js1993

Yes, it was a serious question. If "ghost stays" are a money-loser today due to alleged union rules, accounting shenanigans, and whatnot, then they were a money-loser during Covid, too.

Chasing lifetime status is even more foolish than chasing yearly status. There's nothing stopping Hyatt from devaluing that whenever it wants, just as other companies have with theirs.

drnilescrane

Resort fee waiver started May 31, 2022.

Sunk cost fallacy I know, but after 8 years in I'm 75% of the way there. Might as well just finish it off and move on.

js1993

Can't be many people both trying to get Lifetime Globalist ASAP and also booking MGM "ghost stays" for night credits. haha

drnilescrane

I've never actually done it - I stayed in the damn room at Luxor. Made it 2 nights in the Pyramid before I checked out early and moved to Vdara.

The shocking part to me was how much I spent on incidentals despite the "free" room.

js1993

Ah, I must have confused you for someone else who was doing this repeatedly. Sorry about that.

I saw someone yesterday say he had "canceled his remaining 20 nights" as a result of no OLCI.

lowkeyflyer

Any recent success getting a stay of only comp nights to post?

chicagoflyer1976

Pigs get fed,. Hogs get slaughtered. I wish Hyatt would have cut this off sooner. I go to Vegas multiple times a year, and have never done a "ghost reservation". While I'm all for maximizing value in loyalty programs, I understand where Hyatt is coming from. If everyone is globalist, no one is globalist. There are costs to providing those benefits, and it's not in the spirit of the program to get to Globalist by booking nights you have no intention of staying. One or two nights, ok. But people doing 20-30, etc., is abuse.

PhlyCalifornia

Is online check in still unavailable for those with Hyatt accounts attached to reservations?

Matt4200

Yes. It literally pops up could not find reservation no matter how you try.

jetsfan92588

First, I know it may sound weird, but profit is not always the end goal. Sometimes, especially for businesses in certain industries, such as real estate, they need to generate revenue even at great expense. Remember, during this time they were offering $200 in resort credits and comped rooms for people that have never gambled before. Maybe the decrease in profit is worth the increased metrics.

Second, when the hotels are at basically zero capacity, there's not much increased cost associated with ghost stays, because they have to maintain a minimum number of staff just to operate the property anyway. If they can put everyone in the hotel on the same floor, the number of staff they have to maintain may not exceed the absolute minimum number of staff required.

Third, MGM still got their resort fees for a long time.

Fourth, and probably most importantly, MGM is at its core a gaming company. They cater to gamblers. Their focus on mitigating cheating is cheating by gamblers. It's unlikely that they would have people watching or caring about "ghost" stays to earn hotel status. Their core mindset would be to focus on room shenanigans involving gambling. For example, offers that require a minimum of two midweek nights, come with table play, F&B, etc. - they don't want gamblers booking Wed and Thur night and stopping in Friday morning and taking advantage of all their comps. They likely don't have people in this department that are particularly familiar with Hyatt elite status. As a result, these issues tend to be put aside, even if people in the company know about the issues, and consider them to be issues. Eventually, someone says "ok, I guess it's time to deal with this" and that's when they start.

Just because they made this change now, doesn't mean they *now* think this is a massive problem, and their mindset now is diametrically opposed to their mindset before. The amount that they care about this issue could have remained unchanged for the last year, and they just happened to get around to fixing it now.

js1993

As I've said multiple times, I don't believe MGM cares at all, or they would have ended this at least a year ago. It's likely this was done for Hyatt.

Casinos know how many times each customer blinked in the last hour. There's no way it took them years to figure out checked-in rooms weren't even being entered, especially with the heightened security after the Las Vegas massacre.

Deez Nutz

Pretty sure it was January 31, 2022 or thereabouts.

HHonors OUTSIDER

Yes correct the new MGM Rewards program replaced M-Life on Fed 1 2022. So on Jan 31 2024 we will have had 2 years of waived resort fees. Should also mention ending just in time for the Cosmo joining MGM Rewards on Feb 1 2024.

https://loyaltylobby.com/2022/02/02/...benefit-table/

mster

Is OLCI still DOA for everyone initially affected? Anyone not initially affected now having issues with OLCI?

Curious if MGM has rolled back the scope of affected users *or* if the scope of affected users has been expanded.

It feels like MGM ran a script ~7/26 and is just going to ignore any customer backlash / avoiding further refining their approach at all until they officially link up with Marriott, but at this point who knows.

jetsfan92588

I think that your conjecture about who may have forced this to take place is a pretty good one. Thinking about it, I agree that it would make a lot of sense that hyatt forced them to do that now. That said, it's still conjecture. Because one could also make a completely plausible argument that MGM was worried after this announcement that 4 months of ghost stays would be consolidated into 1 month (because of the program ending), and that was what put them over the edge.

As for casinos having all this data, I 100% agree with you. They have, and have had, all the data they need to determine if an individual checks in but never comes to their room, or even enters any MGM property. BUT, and this is my main point, someone has to be looking at that data and using it to answer this question of how many ghost stays there are and whether that's a problem. Having all the data to be all-knowing is not the same thing as being all-knowing.

As for security, I agree that security is paying attention to rooms being entered and not entered. But, I don't know what ghost stays would have to do with security, so I don't know why security would be attempting to cut the data in that way. If the security team knows that an individual checked in online, never visited the city, and the room was never entered into, why would security care about that?