My Hyatt Visa started out at $23k. I have over the years reduced the credit limit (through transfers to other cards where it was more useful, or by opening new cards) to $7k.

For some people $140k is just a few weeks or so of manufactured spending, or they have a legitimate business and run their business charges through the card. For me it's close to my annual spend on all cards combined. The thought of spending my way to Globalist has never really been a realistic one for me. The opportunity cost of moving most of my spend to the card would surely exceed the value derived from Globalist if I can't get anywhere near the nights required though actual stays (obviously I would have some stays).

So how much profit does Hyatt actually get from me spending $140k on my WoH Visa? I can't imagine that they get more than a penny per dollar - so $1400? What would they (Hyatt corporate) earn from the stays of an average Globalist? Would they get on average $23 per night? ($1400/60)

I have the Aspire card. It's basically my way of having nice stays abroad. In the US, Diamond doesn't offer much (other than extra points) for my stays, so I am not loyal to Hilton US at all and often go free agent (earning AA LPs and miles instead of Honors points). The whole scheme is not really super profitable as I don't have that many stays abroad every year where Diamond matters.

No I was suggesting that the guest wouldn't have to check in. Basically selling status by making the customer go through the motions of booking enough ghost stays.

The main issue is that degrades the integrity of the product and hence the motivation to achieve it by normal methods.

Chase will be paying Hyatt 1.5 cents per point more or less. But I would expect that Hyatt would be funding much of the bonus points earned on Hyatt stays. So at 1-2 points per $ on normal spend, Hyatt could be clearing $2,000-2,500 from your $140k of credit card spend.

Hyatt is going to take 10-15% commission of revenue on room nights, so a Globalist doing 50 paid nights (at some point they will redeem points) at $200 per night will earn Hyatt $20-30 x 50 = $1,000 - 1,500.

Members redeeming points also has a cost impact on Hyatt, but in most cases they are just paying the hotels peanuts for award stays.

If ghost stays were allowed, all the cheap hotels worldwide would suddenly be less cheap, as they'd just be used for mattress running, ruining it both for people who actually want to stay there and now have to pay x-times more because of mattress runners, and it also has a negative impact on the local economy, and even on the hotel, where e.g. F&B jncome is now suddenly much smaller.

Goodness, the fact that this is even gets asked and is somehow seen by some as an actual "debatable" topic is insane to me. Just another symptom of the cancerous self absorbed Instagram Twitter Facebook me me me society we've devolved into where people only care about how and why things benefit them in the instant moment and nothing/no one else. Asking why ghost stays are "bad" or shouldn't be allowed is like asking if water is wet... seriously?

As for the comments about MS and the credit card path to status, that is terrible also as others have said, but the difference is that path is wildly profitable for hyatt (just like airlines and everyone else who basically lives in the credit card point sale business now). Since that path is insanely profitable to them, they not only encourage it, but will likely continue to expand it, which will be detrimental to real actual hotel customers who earn status by spending time and money at the chain through loyalty and the associated significant opportunity costs hyatt loyalty brings.

I probably wouldn't make Globalist without the credit card. On the other hand, I wouldn't stay at Hyatt's at all without being a Globalist. I'd like to think the profit Hyatt makes from me is well worth the waived resort fees, occasional upgrades, free breakfasts, and occasional free parking.

Yeah, as I said, obviously for customers like you, the credit card makes sense and benefits you and Hyatt makes a large profit on it. Hyatt wants to encourage that path and that is why hotels and airlines have all gotten into the points/credit card sale business, often over their supposed "core" business. It certainly reduces the benefit and value to customers that used to earn status in the traditional way by spending large amounts of time and money at the hotels/airlines themselves, but the profit and benefit to the company is undeniable and certainly, to customers like yourself as well. It just is what it is these days. Very different from the original ghost stay discussion for sure.

I feel like there’s a lot going on here.

Ghost Stays, which would be someone not being physically present, usually not even in the same state during the stay.

Mattress Runs which people use to “top off” where they may stay 1 out of 3 or 5 nights then leave while earning the rest of the nights.

I’m curious what’s your take on Mattress Runs vs. Ghost Stays. They’re definitely similar but I feel like Mattress Runs are on the line while Ghost Stays are well over the line as there’s no intention to ever even go to the property.

Then there’s credit card spend to Globalist. I’m also curious why is MS bad to you versus if someone had 140k in regular spend?

I got the WOH card in 2017 and I never really stayed a ton with any hotel brands, maybe 20 nights annually total. BUT after learning about the codified benefits of Hyatt Globalist and that I could get it via MS, I set my sights on it. In 2018 I had an $8,000 limit on my WOH card and I began to MS. It was an extremely grueling process you go to a Simon Mall (my closest one was 45 mins away), purchase 8k in Visa gift cards then spend 2-3 days going to Walmart’s (have to find ones that allow using Visa Gift Cards which even living in a major Metro area I only found 3 out of 15 but they were all 30-40 minutes from one another). You use them to purchase money orders for a fee then deposit those with your bank. Each batch of 8k took 2-3 days at a time, sometimes longer. I had to do it a total of 15 times spending over 60 days of the year driving to the Simon Mall, then to Walmart and banks to offload these cards. It definitely wasn’t easy and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Even if you had a 50k credit limit Walmart only lets you do 3k per day as they have to enter your driver license info into their system. After this long journey in November of 2018 I had 58 EQN’s, and had a stay booked at a Hyatt House for 5 nights. At check in they said “we don’t get many of you here” and even upgraded my family to a suite. I was definitely grateful, and after enjoying that suite have used a few SUA’s at that HH for future stays.

