Originally Posted by
Ancien Maestro
Glad it worked out, and the Hyatt hotel treated you like a valued customer!
For myself, a trip got delayed a day going out at another hotel chain.. Fairmont Orchid.. They were gracious to bump me a day ahead.. when I arrived, I extended my stay another 6 nights. I knew that the rate was refundable but they were gracious.
Nowadays, it may be false confidence, but I do book hotels on noncancellable rates, because my Amex has trip insurance. As hotels in Hawaii, where I often book ahead, is non-cancellable within 14 days or so, I have to rely on my cc insurance anyways. I use Amex gold which gives me double the points, but a bit less insurance than my platinum card which gives me 1.25 points per mile.
Yes, it was very nice of the hotel to go ahead and do that for us, but I definitely wasn't expecting it...just figured I'd ask to see what they would say. My family and I enjoy that particular hotel, and we stay there as often as we can throughout the year. I had never before then (or since then) asked for a refund on a prepaid rate from a hotel, so it isn't something that I would imagine myself asking for again unless another major incident occurred that made us unable to arrive.
The only other time that I asked for something extra was when I had several nights at a Hyatt property in Orlando (Grand Cypress) booked and prepaid for on a family vacation in which we missed our first night due to a delayed flight, and having to stay overnight in Atlanta. The only thing I asked for at that time was to receive points on the prepaid amount for that first night that we missed, which even though they weren't required to do (since I hadn't checked in), they still went ahead and gave them to me. Other than that, I've never been too picky with Hyatt since they've always treated us well. ^