Confirm Grand Club Floor in GH Hong Kong?
 

Anybody has the experience in confirming the Grand Club Floor upgrade availablity BEFORE the day of checking in?
I am a GP Diamond Member.

Any experience?

I am now at the Grand Hyatt HKG and got upgraded upon check in, paying only for two nights 1043HKD and 1 free FFN night. Got upgraded to Grand Club and fantastic harbour view room, so in effect a double upgrade.

***GHHK refuses & redefines upgrades after 9/1/04 ****
 

I made a res, and emailed the hotel to test the policy after 9/1 and this is what I got back. Somehow this comes as no surprise but it does seem to be a misinterpretation. Thank you very much - I will be at the Sheraton. A sad state of affairs.

I am sorry - what is a diamond benefit again ?




Dear Mr XXXXXX

Thank you for the email.

We noticed that you are the Diamond member (XXXXXXXXXXX) However, from 1st September, 2004, there are changes for all the Diamond membership. There will be no Grand Club access unless you upgrade to our Grand Club floor.

However, from your reservation #1234567, you have reserved a Grand Room (Garden view) at this point, and if you request upgrade, this could only upgrade to our next category, i.e. the Grand Harbour View Room in this case. And please note that, for all upgrade are subject to availability upon arrival.

Therefore, if you would like to have the Grand Club access, we would kindly suggest you to pay a supplement for single occupancy of HK$500.00 plus 13% per room per night to our Club Room (Garden View).

Please kindly advice on this matter.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely

Teresa Lam
Reservations Agent
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong
1 Harbour Road
Wanchai, Hong Kong

The DIA policy is:

"Members achieve Diamond status, Gold Passport's most rewarding level, after completing 25 stays or 50 nights at Hyatt* in a calendar year. Additional benefits of Diamond membership include:

30% point bonus when you choose points for your stay.

72 hour Guaranteed Room Availability - with 72 hour notice, local hotel time, you'll be guaranteed a room. Simply call 1-800-400-2261+ or your nearest Worldwide Reservation Centre. This guarantee is not valid at Hyatt Resorts or during extraordinary room demand**.

Complimentary upgrades to Regency/Grand Club, or next best available guest room, based on availability at check-in"

So, the UPG should be to a Regency/Grand Club room if available. If not available, then to the "next best" room.

I guess I'll find out how they will actually treat this when I get there 9/2.

Although I do think the responsive e-mail does not exactly reflect the policy, I am more concerned with why you e-mailed the hotel in the first place. The policy change, at least the letter I received, seemed very clear. So help me understand this, what aspect of the policy were you exactly testing? Did you e-mail the hotel and ask them to cofirm an upgrade to the Grand CLub for you? If so, why would you do that in the face of the annouced policy?

It seems to me that you did yourself a disservice. The policy is what the policy is. You can either live with or choose another hotel chain, but sending e-mails to a hotel in advance trying to get an upgrade to GC to me (IMHO, seems silly and a waste of time.

The point in emailing is to probe the attitude of the hotels going forward and the adjust bookings as necessary. It is not inconceivable that a hotel would at least indicate they will make an effort to keep a Diamond happy. But as we have seen they do not care to. Also to see whether they are choosing to hide behind the policy.

This serves as a public documentation and publicity for a downgraded program.

IIRC the letter stated that IF there was GC space available a D would get it or am I wrong ? The hotels letter states very clearly that in order to have club acess you YOU must upgrade. They are clearly not adhering to the letter. My email's exact purpose was to see how and if the letter was interpreted accurately. If it is possible to determine in advance that you will not get the upgrade then why no tmake use of email to determine where to send your business ?

Seth, I agree with you. I don't know why he would send the e-mail and then seem surprised with the reply. And rbAA apparently didn't get the letter we all received about the change in policy.

What?
 

Hardly a disservice, more like getting in the queue or getting an "advocate" at the hotel. I have always e-mailed or faxed the hotels and informed them of any special requests, i.e. GHT and GHHK for a room with 2 beds when I am travelling with my son, as most of the rooms are kings. At the same time, it doesn't hurt to inform the management of a suite upgrade/club upgrade request, if one is available. Besides, the announced policy is that if a Club floor room is not available when you check in, they will upgrade to "the next best room" and provide continental breakfast but no Club access. Quite different from what you seem to imply the policy to be.

Of course, to be effective, the e-mail or letter to the hotel needs to be friendly, cordial and pursuasive. Work on those, maybe a little practice in FT would help.

I received the letter and read it carefully.

I assume now you know and understand the attitude of this particular hotel and you will not be staying there.

RBAA, sending an e-mail informming the hotel of a special request seems fine. But sending an e-mail asking for an upgrade to the Club level, in light of the stated policy change for international locations, borders on absurd.

But I don;t want to debate this with you. Keep e-mailing and good luck getting those suite and club level upgrades. ;)

The point of the matter...
 

The point of this situation is, UNLESS they have already had all the Regency Club rooms purchased for the night, which OBVIOUSLY they have not, since they specifically told him that he could pay for a room on the floor, he SHOULD have a chance for an upgrade BASED ON AVAILABILITY.

However, they have chosen to not respect the letter and choose to NEVER upgrade, availability or no availability. This should definitely be pointed out to Hyatt Gold Passport today.

I agree with him about e-mailing, calling, faxing, letter writing in advance, etc. If I know that an upgrade to the RC is the one thing that is super important to me, I also have them put a notation in my file. If I would like a suite upgrade if that is possible and they have a suite available, I have them put a notation in my file.

RC room and suite upgrades are subject to availability UPON CHECK-IN, not advance e-mail to the hotel. If a suite or RC room is important to you and you need to know in advance it is guaranteed, pay for it.

You're right - see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=321382 for a long discussion on the "official" policy.

My 2 cents about idainc's e-mail to the GHHK. I'm not sure what his e-mail to the hotel said, whether he was asking for an immediate confirmation to get a room preblocked for an upgrade to Grand Club floor or just inquiring about the stated policy. The response may have been somewhat appropriate if he was asking for immediate confirmation but should have stated that he/she would be upgraded if available on check-in. If he/she was just inquiring about the policy, the response was totally inappropriate.

Some international properties, and this property in particular, will take advantage of this new policy to not upgrade diamonds regardless of availability. This is very sad since the dilution in benefits was passed off as an overcrowding problem.

Exactly what I wrote to Julia in my e-mail last night. However, in April I stayed at GHHK on FFN's and was UPG'd to Club level and had access to the Grand Club. For supposedly being full, as related to me at checkin, the club was wide open, never crowded and the staff did not appear to have any problem serving the guests nor maintaining the selections on the serving table.

I received a similar respose from Ms. Lam at GHHK and they apparently have the rooms available, they just want to charge for them. I can understand that as a business practice, since any UPG would be based upon availability at time of checkin. However, it is not 9/1 yet and I don't check in until 9/2. So I'll reserve judgement until then, though from the e-mail I received from Ms. Lam it seems that they are misinterpreting the policy change. We will see.