A RYEDALE hotel has received its best excuse ever from a customer who failed to turn up after making a booking.

American Claudia Niera, from New York, had mistaken the White Swan in Pickering with its namesake in the bustling Chinese city of Guangzhou.

The White Swan in Guangzhou was fully booked when Miss Niera arrived at the hotel's check-in desk.

She insisted that she had made a reservation on the web, but staff there had no record of any booking and Miss Niera was stranded.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, at the White Swan, in Pickering, owner Victor Buchanan was wondering where his business customer Miss Niera was.

"We rarely get no-shows - that is people who book and then fail to show up, so Miss Niera was an exception," he said.

"We were just about to get her credit card details out and contact her to find out what had happened when I received an e-mail from her.

"She was in China and was stranded because the White Swan where she thought she'd made a reservation was fully booked.

"She asked us if there was anything we could do to help but as we were thousands of miles away I had to tell her 'no'."

The multi-storey White Swan in Guangzhou is on the old Silk Road and boasts of "beautiful banyan gardens on the edge of Shamian island".

A room at the hotel, which is minutes from the airport and city centre, costs around 55 dollars per night.

Pickering's White Swan Hotel, a Yorkshire Hotel of the Year, charges £65 per night.

Mr Buchanan says though the two hotels are very different, their web addresses are very similar.

"We got there first - the hotel in China registered its web address after us," he said.

"We had to laugh because it seemed such a blatant mistake to make. She was very worried because she thought we were going to charge her for not turning up.

"We don't do that because we're a small hotel and our customers would never come back if we did.

"We've e-mailed Miss Niera and asked her to consider staying with us if she ever decides to come to England."

Fact file:

Guangzhou

Capital of Guangdong province in South China.

Population: 3,490,000.

Industries include shipbuilding, engineering, chemicals and textiles.

Architecture includes the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, a theatre commemorating the politician who was born nearby and founded the university.

It was the first Chinese port opened to foreign trade, the Portuguese visiting it in 1516, and was a treaty port from 1842 until its occupation by Japan in 1938.

Pickering

A busy market town in North Yorkshire, UK.

Population: about 6,600.

The town itself is a thriving tourist centre which is the base of the North York Moors Railway.

It is within a farming parish but also has light industry in the form of the McKechnie car components plant and further light engineering to the south of the town.

Sometimes troubled by its duck population, which damages the riverbanks, the town is also blessed with the largest otter population in North Yorkshire.

Updated: 12:09 Monday, April 23, 2001