But I wanted to go ahead and give it a new topic name, because this is a pretty important finding I think.
As you can see if you look at my thread, I couldn't get a room for the Hyatt Sarasota over the Fourth of July weekend. I tried reservations then I tried contacting the manager directly, but no dice, and the hotel was even sold out for a while.
Anyway, I was checking the hotel again today, and low and behold they have rooms and are even offering specials on that weekend, so I call reservations again, and sure enough there are rooms available now for Nights after Nights!
Moral of the story
Nights after Nights rooms are not all allocated when you receive your certificate, more may be allocated at a later date, so if the hotel you want does not initially have any rooms, try again later because more may be allocated later!
Likely to be many reasonable circumstances that would make this true.
The one that comes to mind first is a convention. Large groups set aside blocks of rooms until x day. The rooms not taken are then "released" for any use the hotel wishes. The issue would not be one of Hyatt "central", but with the unit only. They can fill their hotel anyway they want, and a vacant room is a loss for ever. Better to take in a nights after nights or points, customer that let it go empty.
Often the reservations agent can tell you if a large group is planned there and when the trigger date is to release any unclaimed rooms.
Last minute reservations may be availabe for such programs too, if you have the nerve to wait!
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Only God does not have to travel
You're absolutely right Ranles, but for some reason I figured "if they don't have rooms now, they won't have rooms later", but I was pleasantly surprised to find otherwise.
In the case of the Hyatt Sarasota that is the case, they are the headquarters for the Offshore Powerboat race that I am going to attend there, which makes it all the better to get to stay there for free. I assume that they had blocked out a bunch of rooms that did not get reserved for the race and were recently released, and I won!
We would like to assure you that each of our hotels are required to set aside rooms for the redemption of earned travel awards. Availability may vary from day to day due to redemption demand and guests canceling or changing reservations.
At Hyatt Gold Passport we are aware that, at times, you may not be able to use a Nights After Nights certificate because of heavy demand. For this reason, we also offer members the choice of redeeming the Nights After Nights award for frequent flyer miles, instead of free nights.
If you would like to discuss this personally, please contact us via e-mail through our website at www.goldpassport.com or, call us at 1-800-30 Hyatt.
Thank you,
Hyatt Gold Passport Customer Service
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Karen Smith
Gold Passport Concierge
GPC (Gold Passport Concierge) ~ Thanks ... it would be nice if you could have a waiting list feature since the availability is subject to change.
In my case I'm pretty sure what happened is the hotel had blocked out all the rooms for an event they are hosting this weekend (I'm writing this note from the Hyatt Sarastoa where I am redeeming the certificate) so there was no availability when I first received my certificate, but as the weekend approached I noticed that the hotel went from being sold out to having rooms available at somewhat discounted prices, and on a hunch I called again and sure enough I could now use my certificate. I'm guessing what happened is that when the hotel did not sell all of the blocked rooms for the event they rereleased them, including making some available for Nights-after-Nights redemption.
