I booked a four-night stay at the Member Rate at Park Hyatt Shanghai for later this year, and then called WoH to apply a TSU to the reservation. The agent said that she could not see any Park Suite or Bund View Suite (these are the Standard Suites) available as all had been reserved already. I told her that I was looking at hyatt.com now and I could see availability of both suite types at the "Prepaid Rate", but not at any other rate. The lady, without even checking on her system, then said that the suite was probably not available for all nights of my stay. I then had to say to her that I could probably go ahead and book the suite to show her the availability, but I obviously did not want to do so on a Prepaid Rate.

She then reluctantly put me on hold to check further. After a ten-minute wait, she said that she had to call the hotel to release a suite for me. I asked her to send me an email of the revised booking, and she said it was not needed and that "all was good".

I then checked my booking online, and found that the field normally showing the "Cancellation Policy" had been replaced with a remark "Suite Upgrade Confirmed Per Duty Manager". I have never seen this before in all my years of using TSUs. Do you think this is good enough? Anyway, I think I will write an email to the hotel to get them to confirm back in writing. From personal experience, the Park Hyatt Shanghai has had sneaky and evasive measures to avoid confirming TSUs in the past, so that is why I do not like staying here unless it is absolutely necessary.

On a related issue, can a hotel just put suites into a "Prepaid Rate" inventory, and then it does not show up for TSU eligibility? Even the WoH agents could not see this "availability". Is this a way for the hotels to "play games" and avoid giving out TSUs?