Hyatt “Big Welcome Back” reminder – plus your chance to win 2 free nights at any Hyatt!

by Scott Carmichael on

Last month, we mentioned the latest promotion from Hyatt – stay twice, and earn a free night at any Hyatt (or 5000 bonus points).

Consider this a polite reminder about this promotion, because with a little bit of work, you’ll be able to earn yourself a couple of free nights at one of the 340 properties within the Hyatt chain.

The free nights can be earned through stays at any property – which means you can book two reservations at a hotel for as little as $50/night, and earn a free night at a $450/night resort. Me? I’ve already stated planning a couple of stays in the coming weeks, as part of a grand plan for some luxury summer pampering. To take advantage of the promotion, you’ll need a Hyatt Gold Passport account, and have that account enrolled in the promotion.

Now, if I managed to get you in the mood for a weekend away, how about a chance at winning two nights at any Hyatt hotel?

Gadling has two of these two night prizes to give away, and all you need to do is pick your favorite hotel amenity. It could be the spa, the pool, or as simple as the minibar. Pick something fun, and leave it as a comment below.

The rules:

  • To enter, simply leave a comment below describing your favorite hotel amenity.
  • The comment must be left before Friday May 14th 2010 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter the giveaway only once. Multiple entries will be deleted by our vicious multiple comment deleting robots.
  • Two Prize Winners will be randomly selected to receive two free stays at any Hyatt property.
  • A Hyatt Gold Passport account (sign up here, free) is required for the free stays. (If you are selected as a winner, your account will be credited with points, and you may exchange those points for your stay. There are no blackouts or other restrictions).
  • Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
  • The total value of each two-night stay prize is approximately $400
  • Click here for the complete official rules of this giveaway.

Hyatt will assure new jobs for all displaced Boston housekeepers

by Scott Carmichael on

It has been a pretty bad week for Hyatt. First, their Boston hotels were accused of tricking their housekeeping employees into retraining a replacement crew before firing them.

Then Hyatt responded that the accusations were untrue. And then the Boston unionized cab drivers decided to refuse to drop passengers off at Hyatt properties. To make matters worse. the Massachusetts Governor decided it would be politically rewarding (for himself) to demand a boycott of all Hyatt properties for MA workers.

Of course, this completely misses the point, as telling people to stop spending their money at a hotel will only punish the remaining workers. The whole purpose of having to lay off the 100 housekeepers was to reduce costs so the hotels could stay open.

Hopefully the whole incident can now come to an end, as Hyatt has found new jobs for the housekeeping staff they made redundant. The staff can all go to work for a local employer, and will be hired at their previous rate. In addition to this, they’ll also continue to get health coverage till March 31st 2010, after which they can get coverage from their new employer.

Anyone who wishes to pick a different career move will be offered free training and career services, and a task force has been established to open a dialogue with the employees to assist them any way they can.

I’m very surprised how quickly this whole incident blew up. People are losing their jobs every day, and you rarely hear anything other than the basic statistics on the news. Why this individual case managed to get so much attention is really beyond me. Obviously, any time staff are made redundant is a pretty tragic case, but Hyatt was no different than the thousands of other companies trying to stay alive in this challenging economy.

Hopefully the job offers for the Hyatt housekeepers will be sufficient for the Governor to back off, if not, I’m not sure what will make him happy. After the jump, the official statement from Hyatt Hotels regarding the job offer.

HYATT ASSURES NEW JOBS FOR DISPLACED BOSTON WORKERS

BOSTON (September 25, 2009) – All housekeepers affected by August staff reductions at the three Hyatt hotels in Boston will be offered new full-time positions in the Boston market. The jobs, which will be provided by an affiliate of United Service Companies, will match the employees’ previous Hyatt rate of pay through the end of 2010. The Boston Hyatt hotels will extend healthcare coverage through March 31, 2010 for the employees who choose to accept positions with United Service Companies, after which they will have the option to obtain health care benefits through their new employer.

“We are committed to supporting all of our associates, especially when they are negatively affected by business decisions made necessary by the most difficult economic environment in decades,” said Phil Stamm, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Boston and chair of a local Hyatt management task force formed to assist the displaced workers. “Every housekeeping employee who wants a job will have one. That’s our promise.”

