AndyKehn

Exactly. There could be plenty of legitimate reasons why someone wants to reduce a stay from 3 nights to 1 night. How could anyone prove intent? Bottom line is Hyatt itself changed the reservation for OP from 3 to 1 night. There shouldn't even be a question at check in but if there is I would simply refer back to Hyatt. Now the hotel can choose to not honor the reservation and "walk" you, in which case just be prepared to stay somewhere else. I would contest any attempt to charge 2 nights for 1 night stay and I'm sure the CC issuer would side with me.

skj

If the OP had made the change with the property directly, I would agree with you. The OP didn't though. They used a third party by contacting Hyatt's central reservation line to make the change. It's very likely the customer service agent was unfamiliar with the property's minimum stay requirements. Unless the stay is imminent, the property is likely unaware of the details of the reservation.

AllThePants

Fraud feels like a pretty strong term here. But I would guess that either the hotel spots it beforehand and proactively reaches out to offer the opportunity to extend to the minimum stay. Or they do nothing and just eat it and honor the 1-day reservation.

This is a loophole - which although not entirely ethical to take advantage of - is generally the property’s / Hyatt’s responsibility to prevent.

It’s not like the OP is actively pilfering money from Hyatt’s coffers. And I would guess that if the property / Hyatt tried to arbitrarily charge the OP for two nights at the property then the Credit companies would easily come down on the consumer’s side.

The two-night deposit language is really designed to prevent no-shows. People generally stay a lot longer at vacation properties like these, and they are trying to capacitate last minute cancellations to manage their room supply vs demand. The fact that the OP has a single night booking officially in their systems may raise an eyebrow — and although it doesn’t really do good things for their margins with housekeeping having to do a full turnover after one night - it’s accounted for in their booking demand systems so they’ll hardly skip a beat.

Additionally - deposits generally just get converted into generic dollars applied towards the final folio anyway. So even if there were a deposit pulled (unlikely) - just splurge on a nice meal and a massage while you’re their and everybody can call it even.

PG.backpacker

This property here is NOT a hotel. It's a Destination Residence, the villas/cottages/bungalows are individually owned and Hyatt/Destination acts as an agency to rent them out on behalf of the owners. The price for a 3-night stay at this property is quite expensive, about $5k. I'm not judging the action of OP, I'm just stating the fact that their action may cost the owner a big chunk of money.

UA-NYC

5. You have no experience in the matter, it's not really fraud, you don't stay w/Hyatt regularly and are just posting for some bizarre reason to show claimed expertise (w/o anything to back it up)...as you always do

gbdbld

Yea I literally see this person in almost every single thread and the wordings are usually pretty harsh like how a kindergarten teacher talks to children?

AllThePants

For all intents and purposes, the property when rented out under property management as part of the Hyatt fleet *is* a hotel. The unit/room is a fungible asset that the OP has agreed to rent from Hyatt -- irregardless of who the actual owner is.

The fact that the OP is taking it out of rotation for a single day doesn't materially cost the owner money. The property is still available to rent the other two days that the OP doesn't have it booked. Now -- the case can be argued that if OP booked it on a Saturday night on a busy holiday weekend and effectively took it off market when it would've otherwise been in high demand then yes, there could be some revenue effect. But if it's not a busy timeframe then the unit could easily also go unbooked for all three days, netting zero revenue for the property owner -- so the argument cuts both ways.

And of course there are ancillary costs like cleaning and likely per-booking fees that Hyatt probably charges the unit owner -- the details of which I don't even dare to feign knowledge of.

All that said, the agreement underway currently is solely between the OP and Hyatt -- and if Hyatt should find that the OP has acted in bad faith, it's well within the company's right to cancel it. But I would put 5 bucks on the outcome that they don't do anything even if they are aware -- even if only to avoid potentially bad PR.

Beachchaser

I personally play by the rules but have no issue skirting the rules tbh, it is extremely frustrating that hotels enforce minimum stays in order to limit award bookings over cash stays, with that being said if the booking doesn't meet the minimum nights requirement the hotel has every right to cancel the reservation.

Beckles

Note that the OP said this property enforces the same minimum stay requirements on paid stays as well as award stays, this is not the game some other properties play.

alxyng

Let me add more details here
1) The hotel I booked does not mention any policy about minimum night on its own web site. (Though upon browsing the Destination hotel folio I did find written minimum night policy for one particular property, which is a Destination Residence in Wailea)
2) Certain OTA like Orbitz says "This property requires you to stay at least 3 nights" if I searched so.
3) Hyatt (website and customer service) does not mention any policy about minimum nights. If searching or asking for less than 3 night, the only information in return is no availability.
4) I dealt with Hyatt only during the entire booking / changing process.

The intention of this post was never about concerning of fraud, gaming, or violation of policy, as I don't think any of them applies, at least on my end.

The biggest concern of mine is the uncertainty of check-in experience, followed by messed up billing, and I will try to stay away from this kind of trouble during or after my vacation. Looks like this has not been a common enough situation seen here, and I might probably cancel this reservation soon. (I already made another reservation somewhere else).

writerguyfl

I addressed your concern in post #2 of this thread. I'll remind you what I wrote and emphasize the most important part:

seawolf

+1

I mentioned in earlier post as well. No one is going to know. This is going to be YMMV to the point it may even depend on who you check-in/check-out with. What one property does or does not may be the same as this property will do.

Beckles

So you know there is a three night minimum, they just don't document it thoroughly, but it is enforced by not allowing a booking of less than three nights ...
(emphasis added)

You are absolutely gaming the system in my opinion, you appear to be trying to justify it by claiming they don't document the minimum stay eight ways to Sunday, but to me this is a text book example of someone gaming the system. Now sometimes I have 'gamed' loyalty programs too, you can find examples on this very forum of me doing it, so I'm not saying gaming the system is inherently bad. However, there is a line of ethical gaming and unethical (but not illegal) gaming and I think this is on the side of unethical.

AndyKehn

How is booking 1 night instead of 3 nights unethical? Get off your high horse lmao OP wants to pay to stay at this property. Property doesnt allow 3 nights booking. OP asked Hyatt (you know the big company) to reduce his/her 3 nights booking to 1. Hyatt happily did so. Some one points me to what is the ethical issue here? Who was or will be harmed in this series of actions? This is such typical flyertalk sanctimonious altitude. "Only my gaming is ethical, your gaming is wrong and you should go to jail for defrauding the corporation"

Beckles

Unless I'm misinterpreting the OP's original post, they never had any intention of staying at the property for three nights, they always intended to shorten it from three nights to one night to circumvent the minimum booking rules.

Each person is entitled to their own ethical standards and I understand there are gray areas that some people see as black and others see as white. The OP thinking they aren't 'gaming' the system by circumventing the minimum stay requirement in the way they did is simply not true in my opinion.

As for ethical gaming, I would consider making a mattress run at the cheapest possible hotel to gain elite status during a promotion to be 'gaming' too, but to me that is not unethical (and that's exactly what I did with Hyatt earlier this year). As for you bringing 'jail' into this discourse, I'm not sure where you got that since I specifically said gaming could be 'unethical (but not illegal)'.