I feel like I’m in a parallel universe.

I stayed at The Academy in London on a three night reservation in early April. I tried to extend my stay for three additional nights but was unable to do so using the app. The front desk said they would extend it. I asked about getting credit for the nights and was assured by front desk staff that as I was extending an existing reservation I would receive credit for the stay.

Fast forward: I didn’t get an invoice after checking out and had to call twice to receive one. The invoice is for all nights at the hotel, but I only received three room nights on WoH.

I called Hyatt and they at first said they’d check with the hotel and grant credit for the stay. Nothing. I called back, they said it would take two weeks. I called after two weeks, now they claim it will take between six and eight weeks to get credit for the stay,

i dont get it. The invoice is clear. The hotel extended a booking made via the app. Six to eight weeks?

I’ve never experienced anything like this with WoH, or Hyatt until now. It’s kind of shocking,

Has anyone else experienced this kind of service failure? Any suggestions?

Update!!

After a mere 275 emails, of which 274 were clarifications of the first one sent, they corrected their mistake and credited my account just four weeks after my stay.

Apparently, this is a speed and efficiency record in these cases.

Hyatt used to be unusual in that their agents could fix problems like this. I don’t know if it has to do with the boundary between Hyatt and Hyatt affiliated hotels (e.g., SLH), but the performance is shocking.

Anyone else find WoH to be uncharacteristically awkward/slow/obstinate in giving credit for nights stayed?

FWIW, a WoH agent quoted this thread to me in one of our dozens of sunboptimal email exchanges. I’d hoped that this thread might spur faster than usual responses, and I fear that may have happened, which makes the whole matter even more shocking. How much employee or customer time are they willing to sacrifice to prevent making a mistake? Did they bring Kafka back from the dead to design their error recovery process? I’m joking. Not really.

This is was a low stakes transaction for them. I have 60 nights so far this year, so the two nights they tried to pocket aren’t exactly game changing for them, even though it was very frustrating for me since I couldn’t get the invoice I needed to be reimbursed for my hotel expenses in London.

Anyone else experience something thing like this? I hope it is not a sign of things to come.

- Because the app didn’t work
- Because I’m not willing to spend time checking in and out just to stay in the same hotel

i stay at Hyatt for work. I don’t work to stay at Hyatt. That’s the deal.

I’m glad to hear that this worked for someone. That’s the way I thought it would work for me, but that’s not what happened.

The front desk extended the reservation after the app failed. They took another credit card imprint, but nothing else. Then... Four weeks of confusion. Seems like it should be easy, right?

I always thought I knew how hotels work, but thanks for pointing out that I don’t. Super helpful. I get it now. You understand how hotels work while I rely on magical thinking.

I’m not sure how a super expert such as yourself thinks reservations get made and will beg here with my words for your enlightenment.

When the app failed, my stone-age, magical thinking brain gave me three choices: call the number and wait (hard pass), fire up the website on this hotel’s semi-functional WiFi (pass) or stop by the front desk (the one I went for, likely due to not understanding hotels with the millennial wisdom you clearly bring to this task).

I guess I’ve been accruing nights in hotel rooms for all these years by the grace of god since you say this is relying on magic and it turns out that I don’t know how hotels work. Thank goodness I haven’t been jailed for staying at hotels without knowing how they work!

Please, oh great hotel guru, show us the way.

I think I understand what you’re saying.

The FD asked me to settle my bill three separate times - once for each of the three reservations on this stay. The two original reservations were made via the app. The third, which should have extended the first over the weekend, was made by asking the FD to extend the first.

I dont know why, but the FD insisted that I settle the bill - which I understand as checking out - three separate times. That’s precisely what I was hoping to avoid. If I’d been able to make a reservation through some other means, I’m not sure it would have been different. I presume this is peculiar to this hotel or to the complications of the SLH/Hyatt relationship.