After that long intensive process I’ve never MS’d again and have year after year retained Globalist with 0 credit card spend and 60 nights every year, even in 2020 with the reduced requirements I ended up staying 70 nights. Basically for me having Globalist makes me want to go out of my way to stay more to keep that Globalist status. So through that avenue Hyatt has gotten a customer who’s stayed with them almost exclusively for the last 6 years.

I think it's a fair question as the only difference between a 'real' stay and a 'ghost' stay seems to be the person missing in the room.

US Airlines in general prohibit the use of hidden ticketing in their T&C and I think this is an unfair practice as you purchase a bundle of flights and you shouldn't be forced to fly them all.

Conspiracy fake discussion like did the moon landing really happen are silly? Discussing commercial T&C is not.

Is water wet? I'd say no. A shirt that gets water on it is wet. The shirt is wet. The water itself is not wet.

This seems like a common stance on the internet. "I don't see a problem with it. Therefore, it's a dumb rule only to screw with me."

How quick everyone is to agree that "the customer assumes the risk" when nothing bad has happened, and it is in favor of an "entitlement." As if this very forum doesn't have hundreds, maybe even thousands of threads, complaining against countless risks that the company needs to assume. I bet the same people would be quite understanding if rooms surrounding them were subletted to other guests who caused trouble and the hotel wiped their hands clean of it.

Other people may say that, but I didn't. I'm mostly just interested from an academic standpoint, this isn't something I personally would do, and I have learned from some of the responses.

This also seems only loosely responsive to what I said. The 2nd sentence is a bit too abstract for me, maybe you could give a concrete example? The 3rd sentence raises a fair question, but (a) isn't something Matt said so wasn't something I was replying to, and (b) if for example someone in a room was making too much noise or being violent, I would expect the hotel to take action regardless of whether the offending party is the named registrant of the room or a guest of that person (legitimate or otherwise) so this also feels like a non sequitur.

So these answers come from my experience growing up in the hospitality industry. I was in it nearly 30 years of my life (well over half of it).
Yes, but it also scales the other way. I would never staff a full housekeeping crew for Sundays when I knew occupancy was far below every other day of the week. If I knew I had 20 rooms that were perfect and never touched, that's just an inspection and then back into inventory--saving me a lot of regular expense in both supplies and labor.
Kind of. You don't want a no show because that's an easy chargeback that you will lose as credit card companies want 'proof' of a stay. Hard to have proof without something signed. Generally, if we knew 100% a reservation would be a no show because we couldn't contact the person on the reservation, etc, we would just cancel the reservation and give the room to the next walk-in guest. This was a bit tricky though as sometimes someone is stuck on a plane for 12 hours and just couldn't be reached. You had to get a 'feel' for doing this, but if you didn't, you almost certainly lost revenue since no shows generally turned into chargebacks. But it wasn't something you did unless you were seriously turning away potential guests like one every 30 minutes.

If there was a way to get paid for rooms that were untouched, that's the golden ticket since your regular expenses fall to nearly zero. As someone mentioned, you could literally fire all your staff, shut the doors and rent out rooms all day long from your couch at home. It would drastically change the industry, but there's also no way in hell the brands would let you do this, even to a small degree. There are very specific conditions of hours of operation, responsiveness to guests, staffing levels, etc. that are hard-coded into the franchise agreements. You mess with that, and you're messing with your lifeblood, so it's too high a risk.

As far as renting rooms multiple times. I still remember our parents waking us in the middle of the night to clean a room to get it back into inventory on nights when there were a lot of transients or odd-hours check-outs (like a night crew that's been staying for a while and their job is done). We would wake and clean the rooms and go back to sleep and they would get rented again. I still remember those were some golden days for revenue when your occupancy actually exceeded 100%, and I think the record for us was like 108%. But it's also why for years I stopped changing for bed because after getting up and changing back and forth 3 times, I was just going to sleep and just be up and ready for times 4 and 5 that I knew were coming. My cousins thought it was weird of me to sleep with my keys and wallet in my pocket. I could care less since I would be weird to them no matter what I did, lol.
It's more than just the commissions which is usually part of a 'central reservation travel agent fee' that is a minimum of 10%, but more like 15% and may even be 20% now as that's what Orbitz, et al were getting away with, but then there is also the royalty per the franchise agreement on the gross revenue and that was nearly 20% decades ago when I last filled out the monthly royalty reports. So that's 30-40% right off the top. Then factor in your debt service, supply cost, and labor and there's some serious chunks already taken out of whatever came in. Now, let's look at a ghost stay where the supplies and labor have been reduced to zero--that's adding back some percents for sure. A property fully running on ghosts would be a completely different operation when optimized for those type of stays--and would be in full violation of any franchise agreement.

Thanks for the insider color. I am suggesting that if hotels allowed ghost stays, the whole business model would change. Maybe the reservation system would have a check box saying, "I won't check in, I just want the status credit." Of course, they would have to have a provision for guests who changed their minds...