Originally Posted by
jasonvr
So am i the only one who believes the now seemingly rampant addition of a "High Floor" category at many Hyatts is a complete scam? In these properties, these used to be standard rooms that offered no advantage to any other standard room in the hotel. Now, with the addition of the category, I've seen all of the following:
- Limitation of corporate rate availability because half of the previously available inventory is now not a base category room because it is "high floor"
- Being told at an HP (as a Diamond), that I couldn't get a room away from the elevator because the only ones available are on a high floor and that's not what I booked
- More limited award availability because moving rooms into the "high floor" category reduces standard room inventory
- Higher room rate on the exact same room type because it is one floor up (really, does the 2nd vs 3rd floor in a suburban HP really make that much of a difference in anything?)
#2 really galled me, but I was too tired to fight it and my white noise generator was able to block out all the elevator noise for sleeping.
And given that many hotels have horribly slow elevators, high floor is actually a disadvantage in many places.
Anyone else have the same feeling, or am I on a island here?
In general, a room on a high floor can be marketed as more upscale, that is not a scam.
Of course, there is no significant difference between floor 3 and 4 at a Hyatt Place right next to a parking lot in some obscure suburban location.
There is a significant lack of training at many Hyatt Place locations, so your second comment does not surprise me. The training standards at many US Hyatt locations leave a lot to be desired as well.
We all know that some hotels use certain tricks to limit award availability and we also know that a one category upgrade is standard at certain Hyatt locations, no suprise here, at least for me.
But I usually do not fall for Marketing blabla and I also do not expect airlines or hotels to offer lots of award availability when they expect to sell all their inventory.