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I was searching the Hyatt website the other day trying to find some good rates at the Andaz West Hollywood for a friend of mine and I stumbled across something that I’m not sure I can explain.
The friend in question wasn’t sure how many nights he was going to need (he figured 2-3) and his dates were semi-flexible in that he could arrive at the Andaz on any of 3 nights….but he did express a preference for arriving on the Saturday night ”if the price isn’t ridiculous”.
With that in mind I took a look at how much it would cost for three nights at the Andaz West Hollywood, checking in on the Saturday night that worked for him:
$275/night for an Advance Purchase rate in March isn’t too bad for this property, (neither is $305/night for the “standard rate”). Nevertheless I figured the Saturday night stay (traditionally one of the more expensive nights) may be skewing the cost….so I thought I’d check to see how much each night would cost individually.
As I suspected, the Saturday night rate was higher than the average price quoted when booking 3 nights together:
While I wasn’t surprised to see the Saturday night rate set at $311/$345 (advance rate/standard rate), I was surprised at what I found next.
The rate for the Monday night and the Tuesday night were both also higher than the rate quoted when booking the 3 nights together – both came in at $284/$315
The room that was being offered was the same in all cases (Andaz King), so that wasn’t playing a part in the pricing, and I had a long look around the Hyatt website and couldn’t see any offers/promotions for 3-night stays. And yet I was looking at a 3-night stay where the average rate per night was lower than the individual rate on all three nights.
To my mind, the logical rates for the three nights booked together should have been an average of the rates for the three individual nights – $293/$325 – but, instead, the rates were around $20/night cheaper.
I tried to replicate the results with another weekend at the same property but, after trying 5-6 different sets of dates, I couldn’t get the same result.
So, was this a one-off promotion that simply wasn’t advertised anywhere? Was this a glitch? Or have I missed something? I genuinely have no idea….so if anyone out there knows what was going on please let me know 🙂
I ended up booking the 3 nights for my friend and the price of $275/night didn’t change when I went to pay (so it wasn’t a phantom price). He was happy with what he paid for and I got something to consider the next time I’m looking to book a few nights on Hyatt.com.
If this was a glitch it may never happen again but if this is some kind of offer that isn’t published particularly well then it will be worth playing around with dates the next time I need to book a stay.
Anyone else have any experiences of something like this (with Hyatt or any other hotel website)?
