RTW1

I for one recognize the personal effort of those behind the GP Concierge here, but also find the way the GP spin-doctors do their communication here very, very lame in some cases. I know that if I were participating here for GP in helping members I would sometime be ashamed to have to broadcast such announcements, that's where the JZ account becomes a handy tool. It also prevents the other GP participants in having to respond to any of the comments....

But hey, feel free to insult everyone that doesn't like being left out of the targeted promotions. Especially the ones that were available for everybody just 6 months ago.

dsquared37

Indeed: Oi vey.

I'm sure your post goes a long way to assuage the official representatives here.

Crazyhotelguy

...of course I would have a big stay on Jan. 5.

RTW1

I'm starting a somwhat longer stay on Dec 27th, ending just before the 15th :-). But I knew when booking this will not be a promotional period, it's still usefull for re-qualification though.

peteropny

Ok some recent posts are more personal commentary than discussion of thread topic. Knock it off!!

Peteropny- co-mod- Hyatt

GrayAnderson

I very much understand the value of having official representatives (there's another program whose official rep I met some years back) and I do sincerely appreciate their efforts, particularly in dealing with unusual situations that come up (points not properly posting and the like). That said, it's more than a little annoying to have (as RTW1 said) lame spin-doctoring tossed at us. I know that's part of their job (and it's probably the worst part of it for them, truth be told, because I'm going to dare say that the person behind that account is likely just as cynical and jaded as the rest of us are).

With that being said, I'm pretty sure a good share of the sour grapes on here (mine included) are down to REALLY bad timing on Hyatt's part here:
-Dropping a popular benefit isn't going to go down great no matter what.
-Lame spin-doctoring isn't going to go down great almost no matter what (let's face it, most of us are a bit jaded), especially when such an announcement makes us feel like we're expected to be thankful for the new promo (social expectations and all that).
-Based on what seems to have happened the last time or two, announcing a "targeted" promotion was likely to draw some groans and rolled eyes even with details announced...
-...and announcing that there will be a promo of some sort without any details compounded the third point, leading more than a few users to simply presume that they'll be "targeted out" and see either no benefit or a negligible one.

None of those would have had us thrilled. Doing all of the above in the space of a week was probably not Hyatt's finest hour on here: It generated all of the cynicism regarding targeted offers with the added feeling that such a promotion was coming in lieu of an almost universally appreciated benefit. I'm going to dare say that there are probably more than a few frequent travelers who would have, sight unseen, preferred MER to stick around at the price of never seeing another promotion as long as MER was there.

I honestly suspect that had things been spaced out a bit more it wouldn't have hurt (though in Hyatt's defense here, they didn't announce them separately right on top of one another...I could see even more irritation at that). Ironically, not announcing the targeted promo on here (especially when the announcement wound up being so vague) and just letting us find out by email might have gone over better...you'd have some cynical response no matter what, but there wouldn't be the feeling that we (here on FT) were being expected to thank Hyatt personally for the "good news". The other option might have just been to bury the new promo in the general announcement of changes to the program (which would have generated some eye-rolling announcements and some gripes regardless, but it would have felt more "procedural", if you will...which for something like this is a good thing).

Does anyone think I'm too horridly off-base about this?

Edit: Serious question to peteropny: To what extent is discussion of the reaction to the promo on-topic or off-topic in a thread about the promo? (I'm imagining this spilling into another thread, and at least with it mostly bottled up in here the damage is kept in one place)

peteropny

Discussion (pro and con) of any topic (promos and properties) is acceptable in the appropriate thread but personal commentary on other members who post views that may not agree with yours is NOT acceptable.

The following is posted as a member and not a forum mod. I'm pretty sure that unless this upcoming promo is an absolute blockbuster (which I doubt), there will be a lot of disappointment to go around especially with the buildup. Hopefully, Hyatt has learned its lesson from the last round of promo that targeting people for a general promo is not good form - of course specific promo targeting people who haven't stayed in a while trying to lure them back is fine.

On the subject of MER - JZ told us that it was still under review a month ago or so. In a previous conversation, he indicated that the metric for measuring the success of the program is whether it increased overall revenue to properties. While, the discontinuation is disappointing to me personally (I've used this several times this year), I understand because I always felt that 20% off for all elites is very generous especially since anyone can get Platnum just by having the credit card. That said, I think it could still work with tweaks, tiered discount with greater for diamonds and perhaps just offer it way in advance (to get long term planners who have lots of alternatives) and real close in (when you really know your perishable inventory and may be looking for extra revenue from really price sensitive people like mattress run people). But I'm not the one negotiating this with property owners. I think it would be a failure of the program if the majority of the properties do not participate in the plan at least a good part of the time.

dsquared37

This is the crux of the issue. Though, to be clear, I don't expect anything good to be announced.

roland_wa

Are Hyatt promos stackable? Planning a trip to India in February and would like to know if the INDIA (2500 per stay) can be combined with the stay more play more promotion during February/March where they overlap...

thucanhho

Yes

RTW1

I've now seen 3 pre-announcements, including in the members e-mail. Reality is that a good promotion doesn't need any pimping....

OsakaWino

No email for me yet. Hope that's not a bad sign...

RTW1

I should have mentioned that it's in the "regular" account summary e-mail that you get every month:

Stay More Play More is Coming
The more you stay from January 15 through April 30, 2015, the more rewards you can earn with our new promotion. Check your inbox in January for details.

This looks like the promotions we were having the last year with an additional bonus for every 5 nights. Who knows what it will be now, I can only hope it will not be targeted.

GrayAnderson

@petropny:
I think I can agree with all of that:
-A two-tier MER (one tier for Platinum, the other for Diamond) might have made more sense; to the extent that it was a pilot program, I'd be curious as to how successful (or not) it was deemed. Tweaking availability (or even discount levels) a bit in conjunction with demand levels might have been worth the effort as well
-Honestly, going to three tiers might not be the worst idea in the world. Platinum is something I'd expect to make almost every year; Diamond is something that is likely to be a stretch for me and/or trigger a lot of "hotel games" in metro areas with multiple hotels (since if I switch hotels each night, it makes status faster). This is annoying, but I've done it multiple times before (either by design or not).

====================

Also, RTW1 has a good point...I think the loyalty program doth protest too much, with this much bandying about, no hard details, and collective past experience.

JackE

Promotions are part of Marketing 101. If you're a grocery store and everyone buys apples but no one buys oranges, then you promote oranges. If men buy meat and women buy fish, then you market fish to men and meat to women.