Guaranteed availability - a scam?

So I’m off to Japan soon and wanted to go to a weekend festival in Inuyama in April . I booked a room at the Hotel Indigo Inuyama Urakuen Garden for the Sunday night - but Saturday is already fully booked.

No problem I thought - I’ll just use my Diamond status to request a room under the 72 hour ‘guaranteed room availability’ benefit. Or so I thought….

The hotel rates are normally between 24000 to 30000 JPY. Because it is the festival, on the Sunday rooms started at 72000. The room i booked was a castle view room which cost 96000. This is already very very expensive for what it is - about £500 / $625.

I emailed Diamond customer service. They reached out to the hotel. Great news, yes we can certainly get you a room at this hotel! In fact we can offer you the same room type as your Sunday night - standard castle view room.

Now for the sticker shock - the price….. 300000 JPY!!! That’s £1600 / $2000!!! Not for a suite, a castle view room that would go for 40000 on a typical day and 96000 on the same festival weekend.

So, is this a scam? Clearly they are inflating the room rate to make sure I do not go for this and they have to kick someone out. There is absolutely no way this room sold for that price when it was bookable.

It feels like a scam to me - they have honoured the guarantee but made it deliberately unaffordable.

Thoughts?