It is probably not a great idea for a hotel to alienate a business traveler like Richard Glassman. Not when times are good, and especially not now, when the hotel business is hurting.

But a Hilton hotel in Washington did just that recently, and then the problem was compounded -- according to Glassman and Hilton -- when someone at the company's loyalty program, Hilton HHonors, dropped the ball.

Glassman, a partner in a Memphis law firm, was a frequent Hilton customer until late September, when his scheduled two-night stay at the Hilton Washington Hotel went astray after he tried to change his arrival date to Sept. 27 from Sept. 26.

Glassman said he decided to e-mail me after reading a column I wrote a few weeks ago about being hit with a $414.29 penalty when I called to cancel a two-night stay at the St. Regis, a Starwood hotel in Aspen, Colo.

According to Glassman's account, which Hilton did not dispute, a hotel clerk told him he could not check in on Sept. 27 because a large group was checking in that day. "There won't be anyone on the desk to accommodate you," he said he was told.

"I said, 'Let me make sure I understand this. You're saying that no matter what time I get there, even if I get there at 10 p.m., you have the room but you won't have any desk people available to check me in?'"

Correct, the clerk said.

Glassman decided the clerk was joking. "I know a couple of guys in Hilton corporate, so I said to her, 'Wait, they put an asterisk next to my name in the computer and told you to do this, right?'" he recalled.

"Excuse me?" the woman replied.

Getting the old offensive, bureaucratic "Excuse me," a reply to which there is no known rejoinder, Glassman instead called Hilton HHonors. But he got nowhere. "They advised me that they had no control over specific properties," he said.

What Glassman did next was cancel all of his existing Hilton reservations -- and those of his 21-member law firm as well. And then he sent me an e-mail.

'Training opportunity'

At Hilton's headquarters in Beverly Hills, Calif., Adam Burke, a senior vice president who manages Hilton HHonors Worldwide, had an immediate reaction when he heard all of this recently.

"Gaskets were blown," Burke said, using the passive voice but making it clear that he was the one who blew a gasket.

Just what a worldwide hotel loyalty program needs -- an unhappy loyal guest who stays frequently at luxury brands. "My short answer," Burke told me, "is that I am concerned. Obviously, I would like to make sure we get customer service right 100 percent of the time. It seems like we could have handled this better."

Burke said that he regarded the matter as a "training opportunity" for those down the chain of command who had mishandled Glassman's reservation and their supervisors.

By the way, I belong to Hilton HHonors, among other hotel loyalty programs, and so does my wife, who also travels on business. We're both happy customers.

But it takes only one big foul-up to change that. All right, two in the Glassman case. With hotel profits under siege, this is not the time to be making your most loyal customers unhappy. Glassman said, for example, that he travels about once a week on business.

"It's never more important to get it right than in a down cycle," Burke said.

"Every time we've seen that cycle in the last 20 years, the HHonors members were our core market that sustained the business," he added.

Glassman is a tough customer who values loyalty but believes it works both ways. He and his wife recently canceled reservations to stay at Hilton hotels on a trip to Syracuse, N.Y. He says he isn't looking for amelioration from Hilton.

A Hilton HHonors representative called him last week to apologize and assure him that the problem would be addressed, he said.

He wasn't moved.

"They said they will miss me."