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As far as I’m concerned hotels should either be part of a loyalty program or not. There should be no scope for individual properties to pick and choose what parts of the program they’d like to participate in and what they’d like to opt out of – Starwood is hugely guilty of allowing high-end properties to cherry-pick how involved they are in SPG and it’s ridiculous.
The same should be true of hotel sales. When a chain is promoting a regional or worldwide sale there should be no need for a list of participating properties (all properties that fall into the region covered by the sale should have to participate) and the idea of blackout dates should be abolished – you’re either having a sale or you’re not.
Hilton is actually very good at this as I don’t recall too may of its properties opting out all that often but, once again, Starwood is a big culprit as are Hyatt and IHG…..and right now Hyatt is either having serious IT issues or the sale it has recently released is nothing short of a joke.
Hyatt’s New Sale
Hyatt has recently announced a new sale which it’s calling “Places You Can Explore” (not exactly catchy but then what do you expect from the people who gave us “World of Hyatt” and the ridiculous tier names?) and it’s saying that we can “save up to 25 percent at more than 180 participating Hyatt hotels and resorts in more than 80 destinations“.
The regions offering a discount are:
- Europe
- Asia-Pacific
- Africa, India & the Middle East
The sale rules are pretty simple:
- Book between November 15, 2017, and January 15, 2018.
- Stay between December 15, 2017, and February 28, 2018.
- Reservations must be made no fewer than three days in advance, with full pre-payment.
That all looks ok, right?…..not so fast!
The Annoyance
As part of the research for this post I decided to check out the sale prices that Hyatt is offering so I headed over to the European page of this promotion where I could a list properties that are participating.
The list of looks extensive enough (at least for a chain with a footprint as limited as Hyatt’s) and I decided to check room rates for three random dates at three of the properties on the promotion page.
All three properties are supposed to be participating so imagine my surprise when these were the three results that were returned:
Park Hyatt Paris:
Andaz London:
Park Hyatt Milan:
Three out of three searches returned a result of “the special offer or rate you have requested is unavailable”
Unperturbed I tried another European property that Hyatt has highlighted on the promotion page…..and the same thing happened again!
Another randomly selected property, another randomly selected date and another “sorry, no discount for you!” message.
Hyatt has this wording buried in the T&Cs:
Promotional blackout periods may apply due to seasonal periods or special events, and normal arrival / departure restrictions apply, including, but not limited to, minimum length of stay and day of week restrictions. This promotion may not be combined with other offers or discounts.
Let’s just think about that for a minute.
The sale covers a total of just 76 nights and yet Hyatt still thinks it’s ok to let its properties set blackout dates, minimum stay criteria and day of the week restrictions….and apparently these are so prevalent that the first four properties I checked all returned zero availability at the sale rate.
Well, either that or there’s something very wrong with how this promotion is running.
Whichever it is, it’s pathetic.
I decided to move on to another region to see if things got any better.
The first thing I noticed about the Asia-Pacific region was the absence of the Park Hyatt Sydney – one of Hyatt’s most aspirational properties doesn’t appear to be participating as it doesn’t appear in the regional list. Why?
Next I checked out availability for random nights at the Park Hyatt Tokyo and the Park Hyatt in the Maldives…..any guesses as to what happened?
Shocker! 🙂
Moving on to the last participating region I tried two more properties before I gave up in disgust:
Bottom Line
I have no idea if this is the world’s worst ever hotel sale or if something is wrong with how the sale is being handled by the website but the results are statistically staggering.
I selected 8 properties and 8 random dates and not one of them offered the promotional sale discount. How is that possible?!
Hyatt has already lost an incredible amount of goodwill from its guests with the appalling World of Hyatt program and now it appears to be announcing sales that are either not working or are little more than a joke.
I don’t purport to know what’s going on here but, whatever it is, this isn’t exactly going to endear Hyatt to anyone….it’s certainly not encouraging me to move any of my 75+ hotel nights/year over to Hyatt.
A few days ago I had the same experience attempting to book the Park Hyatt Sydney for mid to late January 2018. I thought it was simply my bad luck or ill timing. Thanks for putting a spotlight on this.
Step it up Hyatt.