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.
