Originally Posted by xinmpg

I finally received the contact email for the general manager (the staff sure seemed to take their time providing it!) and sent a detailed email. I won't include the entire email, but this is my request and based on this thread feel it's reasonable:



My Globalist concierge also replied, offering to give me a call about it. Given her hours are 8am-4pm CST, that's a bit difficult but I'll try and connect with her this week.

Originally Posted by xinmpg

Hello all,

I've had an incident at the Grand Hyatt Jakarta and the hotel staff seem uncaring or a bit oblivious to the seriousness of this. So, I'm hoping I can get some advice from this group as to how I should escalate this. I'm a Globalist member, and I've stayed at this hotel either using cash or points at least 10-15 nights a year for the past three years.

During my last stay, a troublesome person I wish to avoid called the hotel at about 2am to enquire if I had checked in. The hotel confirmed when I arrived, and when I was checking out. This caused a significant amount of hassle for me which I won't get into. Suffice to say, my evening and remainder of stay there was ruined.

Now, I could understand "these things happen", except this is the second time it did happen. The same issue occured in December of 2017. At the time, the hotel manager assured me I would permanently be marked as "private/incognito" so that no one could ever call up to enquire about my status. Obviously this did not happen, or their process failed.

I raised my concern to the front desk staff, and they attempted to act concerned but obviously did not understand the significance of why this was a problem. I asked to speak with management, but only had contact back from another local manager in the hotel. I was offered 20% off of a night's stay in the future. Ha? Honestly, I'm not sure what I should expect or ask for, but this seems almost pathetically considering nightly room rate is sometimes as low as $135 USD.

Any advice or suggestions how or who i should escalate this issue to? I'm a globalist, so not sure if there is a special method there. A free night may be nice, but honestly I would rather be somehow convinced something is being done so this doesn't happen again.

And please. Let's not derail the thread with speculation about who or what this troublesome person is all about. It's probably not what you think, and it's not significant to my point. But yes, it did literally cause me to lose sleep, drastically change my agenda, and cause significant stress the next few days.

Originally Posted by xinmpg

Hello all,

I've had an incident at the Grand Hyatt Jakarta and the hotel staff seem uncaring or a bit oblivious to the seriousness of this. So, I'm hoping I can get some advice from this group as to how I should escalate this. I'm a Globalist member, and I've stayed at this hotel either using cash or points at least 10-15 nights a year for the past three years.

During my last stay, a troublesome person I wish to avoid called the hotel at about 2am to enquire if I had checked in. The hotel confirmed when I arrived, and when I was checking out. This caused a significant amount of hassle for me which I won't get into. Suffice to say, my evening and remainder of stay there was ruined.

Now, I could understand "these things happen", except this is the second time it did happen. The same issue occured in December of 2017. At the time, the hotel manager assured me I would permanently be marked as "private/incognito" so that no one could ever call up to enquire about my status. Obviously this did not happen, or their process failed.

I raised my concern to the front desk staff, and they attempted to act concerned but obviously did not understand the significance of why this was a problem. I asked to speak with management, but only had contact back from another local manager in the hotel. I was offered 20% off of a night's stay in the future. Ha? Honestly, I'm not sure what I should expect or ask for, but this seems almost pathetically considering nightly room rate is sometimes as low as $135 USD.

Any advice or suggestions how or who i should escalate this issue to? I'm a globalist, so not sure if there is a special method there. A free night may be nice, but honestly I would rather be somehow convinced something is being done so this doesn't happen again.

And please. Let's not derail the thread with speculation about who or what this troublesome person is all about. It's probably not what you think, and it's not significant to my point. But yes, it did literally cause me to lose sleep, drastically change my agenda, and cause significant stress the next few days.

Originally Posted by BSpeaker

When I checked into that very same hotel a couple of years ago, I had a privacy -related event as well. I'm female. My flight had arrived at midnight KL time. By the time I arrived at the hotel it was close to 1AM. I walked in to check into my room and saw the lobby was filled with businessmen from the region. Needless to say, a lone female checking in at that hour turned heads. Now, I was there for business, but not the kind of monkey business they may have imagined. Several of them moved closer as I stood at the counter to check in. When the clerk handed my key, she loudly said my room number and pointed to the elevator I should take. I took a deep breath, pushed the key back to her and said, "And now you're going to upgrade me to a safer floor, and you are not going to announce my room number to all of these men standing around. Otherwise I would like to talk to the manager." She looked very shaken and did what I asked. As she was redoing my room, I asked her, "Would you want any of those men knocking on your door at 3AM?" She shook her head. I said, "You need to always keep the safety of all your guests in mind, especially the women who come here. I am here on business with the Lord Mayor and his staff. I am not here to meet men."

