Interpreting the cancellation policy
 

This resort charges one-night deposit. I am little confused about the cancellation policy:

"14days Prior/One Night Nonref Deposit/Bal Due 14days Pr"

Does this mean if I cancel 14 days in advance, I can get the deposit back? The wording "One Night Nonref Deposit" looks scary.

Thank you FTers.

I read that as a one night non-refundable deposit, with the rest of the stay due 14 days in advance.

Not a hotel I would be booking personally...

I interpret as once you book that first night you will never get back, and the balance is due 14 days prior. I agree I would be unlikely to book that rate at a hotel.

May be a location and/or date where such a policy is the norm.

But otherwise, agree, would be looking elsewhere.

Sorry I can't help; I'm here to rail against idiotic abbreviations and unnecessary obfuscations and unclear phrases. It's on a web page, for crying out loud! Is Hyatt afraid it will run out of electrons? Hyatt, say what you mean (and mean what you say)!

Again, sorry I couldn't help. Like others, I recommend looking elsewhere.

Not unusual for seasonal properties such as ski resorts during season.

Perhaps it was copy/pasted from character limited field?

Agree about booking elsewhere.

My educated guest is that econ is correct. All hotel systems have to integrate into the global distribution systems (GDS) that power the travel industry. Technologically speaking, GDS are ancient...dating back to the 1960s.

Back when I worked in hotels, we absolutely had to cram as much information into the a character-limited field such as the cancelation policy.

It's comical to think about, but in the early days of computers, it was quite expensive to save data. A company needed expensive banks computers and stacks of tape drives or floppy disks. Because of the cost, the amount of data was limited to the smallest amount necessary.

Sure, times have changed. As you note, Hyatt could easily expand and provide more information on their own website. Yet, that wouldn't really work because they use GDS to distribute their information to third parties like travel agencies.

And it's not as simple as just saying that the GDS should change their architecture to allow more information. There are multiple, competing GDS. Getting them all to agree to make the same change would be tough. Additionally, whenever you change the architecture, you risk breaking third party applications that would need to be fixed to accept more data.

Essentially, this is a case of hindsight being 20/20. Should early computer network designers have "future proofed" their systems to better allow for upgrades? Of course. But, expecting engineers from the 1950s/60s to believe that consumers would have more computing power in our pockets (cell phones) than what we'd use to get humans to the moon is very big ask. So, I won't fault them.

TL;DR: Hotel systems still use 1960s technology to distribute information. As such, many fields are character-limited.

The interesting fact is that the deposit policy was stated in full sentence while the cancellation policy was in abbreviations

Hey, I resemble that remark!

A small number of tape drives, but stacks of tapes. Sometimes even paper tape or cards. Floppies weren't commonly in use until the 70s (8") or 80s (5.25" and 3.5").

Remember Y2K? Most COBOL programs and databases only allocated 2 characters for the year.

Got a similar question... does this mean its a refundable rate if canceled 72 hours prior, or does it mean even if I cancel 72 hours prior, I lose the one night deposit that was charged at booking?

Deposit Policy
Credit Card Deposit Required 1 NIGHT(S) DEPOSIT WILL BE CHARGED TO CREDIT CARD
Cancellation Policy
72h Prior Or 1night Fee/ One Night Dpst At Booking

I read it as the 1 night deposit is refundable up until 72 hr of check-in time.

Same. Cancel before you are within 72 hours of checkin, otherwise you'll pay for one night, which also happens to be the deposit amount.

absolutely ! This policy language is so unclear , why do they do this, I totally “misinterpreted “ it though I think my interpretation is equally valid given the unclear way it is written.