MarkOK

Yeah, well, I think that is really lame.

And, that's fine. I have no problem accepting that individual properties have their own elites that they also need to take care of.

CIT85

Would you have accepted the front desk initial offer to have you move to Hilton and you pay for the night? That alone takes more than 5 minutes to resolve to make sure HP is paying for walking you.

The Road Goes On Forever

That staffing model doesn't really have anything to do with the current labor shortages. It's more or less how every hotel that size is run. The first hotel I ever worked at was a RI about an hour away from NYC, it was bigger than 110 rooms, and 2nd shift was almost always run with 1 run person the same as 3rd shift. Every so often the AGM would stay for half a shift until 7pm but that was rare and there was never a dedicated 2nd person. Fast forward 22 years and three hotels and aside from my 5+ years at a FS Marriott (I didn't work the desk at that place) it's almost always a one person show.

As a late addition, in terms of walking I've worked for some GM's who insisted on "transferring reservations" all the time. I despised that because while most guests would go along with it, you would always get a few who saw what you were trying to do and then lose their minds. Awesome situation to be in knowing that you should be walking someone but if you do you'll get written up or fired so you take your verbal pounding and try to move on. Worst experience ever was one August weekend with three local events all happening at the same time and our sales manager (same RI) allows the property to get oversold by 30+ rooms. We started calling guests and "transferring reservations" two weeks in advance. The ones who showed up and couldn't be contacted (pre-cell phone 2000) got a ten dollar gas card and told that your reservation was at a different brand hotel 40 miles away. Priceless Saturday night that I'll never forget.

LondonElite

I wouldn’t spend any time thinking about this after I left the next day, obviously.

GrayAnderson

I mean, stupid games like this are both why someone being "non-walk walked" should ping Corporate (who is not likely to be amused), and also name-and-shame now that we have the internet. IINM, that sort of a game these days would also kick out "90k points and $100" out over at Marriott for appropriate-level elites. But I'm also going to be hard-pressed to give the poor guy at the front desk a hard time (however, being honest with myself, the "40 mile surprise" might have done that if it came at the end of a long day of driving/I had somewhere to be the next morning...even then, the statement would have been along the lines of "I know this probably isn't your personal doing, but ...?", which I think would be a fair reaction).

To be completely honest, what you described feels like what was probably "actually" going on in Florence until I hollered (albeit with the "transferred" reservations simply being across the street within the same owner's hotels, not to another chain's location 40 miles away). I'd never actually heard about that as a practice before...yeesh.

jayer

Wonder where is all this management creativity coming from? I thought if Hyatt was on the marquee part of the franchise contract was that the GM and some assistants were direct Hyatt payroll.

The Road Goes On Forever

It's a dirty industry secret, but it goes on far more than you would imagine. Sell the guest the snake oil that you've done them a great favor by procuring them a room somewhere else due to XX (insert BS excuse(s) that can't be verified by the guest when the reality is that far too often it's the greed of wanting to sell out at all costs from the owner/management company or incompetence the oversells a property to begin with) and the original hotel gets out of paying for the walk. That RI I was at was also corporately managed rather than the usual, "WTH is that franchise doing". Does that stuff still go on now? You bet. Still transferring reservations two years ago at a HWS that I was at. The management company insisted we always transfer reservations to one of the three semi-local hotels that they also ran and only pay for the walk to a non-affiliated hotel as a last resort.

GUWonder

From Corporate; from consultants/advisers to property owners; from others in the business; and from others covering the topics in the business. It’s both easier and less novel to be a copycat than to be novel.

hotturnip

Oh, yeah. Sounds familiar.

I worked at a large convention Hyatt years ago. We once were selling rooms at a ridiculously low rate for a marathon race. Some dumb sales manager (the lowest form of life in any hotel) had contracted a block of rooms that nobody knew about, and we were overcommitted to the tune of 200 rooms or so. So they sent relocation letters to people in the marathon block.

When I worked FD at another Hyatt, we just walked guests to the nearest available hotel. I don't think the owners had another hotel in their portfolio in that particular city.

