Fota Island Resort apologises over Santa tickets error

Fota Island Resort has issued apologies to 1,201 customers who thought they had booked discounted tickets to see Santa in the run-up to Christmas.

The resort has confirmed that it will not be honouring the discounts to see Santa at the Wonder Christmas Experience.

A technical glitch on the booking system meant that more than 1,000 customers were able to avail of a 50% discount without applying any code, while 150 others applied golf members discounts despite not being members of the golf club.

The hotel said that the cost of honouring all of the discount codes would put the entire Wonder Christmas Experience at risk and, as such, it has started to reach out to customers who booked the discount codes.

Customers have been offered the choice of keeping their booked time-slot and paying the remainder of the cost, cancelling their booking and receiving a refund, or choosing a different time-slot which might be more affordable.

Tickets went on sale at noon on Wednesday. At full price, the Santa experience at Fota costs up to €28 for each child plus an additional €18 for each adult.

Seamus Leahy, marketing director of the hotel, said that emails have been sent to all of those who used the discount and that many people have already been in touch. He said two issues emerged this week.

Members of the Fota Island Golf Club were emailed a discount code, as is done each year. This code was shared online, with 150 non-members booking discounted tickets using this code.

All of these codes have since been deactivated and the hotel is contacting those who used them to determine whether or not the sales were legitimate.

A separate, bigger issue emerged on Thursday when a glitch in the booking website's code allowed people to simply click "submit code" without entering any code to apply a 50% discount. It was discovered by a user at about 10pm on Wednesday night and was quickly shared on social media.

While staff realised the issue in the early hours of the morning, it took until midday on Thursday to resolve it. During this time, 1,050 people booked with a 50% discount.

"It spread like wildfire," Mr Leahy said. "It shows the power of social media. The amount of people booking around 2am or 3am was staggering."

Despite issuing a number of festive-themed messages on Facebook and through email, there has been some angry backlash. A number of furious comments posted on Facebook demanded that the discounts be honoured, with some claiming that they would never consider visiting the hotel again.

Mr Leahy stressed that the hotel is "very disappointed" that the situation emerged.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused," he said. "We try to create a sense of magic and wonder and we are very disappointed that it happened.

"People had to actively click to apply the discount. It was not automatically applied until you did that. The majority of people have been very understanding of that fact."

Under EU rules, while a contract is in place when a confirmation email receipt is delivered, there are two provisos under which transactions can be cancelled. These are in the instance of genuine and honest errors, or if people act in bad faith.