Sometimes my carelessness is nothing short of amazing, and not in a good way…
I’m spending a few days in beautiful Carmel, CA at the Highlands Inn, a Hyatt Residence Club property. I booked the trip months ago and was particularly looking forward to it because Globalist confirmed suite upgrades are to a townhouse suite: a two-level 900 square foot townhouse with a fireplace and full kitchen.
Paying $16 for a $2 salad and $50 for a $10 steak or fish gets old after the first night in this pricey city, so I love being able to at least cook one meal a day in the room. There’s even a nice Safeway grocery store less than ten minutes away in the village.
Only, for whatever unexplainable and indefensible reason, I never called to apply the suite upgrade. I still have three suite upgrades in my account — it’s not like I needed to save them. I simply forgot to call.
Even sadder, this wasn’t my first time forgetting to call. Last time I also did not call, but there were plenty of rooms available and securing a complimentary upgrade to a suite was no problem.
Delayed Arrival
This time, we left LA later in the afternoon and the baby got sick outside of San Luis Obispo, CA…making a huge mess in the car and delaying us a further 90 minutes. We did not arrive at the hotel until 11:30p.
At check-in, an agent informed me that not only were there no suites left, but there was only one room left in the entire property! It was a garden-view room, which itself isn’t bad, but the room smelled like mold.
The next morning we were moved to what the hotel classified as a suite, but it was a standard suite with no kitchen, fireplace, or terrace. Plus, it was under the hotel restaurant, meaning a lot of foot traffic on our ceiling late into the night and early in the morning.
But the views from our room are amazing–
The townhouses were all occupied, even though this hotel has a huge inventory of them.
CONCLUISON
The sad thing is, I am 100% to blame. I was careless and missed out on a great upgrade that truly would have been useful. So the moral of the story is this: if you want to use an upgrade certificate, you actually have to call in to apply it. And if you think you have, double check now.
Here’s my thought….. Us travel guys are generally perfectionists, a lot of guys ahí have mastered travel booking. But, here’s the thing we all make mistakes and we could go a little easier on ourselves. This is the second Boarding Area post about a travel booking mistake in the last day. I know I’ve made some doozy’s with a loss of 160K Thank you points, wrong dates on my hotel. But overall I do awesome and kill it so often that friends and family are truly impressed. So, let’s keep it cool and keep up the awesomeness
We all make mistakes. My dad just redeemed miles for some home appliances at horrific cpm valuation but his alternatives were (1) rapidly expiring miles with no extension possible, or (2) redeem for a very short-haul flight he’s not all that excited about.
It’s my understanding that TSU certificates could not be applied to Hyatt Residence clubs . Is this no longer the case? If so, that’s good news.
No problem with this hotel, at least. I got so mad I booked a new stay in November and have already confirmed the upgrade.