At the end of May 2018, Hyatt stopped a pilot program of charging for breakfast at select Hyatt Place locations. Several blogs speculated that the backlash over charging for what was previously a free benefit caused Hyatt to reconsider. Boy, were they WRONG!!!!!
Hyatt just announced several changes to the Hyatt Place brand including a new policy regarding who gets free breakfast. Thanks to Pizza in Motion and MommyPoints, Hyatt has now confirmed that only members of the World of Hyatt program who book directly through a Hyatt website will get free breakfast at Hyatt Place properties. If you aren’t a World of Hyatt member, you’ll be able to sign up on the spot and get a free breakfast for your stay regardless of how you booked your room. However if you already are a World of Hyatt member and book your room through a third party website like Expedia or Hotels.com, no free breakfast for you.
While I’m not a fan of hotel breakfasts, the one experience I had at a Hyatt Place was positive.
I am honestly amazed in how nice this hotel was and that it was only a category 1 Hyatt hotel. We didn’t get pictures of the breakfast but they had cage-free scrambled eggs with local brand sausages along with oatmeal, donuts and individual packages of cereal. To top things off, the staff went around and gave everyone a “last call” for breakfast, letting us know that they were going to start taking it away in 5 minutes. I heard someone ask about the coffee and they were told that the coffee would be left out for 30 minutes after the breakfast time was over. This is so different from many places that start to take the breakfast away 30 minutes before the posted time, or when the food platters are empty, whichever comes first.
I think it’s nice that Hyatt will let non-members of the World of Hyatt program sign up on the spot and get breakfast, regardless of how they booked the room. For us, this won’t make much difference because I usually book rooms directly through the hotel website, anyway. The only problem would be if I wanted to pay for a room with points from either the Citi Prestige or Sapphire Reserve, as those bookings don’t get credit for loyalty benefits and therefore wouldn’t get free breakfast. People who need to use travel agents or have booed the cheapest room to follow business expense guidelines will be left out in the cold, with no breakfast.
Changes to Hyatt Place breakfasts will start on November 1, 2018. It’s still unclear what breakfast will cost and if it would be it worth it to book a less expensive room through a third party and then just pay for breakfast. I will say that this is one of the only times it would not pay to sign up for a hotel program ahead of time. If you’re staying at a Hyatt Place after November 1, 2018, paid through a third party site like Expedia and aren’t yet a World of Hyatt member, wait to sign up at the hotel and you’ll get a free breakfast out of the deal.
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