With boarding minutes away, we checked our Hyatt app to make sure our reservation was still in order and alas, it had disappeared.

Small, regional passenger plane taxi-ing on the TARMAC in front of a small air traffic control tower at Houston Int'l Airport (IAH).

Perhaps our room had been given away since it was already a few hours after check in? But it still wasn’t even the time we said we’d be arriving and it was booked directly through the Hyatt app. We immediately contact support and chat with a live agent who looks into the issue and is able to “fix it” and it reappears in the app before we board our flight. What a relief! Our flight had been delayed and we landed in Houston a few hours later than expected. We didn’t arrive until after midnight at the hotel formerly known as Hyatt Regency IAH. The guy behind the desk informed us that the hotel had changed over ownership that night and that it was now a Sonesta, as in just a few hours ago! That’s right. This was the very first shift and none of them had ever even been to the property before. And now the action begins. Since we had booked our one-night stay for free using Hyatt points, our reservation was no longer valid and we had to pay out $136 on the spot to get into a room. That’s why it had “disappeared.” The hotel didn’t exist anymore.

Meanwhile, next to us was a group of women who had been out on the town and the woman who had reserved and paid for their room noticed during dinner that she had been charged another 300-and-something dollars for their room that had already been booked and paid for in advance. The poor front desk attendants had to tell her the same thing they just told us – that between her and her friends going out on the town and returning at 1am, the hotel had changed over ownership from a Hyatt to a Sonesta. That must have to do with why she was charged a second time for a room she had already paid for and checked in. All of the signage everywhere – on the desk, the wall behind the desk, business cards, our room cards, everything – was still all Hyatt. There was even an anime convention booked and happening the weekend we were there, already all set up before we arrived.

Imagine leaving your hotel for dinner and being charged for the room you already paid for only to return and find out it’s an entirely different hotel now.

Wing flaps on a large passenger plane upward after plane lands on TARMAC

We couldn’t believe that the chat agent either didn’t know or didn’t tell us just a few hours ago that the hotel was going to be changing over ownership during our one-night stay and that it would be a Sonesta when we checked out. What’s frustrating about that part is there was a Hyatt Place Hotel literally across the street that the agent could’ve transferred our reservation to since it’s a lower collection than Regency in the Hyatt family. Even if we would’ve had to pay out, at least we would’ve earned Hyatt points across the street. But we like staying at Hyatt Regency anywhere we can when we travel which is part of why we chose that one, which made it my seventh Regency, but it almost doesn’t count now because it was technically a Sonesta before we even checked in. Anyway, we had reservations to switch hotels in the morning to be closer to our event since the Regency was by the airport. When I saw the women at breakfast, they said that after a while, they were refunded their money and it was fixed.

I think the kicker for me was not when we were in our Lyft leaving the hotel parking lot and saw the Hyatt Place directly across the street, but rather when we saw a canvas Sonesta banner had been thrown over and tied around the Hyatt Regency sign by the road overnight. Unreal. We continued our trip to the event the next day, on through Panama City, and then to Cartagena where we stayed in another Hyatt Regency, number eight. We waited to complete the entire trip to submit a complaint which we did and were re-awarded the points lost plus 5,000 sympathy points for our trouble. Although, it would’ve been considerate and highly professional for Hyatt to inform all the guests of this change and perhaps not accept bookings on the last date of business at a location.

View of the backside of airport terminal at PTY (Panama City)
View from behind the terminal at Tocumen Int’l Airport (PTY) in Panama City, Panama.

The moral of the story is to make sure you always check and double check and triple check your reservations and anything you’ve paid for in advance, and again just before arriving, whether that’s by one day or one hour. You truly never know what can happen between leaving for your trip and arriving for your reservations. Although this was not our fault, I would still consider this as a travel fail, one I’ve never seen before and hope to never experience again.

I did not photograph this hotel because we arrived so late and left the next day to prepare for an event. I am only able to include photos from while I was traveling to and from Houston Int’l Airport (IAH). Note to self – photograph the hotel property at some point during each stay. You never know when you might need one.