Bad data, and a pool problem

We put so much trust into online databases. Oftentimes, the trust is misplaced. I learned this the hard way when I used some expiring American Airlines miles to book a vacation in New York. I trusted the online database used by aavacations.com to display accurate data about the New York Marriott Downtown. Instead, I found out that some crucial information about the hotel (see the circled part below) was incorrect.

I contacted the hotel and American Airlines, but aside from cancelling the reservation, nothing could be done. My family was out of luck.

In the grand scheme of things, whether or not a hotel database displays accurate information about certain hotel in a certain city matters little. But when you consider that hundreds of millions of people make decisions based on what they see in online databases every day, the scale of the problem becomes apparent. Even if only 10% of listings in a travel or ecommerce website have incorrect data, that represents a lot of frustration, misspent dollars, and lost business.