Originally Posted by
mikew99
It's beyond greedy for a hotel to charge one guest a now-show fee, give his room away to another guest, then get paid twice for the same room. And then play dumb when the original guest shows up for his reservation.
I'm not a fan of Marriott, but it sounds like Marriott has this one right: The cost for walking an elite guest should be so high, that it simply doesn't happen.
Like the airlines, hotels do oversell on a nightly basis. Most of the corporate rates allow up to 6PM cancellation, some might have used prepaid rates that noncancelable and just throw the stay away, there could be misconnects etc. Hotels maximize their revenue by doing this.
If you have large enough property, you can be quite certain about the number of no-shows on a nightly basis.
What I don't understand, however, is the fact that Hyatt doesn't have any formal procedure for NOT walking Diamond members. The Marriott's Platinum walk guarantee is the best in the industry. For a Hyatt property it doesn't make a difference, whether they walk a Priceline reservation or a Diamond member staying on a rack rate.
I have only walked once in my life and that happened last year at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead. It is pretty amazing considering that I have had 300+ stays every year since 2004. This was my FIRST ever walk.