This is one of the greatest challenges females face traveling in certain regions of the world. Even after decades of women traveling on business, there are some men who think you are there for "other" reasons. We learn to be awake, aware, and very assertive about our needs... or, suffer the consequences.

@xinmpg, on your complaint form to Hyatt, I would also mention that there is a discussion on a road warrior website, and you are not the only one who has been challenged by lack of training about privacy issues at this hotel. I don't stay there now when I go. That's the fallout for Hyatt of ignoring this incredibly important part of training the front of the house.

Originally Posted by Dread Pirate Jeff

Let's make this about you for a moment. Lets say, for whatever reason, someone wants to do you harm. Could be a partner, a colleague, whatever. Do you want to wait until that person attacks you in the hotel lobby after calling around to figure out where you're staying, and THEN call the police after the fact? Or do you think, just perhaps, random strangers should not be able to get info about whether you're staying there or not before hand, making it just that much harder to do you harm?

I'm sorry, but you absolutely SHOULD expect at least that from the hotel you're staying at, and if they give out any information at all about you and someone shows up and does you harm, that hotel should absolutely be liable for significant damages in a lawsuit to follow.

All they have to do is simply always say "I'm sorry, we are not able to give out guest information" and that's that.

Originally Posted by xinmpg

If they could somehow demonstrate to me in person the system that was supposed to stop this, and show me how it should work in the future, and explain why the process failed last time and why it won't happen again, I would be happy with that. I've designed controls and systems like this myself. Show me what you have, tell me why it didn't work, and convince me how you're going to fix it. Plus, a discount or points.

Otherwise (and this is what i suspect is going to happen), I won't stay at this property anymore and it will be up to the Hyatt in general to give me points or a night at a comparable property to keep me loyal to the brand. Of course, it will be painful for both the Hyatt and myself to switch loyalties, so I really don't want to do that. 85-100 nights a year is a lot of money for them (most of it at much more expensive properties in HK or SH), and it's also a lot of time for me to build back up my status elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Fly Me To The Moon

Years ago, when the Hyatt on the Bund in Shanghai first opened, I stayed there because it was convenient for my work concerns in that immediate area. At that time, and for a period of about 1.5 years, I had to do some quite confidential work/visits into Shanghai. I ended up staying at HOTB at least on a monthly basis for that 18-month period. During my second stay there, I already let the hotel know that I did not wish to receive any calls, I did not want any caller to know whether I was staying there, etc., etc. In short, the Reception, Operators, and any front line staff were not to acknowledge whether I was at this hotel or not.

The staff at HOTB did their job to perfection. Not once did any of the staff divulge my presence at the hotel. For the first half dozen stays, I even got an associate of mine to call the hotel while I was there to get the hotel staff to put the call through to me or to confirm my check in situation. No information given by the hotel during these tests. And for a few times that I was not even at the hotel, I got my associate to call and check anyway, and the staff gave the similar confidential response.

When my particular work ended, I did not stay at HOTB anymore for a few years. On one occasion after those years, I had the chance to stay there again. I was waiting for a friend to call me in my room to go to dinner, and that call never came. Eventually, my friend called my mobile to inquire where I was because the hotel could not find me as a hotel guest. I had completely forgotten about the confidential status of my stays, and after the few years of absence, the hotel still flagged my stays as such.

Originally Posted by xinmpg

As mentioned above, there was an event in Jakarta that anyone who knows me moderately well could easily assume I would be attending. I can't change that.

My opinion is hotel staff should never divulge by name, but instead if someone calls that person should have to ask for a specific room number. In this age of emails, sms, whatsapp, and ubiquitous international roaming and wifi, how many people would actually have to call a hotel on a land line to find you? Anyone close should be in contact some other way.

Originally Posted by MSPeconomist