The soon-to-open Andaz Mexico City loaded a rate of just $39 plus 6000 points for a suite. The rate was around awhile, but then got significant coverage, and so I shared it as well.
- Confirmed suites at the hotel normally go for 21,000 – 27,000 points per night
- Room rates here run $300 or so for a regular room and twice that for a suite
It wasn’t clear to me that Hyatt would honor these reservations. I wrote at the time,
There’s either strength in numbers, or this will be so costly to the hotel given much higher volume of bookings that they may push back. However similar past deals at Hyatt properties have been honored. Regardless I would wait awhile after making the reservation to lock in airfare or other non-refundable arrangements.
However three weeks passed without any indication of an issue. That is, in effect, communicating that all is well. Plenty of people have made non-refundable airline bookings as a result. Yet now Hyatt is cancelling the bookings.
I’m not going to offer legal advice. I’m not going to suggest that Hyatt’s past honoring of ‘mistake rates’ estops them from claiming their long-standing terms and conditions dictate such rates will be cancelled, and I’m not going to argue detrimental reliance in customers incurring costs as a result of Hyatt’s silence on these reservations for three weeks or more.
Instead I’ll simply suggest that I’d have been fine with the reservations being cancelled within a few days of bookings, and not several weeks after those reservations have been made. Simply cancelling reservations after this much time without further accommodation is unacceptable. At a minimum offer a discount rate at the hotel for a standard room or suite, or some points by way of apology – and find a way to address costs that customers are actually incurring as a result of the property’s long wait to decide to cancel the bookings.
We kill the things we love. I wonder how many bookings were made after the travel blogs let the cat out of the bag.
Well, it’s Mexico, what do you expect?
When Starwood (remember them) published members e mail address’ they gave those people 5000 points. At the time, IIRC, the Bora Bora property posted an error rate. When *wood sent the e mail to those that purchased, they didn’t BCC the mail. Gasp.
@dhammer53 That Bora Bora mistake rate and subsequent 5,000 points from cancellation literally started my now 16 year career in miles and points 🙂
@Dave, I was deep in the game back then. 5000 points back then (pre-inflation – Marriott) meant something. It’s nice to see that there are old timers still around.
@dhammer53 – yep. I often tell the story about how that got me interested in miles and points. I didn’t even know what 5,000 Starpoints meant. So I studied up, got an SPG credit card, saved up 46,000 points, and booked 5 nights in a butler suite at the Le Meridien Monte Carlo with cash rates of 1,500 Euro / night.
After that, I was determined to learn everything I could about miles and points and spent hours upon days reading Flyertalk threads in their entirety, no matter how many hundreds of pages long. Years later, it would become my actual career 🙂
Lol..Hyatt, overpriced garbage only Americans stay at
Well…a Best Western hotel in suburbia Paris cancelled a “mistake fare” that I had for several months …the day before arrival. Top that….
You rolled the dice and lost, Gary. You got others to do so too, and.now try to justify it by saying other bloggers did it first (a weak defense). If I recall, you thought (knew) it had to be a mistake when you first posted about it. Karma happens, particularly when you don’t hold the moral high ground..
The only regret that I have from this site was not buying AA miles for $0.0042.
I did book the Andaz but have yet to receive the cancellation. We shall see.
Gary, I’ve had some negative comments as of late about a few of your posts so it is only fair that I say, “Thank you” for this post.
You tried to help folks with a potential great deal AND offered caution so people knew what they were getting into AND you called out Hyatt for their poor and way-to-late response.
Thank you. This is why I read this website 2x per day.