Turned away for confirmed reservation
I arrived on 11/5/2007 and checked in; I also accompanied two of my colleagues who arrived the day after and who tried to check in on 11/6. My coworkers were told that their confirmed, PRE-PAID reservation could not be honored because "a group staying at the hotel had to extend their stay an extra day".
We asked the manager on duty if anyone other people had not yet checked in for the evening and if we could take those rooms instead. He insisted that the hotel was booked and that there were no rooms remaining to be checked in.
They sent my coworkers away to a nearby hotel (which was dirty, uncomfortable, and a big step down from even this property). Since I had my own room confirmed (because I arrived the previous night), I decided to hang around the lobby for a while just to see what happened.
Although the front desk turned away more than a dozen people who showed up with preexisting reservations in the 30 minutes that I waited there, they also let two other people check in and gave them keys to their rooms! At this point, the manager jumped in and said that those people were "part of the group".
The manager therefore lied to us twice: not only were all of the rooms NOT checked in by the time my coworkers were turned away, but also, this mysterious "group" couldn't have been "extending its stay" for an extra day since the people in the group were apparently just checking in!
Unfortunately, all of the other hotels in Atlanta were full due to a conference, so my coworkers could not go anywhere else. It sounds like Hyatt Place simply decided to sell my coworkers' already-sold rooms to a group which had more money and/or contracts than us. It's simply bad business.
And, come on: the group "had to extend their stay another day"?! The hotel was full, period, so if management had any integrity, they simply needed to tell this group that their stay could not be "extended" because other people had booked those rooms.
Even if Hyatt Place were going to sell out, at least the manager should have admitted that to us rather than lying about it.
I've been a business traveler for 10 years and I've never seen anything this shady. I will never stay here ever again.