Originally Posted by
AZ Travels the World
I completely agree with this.
I was at a dinner with some SPG execs recently and they asked me what one thing they could do to elite benefits that would enhance the program the most. My answer was to provide some small number of elite upgrades, say three or four, that can be confirmed in advance -- exactly what Hyatt is doing now.
I used the same logic -- that 90+% of my stays are such that I could care less about being upgraded to a suite -- but that there are a few occasions a year where it would really matter to me.
As we talked about it further, one issue became clear that I had not considered -- very likely, all the top-tier elites would identify the same few hotels for their special upgrades -- Hawaii, Rome, Venice, Tokyo, Sydney, etc., likely in the same high-occupancy seasons, and few would be booking early to snag an upgrade at, say, the Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center.
We agreed that would make such a program problematic. It will be interesting to see how Hyatt fares with it.
Actually electronic suite upgrades was in the pipeline with SPG many years ago and finally eliminated before the official roll-out.It had even been written about in the press as a done deal at the time.
Keep in mind that Hyatt with less hotels has many fewer members in Gold Passport then SPG too.
I think Hyatt may be able to execute suite upgrades reasonably well.
One thing for certain it won't take GP members long to test the water
