In Italy we have "formula roulette", in the UK?

[Tizfata]

Hello!
When booking an holiday with a tour operator, you can decide to take the "formula roulette". This is how in Italy we call when the tour operator offers a range of 2, 3 or more hotels, then tells you only right before the beginning of the holiday which one is your hotel.
What is the name of this kind of offer in English, please?
Thanks!

[James3214]

I would of just thought 'Last minute bargains with un-named hotels'

[kteee]

I think tour operators in the UK offer 'Accommodation allocated on arrival' for late availability, discounted bookings

[Don Ciccio]

I'd call it Russian roulette, without the bullet.

Not aware of such a thing here (I am based in UK 50% of the year). Surely Brits are far too untrusting and complainy to invest their holiday money in a tombola style shenanagin. But if it all went wrong they'd love the fact they could complain, write to BBC Watchdog and tell everyone they know about the ghastly experience.

I reckon that there'd be a market with tyhe younger generation, who are less regimented by convention though.

[Tizfata]

Thank you all.
A lady enquired for a 2 bedrom apartment in September, despite having a budget of 100 euro lower than the current price. I was thinking about offering one of the 2bedroom apartments as a 1bedroom apartment at the price of the already booked 1bedroom apartment (so everyone will be financially happy).
I wanted to offer a "generic" apartment (the last on the market, hopefully) without specifying if it is on the ground floor or on the first floor, some thing like:
You can have one of the following:
Apartment Girasole (description) or Apartment Lunarossa (description) or Apartment Solemio (description)

[KathyG]

It is used in the UK and as kteee says I'm pretty sure it's just called 'Accommodation allocated on arrival'. Good luck with her!

[Margaret]

I have done this several times with guests. Specifically when I am trying to get the best occupancy. I will tell guests when they book if they would 'mind' if I gave them an free upgrade to a better apartment later if that was more convenient for me. With our one bedroom apartments I can certainly imagine offering whatever is left available in exchange for a lower rent - the issue has not arisen so far.

[klompje]

A lady enquired for a 2 bedrom apartment in September, despite having a budget of 100 euro lower than the current price. I was thinking about offering one of the 2bedroom apartments as a 1bedroom apartment at the price of the already booked 1bedroom apartment (so everyone will be financially happy).

I am lost in this logic. A woman wants a two bedroon apartment at 100 Euros below the advertised price. That is her negotiation stance, you can accept this price or not or you can go back with a counter offer.

Why are you thinking of telling her that she can have a one bedroom appartment for the one bedroom price, but then give her the two bedroom appartment anyway?

I wanted to offer a "generic" apartment (the last on the market, hopefully) without specifying if it is on the ground floor or on the first floor, some thing like:
You can have one of the following:
Apartment Girasole (description) or Apartment Lunarossa (description) or Apartment Solemio (description)

This is a far better approach, you can tell her if she is not prepared to pay the full price, you will allocate her the last appartment available for the price she wants. It depends on how confident you are of selling the appartments for that week and how big a discount 100 Euros is.

[Tizfata]

Dear Klompje,
I am sorry I lost something somewhere in describing my intentions.
It is a couple and a 2year-old kid.
She answered the ad for a 2bedroom (I have 4 2bdrm and 1 1bdrm that is already booked).
I wanted to point out that (for that money) she can have one (which one I don't know yet) of the 2bdrm apartment BUT with only one bedroom.
Looking at the occupancy last year, I am can "downsize" one of the apartments but I do not want to go any lower. In the meantime I do not want to offer them 1 of the apartments on the groundfloor (I might get the full price for one of those) but they could have one of those if it is free.
Sorry, I'm not able to be concise and explain myself well

[Margaret]

I overlooked that bit of the posting. We do this all the time. We have one 2 bed apartment and 4 three bed apartments. We actually say on our site that one of our 3 bed apartments can be booked 'on a 2 bedroom basis' for the same price as the 2 bed apartment. We tried this last year and, in spite of being reminded when we showed them round, they still managed to use all of the bedrooms. As the argument in favour of doing this was less laundry and cleaning, this year the 3rd bedroom will be locked.

[klompje]

That's certainly a good idea as long as you can lock the other room (to reduce washing and cleaning). A number of years ago I used to do gite changeovers in a 3 ensuite bedroom house and I was amazed at how so few people could use so many beds this house. We made up all beds to allow the guests the choice of room and even if there was one couple, they invariably used at least two bedrooms... The owner took to locking off the top floor to stop this.

[Don Ciccio]

Having now spoken to friends who use lastminute dot com, It is apparent that they do offer such 'lucky dip' accommodation breaks .

Sorry