Are you talking specifically about Hyatt or about hotels in general? I have often made reservations where I couldn’t select my desired bed type. That seems much more common than arriving and not getting what I booked. The booking systems seem pretty good at not offering me what can’t be delivered at checkin time.

Last fall I booked a king bed room award at a Best Western (of all places). I then decided that I actually needed to arrive a couple of days earlier (but keep the award). I had no more points, so I booked revenue nights. For the two rev nights there appeared to be no King availability at booking so I picked two queen beds. In the reservation note I mentioned the confirmation # of the award booking and asked if I could be put in the same room for both reservations (hoping that they would find me a King, but accepting the risk that my award would end up being in a queen).

Not one hour after I made the reservation I received a call from the hotel. They had seen my reservation note (for a reservation a month later) and wanted to let me know that the only way to stay in the room across reservations was if I accepted a Queen room for the second one as they had no Kings left for the first one, exactly as their website showed.

Obviously, in the time between booking and arrival (1 month) it was possible or perhaps likely that some King reservation would get cancelled for the period of my rev booking. But they weren’t going to count on that and lead me to believe that I would get something they couldn’t guarantee based on the data they had when I talked to them.

Good customer service at a place where I expected little more than a clean basic room.