Hmmm. I'm stuck arranging my day around a guy's who's job is to book rooms? Really? I can go on any website and book in minutes. But to get the "discount" rate, I have to play phone tag? Absurd.
Doesn't it strike you as extremely odd there's a meetup where we all are to discuss our great MS skills to get "free" rooms/flights and yet the venue is at one of the few chains where we can't use all the points we have? I really hate the idea of using Arrival points for a hotel room where I literally have millions of points in multiple hotel programs (thanks to lots of MS on hotel credit cards). That's face palm material. I haven't paid for a room in years and surely didn't expect to in what is supposed to be the Holy Grail of MSing.
As for the hotel itself, looks very nice. But there are plenty other nice hotels in the area too where we could use points at substantial discount over book rates.
Now the choice is to pay rack rate at this place (since the few discounted rooms sold out in hours - before the discount code was even offered) or use my points elsewhere but arrange transport? Crikey.
I agree with you Paul. We looked at several other options for the hotel, and we were going to move forward with a Hyatt - the one in Scottsdale was booked so it didn't work, but we did find one in CA that we liked. However they wouldn't allow us to book without an 'attrition policy' in place. This means that we would have to guarantee to 'sell' a certain number of rooms, meaning we would have to encourage people to not use points, or corp codes, they would have to be on 'our' rate. We actually avoided this in the end because every room option in the area (including our discounted rate) would have been at $240 per night - no cheap options.
I don't want to be a travel agent, nor a pimp for a hotel, so I instead went with what is called a 'courtesy block rate' of $159, we were assured that it would be fine, and it is exactly what we did with the Hyatt in CLT for DO #1. The way this works they block off say 10-20 rooms, we fill them, the release 10-20 more, we fill them.. etc.. and then about 30-60 days prior to the event they call it on the rate.
What happened yesterday with Firesky is that the sales manager (who is a really nice girl called Sarah) sent me this email at 4:35pm:
Hi Matt!
We’re so pumped about how the blocks already picked up – keep ‘em coming! I understand you spoke with Ryan earlier today; our cancellation for the entire hotel is 72-hours, which Ryan let me know he informed you of.
Please let me know if you need anything further – happy (pre-)4th!
I then got an email from a reader saying our block was full and I needed to call in, so I emailed Sarah back saying:
Am getting reports from my readers that your block is full- please sort that out guys.
Sarah's reply (around 1hr after her first message) was
Hi Matt –
I just concluded a meeting with my Director; as the block is a courtesy, we are only able to offer 20 reservations without a stronger cancellation policy. We have to be able to protect and manage our inventory, and with 20 reservations, you already have 10% of the hotel! As our courtesy blocks normally are budgeted at 7 guestrooms and by definition are not obligations on behalf of either party, I’m thrilled to be able to honor this terrific deal for these 20 rooms that have booked so quickly.
In order to continue offering the $159.00 rate, we’d either need a locked in contract, guaranteeing a certain number of rooms, or any future reservations booked into this courtesy block would have to be non-cancelable.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions. I will be out of the office for the holiday, back on Monday.
Enjoy your weekend as well!
I called in to sort this out, and we spent an hour last night trying to resolve it, and she really was a professional who was trying to help, but she has been put in a position by someone at Kimpton that she just can't figure a way out of. On the call there was no real talk of keeping the $159 rate here, it was instead to move the rate to 179 (and put it on an attrition basis - IE non refundable) or offer $199 with the same 72 hr prior cancellation but only for like 5 rooms as a slow down period - the other rate that we could offer would just be rack rate.
Simply put, this is a revenue play by Kimpton, someone decided that they could get more money from the rooms than our rate, and since we sold so many so fast they are worried that if they were to have the full 120 people staying there it would be like 50% of their rooms sold off at a lower rate than they 'could hope to get' if they sold them open market.
I think it is incredibly short sighted and unprofessional of this brand to pull this on us, but I can't find out who pulled this move, I talked with the sales team at Firesky (great people) I talked with social media (great people) I talked with loyalty (great people) and I just can't find who the link in the chain is that decided to pull this on us, it really feels like bait and switch to me.
We took a risk on Kimpton, bringing in people with top tier status from Hyatt, Hilton and SPG and steering them away from their brands, and I feel like a dick right now.
