One of two Regencies that my wife and I stayed at during our ten day Midwest road trip, the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati is located to the Convention Center in downtown. It has 491 guest rooms with 22 floors, making it one of the largest hotels in the area. It opened in 1984 as a brand new Hyatt Regency, with a large central atrium, giving it a very large open feel. It ran into financial problems in the 90's and 00's, eventually resulting in a foreclosure and sale at auction in 2009. With the change in ownership, extensive renovations was done by 2013 to reopen the hotel, with continuing updates happening until 2017. My wife and I stayed here for one night, and the experience was very much a mixed bag: some very highs and some very lows.
I booked one night for a Thursday using 12,000 points directly through the Hyatt site. As part of this, I had to give my credit card number, which gets passed along to the hotel. I mention this because I saw a pre-auth for over $200 on my credit card by this hotel about a week before my stay. I figured it was a mistake that would self-rectify (i.e. the amount wouldn't get settled), but it did end up settling. Since I was going to the hotel in a couple of days, figured I would rectify it once I got there.
Reading online about the hotel, learnt that they don't have a parking garage, so options are to self-park yourself or go with valet. So decided on the latter for $49 a night. It's a very antiquated system, with valets writing info on a call sheet and no ability to call/text down to have your car ready...no digital automation here at all. Result is that because you have to ask the valet to get your car in the garage across the street, it takes more than 10 minutes to get your car.
The valet going in was fine, however, and we entered the central atrium to get to check-in. The agent's attitude was faux-friendly but not uncivil, so decided to ask about my unexplained billing issue after I had given my check-in info. This was when she raised her finger at me while looking at her screen, and said 'one thing at a time, please'. Yeah...this irritated: I had guessed wrong that she could multi-task, and had been given the infamous 'wait' index finger. So I waited until she handed me my key to complete the check-in. Then I asked about the charge and stressed that this was my first time at this hotel. She kept looking at my account and repeated: "I don't see the charge". Finally, she said: "I'll need to contact my manager, and she will call you back", taking my phone number.
I got an email from her stating that she and her super could not find the charge on my account and that I needed to contact my bank for more info. I didn't expect that...basically being treated as if I was making this up. So I did call my CC company to request a chargeback, which happened immediately. I wasn't done...
First tried calling the Hyatt loyalty line, but got connected to an offshore call center. The agent was not helpful. Then contacted the generic Hyatt customer service line to get the GM's contact info. The agent was extremely helpful (and sympathetic), opening an incident and giving me the GM's email address. I then wrote an email to the GM, explaining the situation, and how disappointed I was. Surprisingly, he responded the same night, apologizing, and saying he would meet with his leadership team in the morning and get back to me.
He reached out to me via email the next day, saying that he wanted to meet with me personally before we checked out. I also got an email from the original front desk person saying "Great news...we found the charge!". Yippee...
The GM and supervisor met with me and my wife, and explained that they had found the charge: somebody had made a mistake and used my credit card on a different overdue account (our last names were the same). They had immediately done a credit to my account which they showed me. This was basically all I wanted to happen. I felt none of the attitude from either of them that I had felt from the original front desk person: they were sincerely apologetic. They even offered to credit the points I had used for the stay (though not done yet).
Room: AC worked fine, but the room was damp with a lot of humidity. The room got too cold, so had to live with the dampness. Bed was comfortable (minus the damp sheets) and the outside view was nice. The BR had good shower pressure but it was an older bathroom. It didn't have a vent fan, There was bottled water in our room.
There is a ton of space in the lower floors, with a nice fitness center and filtered water dispensers.
The valet charge was not included in the bill sent out via email. Instead my CC was charged a day later, but no new bill came out to indicate. I get this happens when a charge is done on day of checkout, but they should have known this charge the night before, so it appears correctly. It's one of those small things that add up to a neg experience. read more