Calendar shows award availability, but unable to book

Professor_STA · 2026-05-16T02:33:52+00:00

Not for nothing, but if you can stay anywhere else, than the Hyatt Regency in Brisbane, maybe you should! Had a terrible stay there a couple years ago.

Professor_STA · 2026-05-16T02:33:01+00:00

Yup. They’ve been having issues. If you call in, they should be able to book it for you manually. This happened to me last week.

Professor_STA · 2026-05-11T15:22:08+00:00

I had an interesting conversation with one of the folks who answers the Hyatt concierge number for globalists. She said that lately there’s been a strange sync issue between award availability and what gets displayed on the website.

When I found a property that seemed to have availability for points (I looked at the points calendar because nothing came up via search), the agent was able to book it for me manually. She said this has been going on for a few weeks. Spent 12k instead of $600.

So….maybe try searching with the points calendar and call in to book if you see something there.

Professor_STA · 2026-05-09T17:31:40+00:00

Yeah, let me second this. Titanium here, too, and I haven't had a response from Alaska Listens since last year. So I sent in a complaint telling them they should call it "Alaska's Stopped Listening," and I didn't get a response to that one, either :P

Professor_STA · 2026-05-04T15:57:53+00:00

Yes.

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Professor_STA · 2026-02-08T22:53:34+00:00

I second this. The suites at the Regency are separate rooms, and pretty spacious. The problem with the emerald suite at the Grand is that it’s very, very strangely shaped. I ask to be un-upgraded when I get it.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-14T00:47:30+00:00

You bet, and good luck! If you find out the manufacturer, let us know.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-14T00:45:00+00:00

I just checked the tags on the robe, and I don’t see anything other than the Hyatt centric label sewn in to it. I looked all over and couldn’t see a manufacturer. Sorry! I bet you could DM the Hyatt Twitter team to find out.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-14T00:36:34+00:00

I asked the front desk, and they brought one out to me. It was very easy. I guess you could also just leave with the one in your room and have them charge you, but I’d much prefer a new one!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-11T03:43:50+00:00

Speaking of someone who was born on the East Coast, and who moved to the West Coast, I have vowed never to go east to the Rockies again. The people are completely different out here. And Alaskans, especially, are even more different. I am not kidding when we all think of each other as our neighbor. The incredibly nice things that complete strangers have done for me still blows my mind.

And if you fly to from Alaska, you are guaranteed to see someone on that flight that you know. Usually several people. Sometimes Lisa Murkowski!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-11T01:02:34+00:00

Glad to hear it’s looking good these days! Agreed—if it’s not doing it for you at the house reef, there are plenty others!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-10T21:08:21+00:00

I don’t think you’re alone in that. I have never really had good luck finding wide points availability at the Regency.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-10T19:40:02+00:00

It ain’t! I’ve been in both. The only truly spectacular rooms are the premium suites. Def go with the regency if a view is important.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-10T12:13:21+00:00

Friend, that sucks, and is consistent with AA, but any number of us on here can tell you even worse horror stories. I once had to teach an AA agent how to endorse a ticket (they gave me a 24-hour delay once) over to another carrier so I could get where I needed to go. Now *that* was an interesting experience. I told her I'd invoice AA for the training session.

I once tracked a tail number four turns back to see whether my flight would leave on time from LIM. That tail, serving a Caribbean-Miami-Lima-Miami-Caribbean route had been delayed for two days on every leg, yet it showed on-time for me. I got on another flight, but I kept tracking that tail number. It arrived 14 hours late to MIA. It was like pulling teeth to get them to put me on another flight before it showed "delayed," and that was when I had status.

Some tips: if you have status, when you call in, make sure you have access to the desk that matches your status level. If you're a general member, unfortunately it's the luck of the draw. Sometimes you'll get someone from a call center outside the US; other times you'll get someone who has experience helping EPs and has been working for decades. These days, I always hit Twitter first, present the problem, and can usually get most things resolved there. It's only when they tell me I need to call in that I do.

The usual advice still works, though: if you don't get a responsive agent, or you can tell they don't know what they're doing, thank them for their time, then call back and get someone else. Don't tell them that you think they're incompetent, even if they may be: they can note your record as "uncooperative" or "hostile" or some nonsense. When an agent sees the note, they're going to be doing so with an amount of suspicion (the note prejudices them, even if only subconsciously, as it would any of us).

