I love Hyatt as much as the next person, but I don't understand the "What do you expect it's a peak weekend or who cares about a one off property?" sentiment. This is a ridiculous loophole that any property that wanted to could use as a way to completely disallow standard award stays. I know this isn't happening, but I don't think anyone could argue that a property could very easily do this based on what we've been told. There are at least a few properties that do this regularly and it completely undermines the program IMO. Now if this was how properties went about enforcing their limited number of blackout days so be it, but it's never been explained like that. When this first came up Jeff Zidell himself commented that this shouldn't be happening and to let HGP know about it if we encountered it. Since then, HGP concierge has basically endorsed the practice and doesn't add much more than a quote about the "Hyatt Daily Rate" each time it's mentioned.

Peak times are exactly when I (and I'm assuming a lot of other FTers) want to use points and the points at this hotel in particular are usually a terrible value unless there is some event going on so if this became a regular practice my points would become much less valuable. I would agree that the sky isn't falling, but this loophole is complete crap and I don't understand how anyone could argue otherwise.