MSPeconomist

HINT TO HYATT: When I'm trying to book a room at one of YOUR hotels on YOUR WEBSITE, I do not want to be redirected to some third party hotel (consolidator?) website, especially one that pops up without even listing a Hyatt hotel on the page with my location and my dates. I don't care if Hyatt is getting commissions from bookings elsewhere on this apparent third party website (there's a Hyatt logo at the top but no Hyatts listed), I do not want to make a reservation this way and I do not want to (and will not) stay in any of their listed hotels. If you insist, I'll book at spg.com or even marriott.com, both of which will be happy to make my reservation at one of their hotels.

This morning I was attempting to make several reservations at particular Hyatt hotels where I knew I wanted to stay. It was extremely frustrating to be redirected repeatedly to some (fly-by-night?) third party (consolidator?) website. This happened sometimes when I clicked search after entering my location and date. Other times hyatt.com seemed to send me to roomkey.com when I was exploring particular rate plans or trying to select a particular room at some Hyatt property I had already chosen.

Note that I don't care what benefits, if any, Hyatt might give me from such bookings. I do not want to make my hotel reservations this way. If I were to try to use third party sites, I would decide for myself which one to use rather that go with the one where Hyatt sends me.

Other than the hypothesis that Hyatt is getting a bigger commission from roomkey.com bookings than their own hotels are paying for hyatt.com reservations, it's hard to see how it could be a sensible business model for Hyatt's website to send (elite) customers over to the competition. This seems crazy, even above and beyond keeping a website that makes it difficult for customers to purchase your product (make reservations at Hyatt hotels).

Rant off.