E.T.A.: I was always scheduled for nights when we might walk. Formerly they always had a manager do it, but I was actually much better at it. It takes a careful use of language (verbal and body) to keep the guest's annoyance to a minimum.

hotturnip

Lame from your perspective, but completely rational. You have no idea if that other reservation is actually going to show or not, even if they're an elite. For some reason, charging a no-show for one night was not considered a replacement for having a butt in a bed, and didn't count towards official occupancy. I do recall some oversold nights when the FO manager would review all the remaining reservations after 6 PM and try to guess who might come and who would not. She may have even made a few calls to confirm people were going to show.

By the way, in those days you could still book with a "6 PM hold." You didn't have to give a CC number or a deposit, and the hotel would hold your room until 6. On oversold nights, those 6PM reservations got canceled at 6PM on the dot. For some reason, those people showing up late to a canceled reservation were much harder to deal with than walking someone. They would get mad and argue with you.

sethb

I remember once (maybe 40 years ago) doing that. I was attending a convention; when I got to the hotel (early afternoon) they told me my reservation was moved to another hotel some miles away. I had no car, but they said they'd run a shuttle every hour between the hotels. I didn't find this acceptable.

So I went to a payphone in the lobby (it was that long ago), and called the chain's 800 number. I told them I had a reservation for that night at that hotel, and in case I didn't arrive by 6 could I guarantee it on my American Express card? They said of course, so I read them the number and thanked them.

Then I went to the front desk and told them I now had an American Express Assured Reservation and they'd have to compensate me if they moved me to another hotel. Surprise! They found a room for me.

GrayAnderson

So, @hotturnip and The Road Goes On Forever, I'm now wondering something practical: Let's say I show up at a hotel at 10 PM and I have a "transferred reservation". For the sake of discussion, let's say it is "out of family" and I'm not interested in taking the move/can find a better rate or more convenient location (or that, for some reason, I quickly check my phone and can find a room cheaper at the hotel in question on their chain's website than at the original rate). Can I order the hotel to cancel my reservation (with a refund of any deposit) since they aren't honoring what I booked?

(This likely wouldn't apply to an advanced booking, but if my booking was same-day or close to it [or, heaven help me, a guaranteed availability room] I can easily see it happening.)

strife

This is not how it should work (nor how it did work including at any of the Hyatt properties I ever worked at). When a property is reasonably certain that it will have to walk some guests, typically the property will start doing so immediately upon making that determination. This could be earlier on the day of the guest's scheduled arrival or days or even weeks in advance. This is done to minimize inconvenience to the guest as well as better distribute staff workload, not to mention in order to secure room availability at other properties in what could be a low supply situation in the local market. And if the walked guests do not need to show up on property at all, why even bother forcing them into that inconvenience?

In the same vein, the decision on who gets walked is based primarily on limiting inconvenience. That is the main reason to prioritize elites over non-elites and corporate contracts over average Joes. Now obviously no property wants to make those groups unhappy, but the point is to limit the inconvenience and thus also the potential unhappiness. Put it this way - why would any property bump a corporate contract booking by a company HQ'd across the street over say, an opaque third party OTA booking where the guest did not even know where the property is located, in favor of a "first-come first-served" order? That makes absolutely no sense.

strife

Any property should be ecstatic to refund an overbooking. Ovebooking policies are consumer protection, existing primarily because (poorly-behaving) properties would rather just cancel the reservation.

GrayAnderson

Eh, not quite. I suspect that there are cases where the "walk" is profitable for the owner, either because they own both properties (and so any question of the hotels billing one another is simply shuffling money between accounts) or because they're able to get space at the walked-to hotel for less than you're paying them. For the latter, if I pay $150 for a room and then the hotel walks me somewhere they have a standing arrangement for rooms at $100, the hotel would be pocketing $50. So you have two subsets of cases where the hotel might prefer to stick you with the walk (and keep your non-refundable reservation) rather than refund you.

(The policies at least mean you'll have someplace to stay, but the "bad behavior" is issues like those two sets of cases.)