Affected employees who wish to pursue a different employment path are being offered career services and training opportunities through a partnership Hyatt has formed with Manpower and Right Management. Employees opting to participate in the career services and retraining program will receive financial support equal to their Hyatt rate of pay through March 2010 or until they secure permanent jobs, whichever comes first. “We’re pleased to be able to support our employees with retraining and job search assistance provided by a highly respected employment and placement firm,” said Stamm.

“We are meeting with these individuals to fully explain their options, answer their questions and ease the transition,” said Michael Hickey, general manager of Hyatt Regency Cambridge, also a member of the task force. “The task force we set up accomplished what we set out to do. We believe the creative solutions we’re offering are responsive to the concerns expressed throughout our community, and are consistent with Hyatt’s core values as well as our responsibility to manage our properties prudently in this very difficult economy.”

“We sincerely hope these efforts demonstrate the respect we have for our associates and renew the community’s faith in Hyatt. Contrary to the way our actions have been characterized by many, we did attempt to implement this staffing change in a respectful manner and many of the assertions that have been made are false. We do, however, recognize and regret that we did not handle all parts of the transition in a way that reflects our organization’s values, ” said Stamm.

Update on the Boston Hyatt housekeeping story

by Scott Carmichael on

Yesterday, we reported on a bit of controversy brewing in Boston where Hyatt hotels had reportedly fired all their housekeeping staff after “tricking” the staff to retrain their replacements without their knowledge.

As with most stories, there are two sides to this one, and we have asked Hyatt to clarify their position.

As it turns out, the original story may not have been entirely correct. Their entire statement is posted after the jump, but the bottom line is that the story of staff being tricked was not true.

Hyatt also made it clear that the current economic climate gave them no choice. The staff were given a severance package, and Hyatt extended their health benefits until the end of 2009. In addition to this, Hyatt will invest in retraining them.

Obviously, firing staff is never a thing any company wants to do, but the travel world has been hit harder than ever this year. When the only available options are to trim your workforce, or close an entire hotel, someone obviously had to make the tough choice. I’d like to thank Hyatt for providing the other side to this story.


Statement Regarding Boston Hotel Housekeeping Staff – 9.18.09

At Hyatt, we value and respect all our associates, care about the communities in which we operate and deeply regret whenever staff reductions are necessary. The difficult decision to outsource the housekeeping function at our Boston properties was made in response to the unprecedented economic challenges those hotels are facing in the current business environment. It was not made lightly.

A precipitous drop in revenues at our Boston hotels has made major cost cutting measures necessary. The decision to outsource the housekeeping function is the most recent in a long series of efforts to control costs. We have eliminated management positions at all three hotels, reduced staff in multiple departments and made significant cuts in sales, marketing and administrative budgets.

Though the business downturn has necessitated difficult decisions for us as it has for so many other employers, Hyatt always strives to treat its employees with care and consideration. Despite what has been reported, the hotels in Boston have treated their housekeepers with fairness and dignity. Press reports suggesting that we “tricked our associates into training their replacements” are absolutely false. The transition to contract housekeeping services was not sudden and secretive. In fact, the company providing housekeeping services to our Boston Hotels – Hospitality Staffing Solutions (HSS) – has been working with two of the three hotels for more than three years, with Hyatt and HSS employees working side‐by‐side every day. When the properties completed the transition to all contract personnel in housekeeping on August 31 approximately half of the housekeeping staff at two of the three Boston Hyatt Hotels were HSS employees.
We are providing resources and support to assist employees who have lost their jobs as they seek new employment.

  • The housekeepers were invited to apply for open positions at the three hotels, howeverthere are very few positions available due to economic conditions. They will continue to be welcome to apply for jobs at Hyatt hotels as positions become available.
  • We worked with local hotels and provided each housekeeper with current job openings.
  • We provided them with an Employee Assistance helpline, assisted them with benefit transition paperwork.
  • We provided severance benefits.

Because we have a longstanding relationship with HSS, we’re confident that HSS personnel working according to Hyatt standards can provide Hyatt‐quality housekeeping services.
The savings realized from these arrangements contribute significantly to the financial stability of our properties, which allows us to continue to provide services to our guests and enables Hyatt properties to continue to be major employers in the Boston area.

The HSS employees serving our properties in Boston are living in the area. They are not from outside of the community. So the notion that jobs were exported to somewhere outside of Boston is inaccurate.

