By: Sharan Kaur and Simran Panaech

The Grand Hyatt Hotel Singapore has unexpectedly become the centre of an Australian media spectacle - but not quite for the right reasons.

Earlier this week, the hotel had called Kym Illman to confirm his restaurant reservations. The Perth-based businessman then alleged he was put on hold for six hours by the hotel staff.

He told couriermail.com.au, "Ten minutes of classical on hold music later, I began to wonder if she'd forgotten me. At the 30 minute mark I figured she certainly had but since I wasn't paying for the call I decided to keep the line open and see how long it was before they realised I was suspended in their phone system."

Keeping his phone plugged to a charger, Illman was able to go out to a football game and have dinner. He returned surprised to find that the call was still on hold, according to the website.

After five and a half hours, Illman decided to take action and emailed Grand Hyatt Singapore advising them that he had been on hold for so long. The call was shortly cut off. "Total time on hold - six hours, eight minutes and forty-two seconds," proclaimed the businessman.

Grand Hyatt Singapore: Technical glitch, human error, or a deliberate set-up?

According to the hotel in Singapore, Grand Hyatt is unsure as to what may have caused this time-consuming error.

Said Grand Hyatt's spokesperson: "We called him, so we were paying for the overseas charges."

She also explained that the hotel would not have wanted to incur the hefty overseas call charges over such a long period of time, unless they were not completely aware that the caller had been on hold.

Some readers on the Internet have cried foul, saying that Illman might have had an ulterior motive for going public with his experience.

Said one reader: "Illman and his cohorts are always after free publicity - maybe he was on hold for that long but he certainly knew the right calls to make to get his story published."

Another reader even joked, "This guy made up the story so he can advertise his company."

That might not be entirely untrue, as it is suspected that Illman is currently writing a book on service standards. He ironically also owns a production company in Perth called 'Messages on Hold'.

Interestingly, he turned up at Grand Hyatt Singapore a few days after the call.

The Grand Hyatt's spokesperson informed AsiaOne that Illman had gone down to the hotel on August 6, 2008 to meet with a few of the hotel management staff.

His purpose? To sell his service training programmes to Grand Hyatt. The hotel politely declined as they already have internal training programmes in place.

Is this truly a coincidence or simply an ingenious marketing ploy?

And if it is all a game for publicity, why did Illman choose Grand Hyatt Singapore out of the so many other hotels in Singapore and Asia?

"Perhaps," said the hotel's spokesperson matter-of-factly, "Grand Hyatt is a big name to have on a company's portfolio - it means a lot."