PSA: Be careful when changing room rates
 

A while ago I booked the Hyatt House in Portland for $212/night. A few weeks ago I was looking through my reservations and re-pricing them (I do this occasionally to capture price drops) and I saw that the price had dropped to $180.

It used to be that if you "modified" a reservation to the same room type, it would not reprice -- it would always show the old price. So the trick was to do 2 modifications back-to-back -- switch to a different room, then switch back. But this time I noticed that I could select the same room at the new price. Progress!

So I reselected, confirmed the price change to $180, and forgot about it.

Today I was looking through my stays and... $212. Strange. So I modified it again. Confirmed $180, and screenshotted it to be sure. A few minutes later I got the confirmation email, and I actually read it this time -- it still showed $212, as did my reservation in the app.

So I canceled and rebooked at the $180 rate.

So... be careful; this does NOT work. It will tell you it is modifying your reservation to the new price, but it isn't. Either switch to a different room type and immediately switch back, or cancel and rebook to capture the lower rate.

Hopefully they fix this bug soon. I'd like to report it, but I really don't know who to report it to.

:confused: So, explain to us again why making a booking at the lower rate, then cancelling the separate booking at a higher rate is a BAD thing? And why you should mess around with doing anything else? :confused:

Modifying, and selecting the room type you want is MUCH simpler. If it worked, that would be the way to go.

Modifying twice (switching to a different room, then back) is still simpler than the cancel/rebook route.

Also, even if you are inside the cancellation window, you can change room types without a cancellation fee. This is useful to capture last-minute price drops (I've done this before).

You mean as in within 2 days? Does it also work for prepaid/nonrefundable?

If you say so. It sounds to me like a lot of effort and far more prone to error.

If it worked on non-refundable rates then I'd agree with you.

I mean within the time when you can't cancel for free. It varies based on the hotel. As globalist, the 2-day window is dropped to 24hr, but some hotels have much longer timeframes, which don't get reduced as globalist.

I have only ever booked non-refundable once, and I have never tried this. I believe those can't be modified at all, though, so I doubt it.

I had experienced the same glitch as you, but did find out about it until I actually checked in to the hotel, and had to pay the higher rate. The difference was not much, but it was still a learning experience not to do this "modification" for future reservations. It is back to "cancel and rebook" again.

That's why I only do the rebook/cancel. Much safer.

Good Morning VegasGambler,

I am sorry for the confusion. Would you be willing to send me a private message with those confirmations you had? I would be happy to look into this.

Best Regards,
John S

If you do the modification twice, wouldn't you run the risk of the original room type being sold out or the rate not being available when you want to switch it back? Still, useful trick for inside the cancellation window if ok with risk.

Otherwise, I'd go with book and cancel.

Never knew about the "room type switch" trick - as a data point, it seems to work on Prive bookings, fully preserving Prive rate benefits, as opposed to having a Prive advisor redo the booking if cancelled and rebooked.

It is a risk, but very low risk because unlike airlines, Hyatt is pretty good about releasing the rooms back into inventory very shortly after the reservation is canceled.

If you see a rate, that means that there is room availability (other than your room, which is booked). Switching back and forth takes under a minute.

Anything is possible, of course, but it seems incredibly unlikely that this is an is issue. Hotel inventory is just not that fast-moving.