Contrary to published reports, HSS does offer a wide range of benefits to its employees.
Hyatt properties continue to be significant employers in Massachusetts with approximately 600 employees.

Hyatt hotels in Boston outsource housekeepers in a dirty deal

by Jamie Rhein on

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz is a bit disgusted with three Hyatt hotels in the Boston area. As she wrote in her column in Sunday’s The Plain Dealer, the management of these hotels recently had longtime housekeepers train a fresh crop of housekeepers who had been imported from Georgia.

The longtime housekeepers, one who had been with the company for 22 years, thought they were training staff to fill in for vacation leave hours. They thought this because that’s what management told them.

Boy, were those housekeepers duped. They were let go as soon as the new employees were trained. In all, 100 workers were given the heave ho. Those who were brought up from Georgia are cleaning rooms for almost half the salary of the longtime employees, plus they don’t receive benefits. The longtime housekeepers did.

Schultz isn’t the only one who is disgruntled with the management who has tossed out loyalty in the name of the bottom dollar. The mayor of Boston is calling the move “crude business” and hundreds turned out to protest outside the Hyatt Regency Boston last Thursday. This Boston Globe article that outlines the controversy also states that there is talk that people should boycott the Hyatt hotels that practice such dirty business.

Along with not knowing much about fair play, it seems that the management of those Hyatt hotels should consider this: If part of what one pays for at a higher end hotel is great service, cutting corners on salaries of those people who clean drinking glasses and the toilets may not be the best plan. Remember those hotel drinking glass horror stories that came out two years ago?

Picking the best hotel room – when cheap delivers more than upscale and expensive

by Scott Carmichael on

We are already halfway through our hotel month here on Gadling. In the past week weeks, we’ve written hotel reviews, shown some wacky minibar finds, and described the best way to pick a hotel brand.

Today’s article is going to try and explain some of the logic that goes into picking the best hotel room, and getting the best value for your money. The examples in this article will be based on real hotels, real rates and real stays.

If you are not interested in amenities, and just want to get the cheapest possible room, then this article really isn’t going to help you much. Instead, the target audience for this article is the hotel guest who doesn’t mind paying some extra for their room. After all, paying more gets better service and amenities, right? Wrong!Here is a real world example of the tale of two rooms – you need a room in Chicago, so you start your search. Your requirements are simple; you want a spacious room with a view, a king bed and free Internet access.

Lets pick 2 of the more popular hotels in downtown Chicago (within 5 minutes of each other):

One of these rooms is a 2 room suite on a high floor (with a view of the Hancock building), a kitchen, free breakfast, flat panel HDTV’s in both rooms, recently renovated and access to free wired and wireless Internet.

The other is a smaller room with outdated furnishings, and comes without a “view”. The room does come with butler service and a DVD player. As an added bonus, the hotel does offer wireless Internet, but the signal is too weak to pick up in your room.

Of course, the larger room is the cheapest here. The concession of picking the cheaper hotel is that you don’t get that “luxury hotel” feeling when you step into the lobby. That said, the service in the cheaper hotel did feel much more relaxed and the free breakfast was a great deal.

Of course, I’m not trying to tell you that you should never stay in an expensive hotel – sometimes the occasion calls for some added luxury, but on a “normal” stay, upscale hotels can’t always provide the best value for money. The more expensive hotel often offers better amenities (spa services, valet parking etc…). However, when you are saving $147 a night, you’ll actually have money left to pay for those spa services.

So, next time you head to the hotel booking site, try and think smarter. This will require some homework, as not all cheaper hotels are going to be a good deal. Many of those hotels may not have been renovated in years.

Hotel review sites can be a great tool for this. Try to stay away from the room photos provided by the hotel and do searches for user submitted reviews photos through sites like Tripadvisor or Hotels.com. These photos often paint a much more honest picture of the hotel. When reading reviews, skip the ones with rants and complaints with hyperbole as too many people post totally useless reviews. A good article on how to use Tripadvisor can be found here.

If you do your homework, and read through all the real reviews and photos, you may be able to find that one gem that is able to save you $150 a night. Sure, you may not be in the luxurious location you had expected, but you’ll be able to sleep better at night knowing you’ve got more money to spend on worthless souvenirs.