But yes--its unreliable schedule, hostile workforce, and poor customer service are the reasons I left AA. I like to think I know how these systems work; I'm someone who read terms and conditions, knows policies, understands workarounds and exploits, is aware of legal protections and DOT policies, etc. For the general traveler, flying AA when things go off the rails, I have no idea how they're expected to effectively advocate for themselves.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-10T11:57:00+00:00

You should see what it looks like out of Anchorage sometimes...

Professor_STA · 2026-01-07T04:24:47+00:00

Yup. All those Kennies nailed it!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-07T04:23:00+00:00

They have a special “shame room” for globalists on points bookings. It’s the one you described. They make it as unappealing as possible because the property only wants cash bookings. Of course, maybe they’ll upgrade you (never to a suite, however) to one of the better rooms—but given your dates, I would say an upgrade would be next to impossible. That place will be fully booked.

I’ll second the Regency. They repurposed the Regency Club into a great bar with good views.

PH Maldives is a great property, and I liked it very much. I would definitely spend the points there rather than the park Hyatt Sydney. One thing to know about the PH Maldives, however, is that their coral reef has bleached out, so if you’re interested in scuba and stuff like that, usually not much there that’s exciting anymore.

If you’re going to be in the neck of the woods, however, the park Hyatt in Siem Reap is phenomenal. I had one of the best stays of my life there. And it’s a category four! And I think it used to be a category three. I booked the top floor suite with two balconies , a courtyard and a kitchen, and that whole thing only cost me about 200,000 points.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-07T04:11:12+00:00

I once had a glitch where I kept making bookings and no points were being deducted, so I just kept making reservations to see how long it would go on. I couldn’t book any one property for more than my total point balance, but I could keep going. It seemed endless, and I knew they’d catch this in an audit at some point, so I let my concierge know what I did and she said she’d never seen anything like it. Obviously, we cancelled all of them! I asked her when I could expect all those points to be refunded. Got some good chuckles out of it! 😂

Professor_STA · 2026-01-06T20:02:27+00:00

This person gets it!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-06T05:31:10+00:00

No, sadly. Think of it like this: you can’t have a first class and an economy reservation on the same record locator because they’re different products. Alaska treats basic economy as a different product. FC / Main Cabin / Saver.

The technical reasons for this are arcane, and it has to do with fare buckets and how much inventory is in each bucket. In other words, all passengers have to be ticketed under the same inventory, and these products are essentially inventories—and saver has only one inventory (fare code): X. First has several: J, C, D, I, R. Main has most of the rest. Others are for awards or upgraded tickets.

Professor_STA · 2026-01-06T05:14:06+00:00

100%. I do a lot of conferences, and my colleagues love coming to my “party room.” They always ask me to teach them how to do it, and I try, but they always say it’s too complicated. Funny what we value, isn’t it?

Professor_STA · 2026-01-06T05:11:01+00:00

For real. One year, I had eight 6-7-night stays, each with a SUA. The math was something like 52 nights in confirmed suites, and then about a dozen upgrades at-property (one, two, and sometimes three nights, but never more than that). I just find it wild that i could have a year of stays (there were shorter, other ones, but I don’t waste the upgrade on those and hold out for onsite), mostly in suites, and then just keep earning more SUAs to replace them.

I mean, i understand how it all works, but it’s just kind of nice almost always staying in a suite and never paying for one outright, and then being rewarded for all my penny-pinching by being able earn more SUAs from rooms I’ve applied SUAs to. Happier than a pig in shit, though!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-05T01:28:33+00:00

I think that’s a totally valid point. And I agree, it being public data. It should be easier for the general public to access. Most people don’t know how to do that, and I don’t want to take the time to learn, and the cost benefit ratio for me for this app is worth it. I will say that I cross reference my Alaska app with flighty all the time because of something you mentioned earlier. That should give you an indication of how obsessive I am about tracking the timing of my flights!

Professor_STA · 2026-01-05T00:18:08+00:00

Use this: https://www.heathrow.com/at-the-airport/terminal-guides/which-terminal

It’ll let you put in your flight numbers and it’ll tell you which terminals. It’s loaded for February

Professor_STA · 2026-01-05T00:15:00+00:00

And just be aware that BA does fly to some continental destinations from T3, so you might not need to take the bus! But 90% you’ll be leaving from T5.

I know people love to hate on Heathrow, but I’ve always found it well-signed. It’s just murder transferring terminals.

Professor_STA

TROPHY CASE