I have a reservation at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach next week for four nights. My plans have changed and I need to leave two nights earlier than planned (my arrival date isn't changing). I called the hotel today and they said that have a length of stay based rate and my nightly rate would change from $209/night to $279/night if I make this change. I'm know some hotels offer weekly or monthly rates but I had never heard of a length of stay based rate for such a short period of time. The only thing similar I've run into previously is stay X nights get one night free deals, but this isn't such rate, it's Business Plan room booked at the Hyatt Daily Rate.

Not believing the clerk that the Long Beach Hyatt has a length of stay rate that applies to four nights I tried some test bookings for various lengths of stays on hyatt.com and I could find no cases where this is true, the rate never goes down staying for more nights. In fact the opposite is true, in most cases staying four nights results in a higher total charge than staying one night followed immediately by three nights (or two nights followed by two nights). And this is true for stays that include a weekend as well as entirely midweek stays (weekend stays do tend to be higher, but my planned stay is entirely midweek).

For example if you wanted to stay in a Business Plan 1 King Bed at the Hyatt Daily Rate (the room and rate that I have booked for my stay) for 4 nights starting on July 25 the rate is $279/night for a total of $1116. But if you book it as two stays, a one night stay starting on July 25 and a 3 night stay starting on July 26 the total cost would be $946 ($259 for the July 25 night and $229 for the next three nights). Booking as a two night stay followed by a two night stay results in a total of $976 since the July 26 night jumps from $229 to $259 when it is booked along with the July 25 night. This isn't an isolated example; as I said earlier, in most cases staying 4 nights in July is more expensive than staying 1+3 (or 3+1) or 2+2.

I know airlines will charge N passengers a higher fare if there are less than N seats left in a particular fare bucket but in this case the Long Beach Hyatt is charging a higher per night rate for the total stay than for either stay individually.

BTW, the hotel is fully booked for the two nights that I want to stay, so I can't cancel the reservation and rebook. I did check to see what they charge for the room for the two nights I'm trying to cancel and it's $209/night, which is the same rate I'm paying for the 4 nights, so I guess this a counterexample to my assertion that staying 2+2 nights is cheaper than 4 nights.

Can anyone suggest how I can convince the reservation agent to let me reduce my stay by two days but not change the rate to $279/night?

On a separate note does anyone think I could arbitrage this illogical pricing to make money? If I start a www.savemoneyathyatt.com website and offer to find the optimal booking by checking all permutations of a user's intended stay would 5% of the money I save them be a reasonable fee? Perhaps some travel websites already book a four night stays as two separate reservations and pocket the difference :-) They'd have to include a note in the reservation so the hotel doesn't make the guest change rooms, but since the hotel saves the maid's time to change the linens they'd presumably be happy to do this.

BTW, it might be possible to use the Hyatt "Best Rate Guarantee" and save 20% over the lower rate when you run into this situation. The terms and condition require the booking to be the "same dates of stay and same length of stay" but one could argue that 2 two day back to back stays are the same dates and length of stay as 1 four day stay.

marcos