spbeck

Without knowing the exact details of the flights, cabanas are available for 4 hrs per person.

HAM76

If the maximum booking time is 4h, block those hours after arrival and explain that longer bookings are not possible.

What I stumbled upon was when I read that the OP was requesting two spa treatments as I was under the impression that one could only have a single treatment. Same here, if there's a rule, book one and politely refuse the other.

By plainly refusing everything even with a precise request (cabana after arrival), You First is given the likely wrong impression of not caring. By making a good-guess reservation, though, they put the ball back into OP's hands.

Not necessarily... The OP is giving to flights and requests a reservation any time between those flights. For a multi-hour layover I would indeed consider this to be the norm, because one is in the CCR anyway and could walk over at any time. By needlessly restraining your request to a single time, you risk having to exchange multiple e-mails and prolong the process. Outside of UK business hours this often means waiting a whole day.

Land-of-Miles

Look at this from the other perspective, by just booking something which appears to fit there is a greater chance that the OP would cancel whatever is booked as not suitable but in the interim deprive someone else of a slot that the OP does not want.

Also as very few can reserve treatments at the Spa in advance the odds of not being able to get the time of choice is slim to remote. Based upon the response I assumed that the OP's onward flight was non-longhaul hence the fact that they were unable to reserve based upon "arrival" rather than departure. There is no entitlement to a Spa appointment in departures for an arriving longhaul flight connecting to shorthaul. However we don't really have the detail here to know for sure if that is the case.

Certainly based upon the limited detail we have I don't think the response was unreasonable. The OP could have simply called YF/GGL and sorted this all out over the phone in one fell swoop.

I don't have very much experience of spa reservations (because I think the spa is crap and an utter waste of time, given the setup and available treatments) but YF/GGLhave always ben very helpful whenever I have reserved cabanas. I always gave a preferred time however for my cabana booking and am then happy to flex this around availability.

BizFlyin

Since when? I tell them my connection times and they always tell me how long I can book it. I've had them reserved for well over 4 hours and had a very nice sleep. Maybe they quote you based on availability?