you have to enter. If you type that code faster than 3 seconds, it flags an error and says that you've done it faster than 3 seconds and need to retry. (Sucking up time for you to complete the forms)
5.) For those who saw the videos, many watched the first video, got their $1 search results and still had time ticking on the top of the page when they clicked "Book it". Unfortunately, they were then taken to a page that said "The contest is finished".

I, personally, have worked in tech support and community management in the past. They've got a blog (which is pretty much instant communication) but are not communicating to people whether they've had tech issues, etc. I don't believe that people are unreasonable about wanting to know the scoop... they do seem to be changing the rules on us without telling us.

Posted By Tina on February 3, 2009, 10:50 AM

I didn't try to get in on this promotion, but reading all these comments, I'd be REAL interested to know if any of those folks who've supposedly booked rooms actually get rooms when they show up. I'd also like to know if any of the folks who didn't get rooms become victims of id theft. This just sounds SO scammy to me. I sure hope I'm wrong but as the old adage goes "if it sounds too good to be true..."

Posted By karen on February 5, 2009, 8:34 PM

Judging from comments of visitors to the LMT site during its promotion, incredibly bad planning and mgmt on their part. How many customers have they managed to turn into LMT ex-clients and haters? Will someone lose their job in favor of a more intelligent and viable job candidate?

Frankly, I´m shocked that such a large, well-known website can behave so unprofessionally. It makes me wonder whether there will be other customer service issues on future bookings with them. Good idea for a promotion, but incredibly terrible implimentation, Lastminutetravel.com. What a fiasco. I would NOT dare claim success on this campaign. 900 rooms available, only 624 bookings, in other words, 31% failure + millions of frustrated potential customers. I work in Internet marketing, and it just requires a little planning and attention to detail.

Posted By bob on February 6, 2009, 6:01 PM

In response to Karen...I'll let you know if it was too good to be true when I come back from Bahamas...Here is my thing. This promo was great but was very difficult. Think about it, you had 15 mins out of a 24 hr day to get this. It took dedication, check out SlickDeals forum for example, there are huge threads dedicated to this.

Posted By Sean on February 7, 2009, 1:06 AM