The mistake rate at the Crowne Plaza Venice East that I posted about last weekend is being honored.

Supposedly 228 people booked 1400 room nights, and the hotel claims it stands to lose $129,000. It won’t really cost them that at all. In fact, my best guess is $10,000.

(1) Many of the nights won’t be consumed.

(2) Most nights the hotel won’t be sold out.

Now, if I were on the other end of this deail I would agree to honor the rate but add a stiff cancellation penalty for any booking cancelled after a week or so. In other words, I’d do it in a way that would shake loose any rooms at this rate that definitely won’t be used, or might not be used. Otherwise folks can keep their reservations and never cancel, risking only a single euro cent.

But since the hotel will rarely be completely full, these reservations aren’t actually displacing other paid bookings the hotel could have made. And that means they aren’t actually losing money by honoring the deal. It’s disingenuous to price the number of room nights times their prevailing rate, because empty rooms would have fetched zero rather than 80 euros or thereabouts.

The only ‘cost’ to the hotel for most of these nights is incremental service, let’s say it’s $20 per room night actually consumed. And let’s guess that fewer than half the room nights are actually consumed.. I bet it is no more than 20% tops.. Ultimate true cost here will be less than $10,00 I’d bet — even if 30% of the room nights are ultimately used.