Hotel discount offer blamed for server crash
Leading Hotels of the World, the fancy-lodging chain I only ever hear about in airline-magazine advertisements, has badly flubbed a discount offer celebrating its 80th birthday. So many people tried to get the chain's $19.28/night discount rate that its servers supposedly crashed.Sure, blame the sysadmin. What the company is telling customers: It's hired Akamai Technologies to make sure the site stays online. But what we're wondering: Did someone forget to put a cap on the offer, and pull the plug on the website after more people than expected signed up for the $19.28 rate?