Hyatt Hotels. You’ll find no hotel brand with more loyalists and almost no haters. The most common reason you’ll hear why people don’t love Hyatt is the fact that there are some places where you simply can’t find a Hyatt (or if there’s a single property, it’s poorly located). While those people aren’t wrong, I’ll tend to stay at a Hyatt over another brand if everything else is equal.
However, there’s one thing I’ve found that Hyatt properties almost always get wrong.
The Dining, Spa and More Benefit
According to the World of Hyatt website, members can earn points for restaurants, spas, and other expenses at participating outlets, even if they’re not staying at the hotel. In order to receive points:
World of Hyatt members that visit participating restaurants or spas need to provide their account number to the Hyatt Colleague at the outlet at time of payment to process the earned Base Points (5 points per $1USD) on eligible charges.
For example, if we were staying on Kauai and wanted to dine at Stevenson’s Library, we should be able to provide our World of Hyatt number to the restaurant and earn points for our meal. We didn’t have to worry about this as we stayed at Grand Hyatt Kauai and charged the meal to the room.
However, we also like to visit the restaurants at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress, which was previously home to one of our favorite off-property restaurants around Disney World. During the pandemic, our dear Hemingways restaurant closed, but reopened in 2021 as Four Flamingos, A Richard Blais Florida Kitchen.
After some good reviews from local critics, we decided to head there for a special evening. The food and service was wonderful, which included my trying the Mako Shark.
When we received the check, I asked our server if I could add my World of Hyatt number to earn points. He asked if I had a Hyatt credit card (which I did) and he said if I paid with the card, Hyatt would know I was at a hotel, and I’d earn the points. I wasn’t sure about this, but I wasn’t in the mood to ask for a manager at the end of a great meal.
As expected, I earned the 4x points on the credit card for Hyatt charges. However, I didn’t receive the 5X base points from World of Hyatt for hotel expenses plus a 10% bonus for having Discoverist status.
When it was clear I wouldn’t receive the extra points, I wrote the Hyatt Concierge on Twitter. Whatever you think of Twitter at the moment, it’s still a great way to contact customer service. The agent asked for my information and said they’d contact the hotel for me. The next day I received an email from the restaurant manager for the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress asking for the date of our meal and the last four digits of my credit card (to look up our check).
I kept looking at my account for the points for our $200+ dinner (did I mention Four Flamingos isn’t cheap?!) which should have awarded me over 1,000 Hyatt points.
Instead, I noticed this on my World of Hyatt account.
I thought this was a gesture from the Hyatt rep for my trouble getting my points credited (which would not have been off-brand for Hyatt to do).
After not seeing any points added, I reached back out to the restaurant about not seeing the points on my account.
I submitted to the World of Hyatt your bonus points the same day that we had the last email xx.xx.xx. From there, it was approved the next morning from our end. It was sent as bonus points.
Instead of submitting my bill to World of Hyatt for points, the restaurant submitted a bonus credit of 250 points. If I was staying at the hotel, this would be equal to $50 in spending, which is approximately what this restaurant charges for a single entree.
From the initial request at the restaurant to the Tweet to the concierge and finally, with emails to the restaurant, my entire point was to show that Hyatt properties are uneducated about the Food, Spa & More benefit. I get that a server might not be familiar with it but when a guest brings it up, and the manager on site doesn’t step in to apply the benefit is poor customer service.
I don’t know what to think when I escalate the case to the Hyatt Concierge, who contacts the hotel, and the benefit is still applied incorrectly. Who’s to blame? Hyatt corporate? Hotel management. The restaurant?
In the big picture, 1,000 World of Hyatt points isn’t the end of the world. However, it’s not an insignificant amount either. That’s $1,000 spent on my World of Hyatt Visa which I could spend on a 2% back card and get $20.
I’ve already spent too much time and effort trying to explain the World of Hyatt rules to a hotel in the program. I gave them a chance to fix the problem, and their solution was to give me 250 points. What happens from here is on them.
UPDATE!
The story continued into the next day – click here to see how it ended.
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6 comments
I agree this is super frustrating and my number one annoyance with the program (aside from a small number of properties that never seem to have award availability). However, in this case, I think it’s actually because the hotel does not actually own this particular restaurant. I stayed at Grand Cypress a little over a year ago and despite charging to my room, i did not earn points either. When asked, that’s what they told me. This is a separate but almost equally annoying issue to the problem of qualified spend on incidentals often not being credited correctly. A guest has no way of know for sure without asking each time if a dining outlet is owned by the hotel and therefor earns points or not. Even then, I suspect you might not always get the correct answer depending on who you ask. In the case of Four Flamingos, i suspected as much because it’s a celeb chef restaurant with it’s own website, but sometimes it’s not obvious at all. The restaurant in the Hyatt Centric South Beach is also apparently not owned by the hotel despite the fact that it’s literally located in the hotel lobby and adjacent to the hotel’s pool deck. There’s no separate door and it’s not walled off…it just appears to be part of the lobby and it’s the only dining option in the hotel. I really think Hyatt should fix this. If a restaurant within a hotel isn’t going to participate in World of Hyatt, the webpage for the hotel listing the dining outlets should clearly state that.
But I’ve been in contact with the restaurant directly and they never said they weren’t participating with WoH.
I’m not invested enough to be a hater of any hotel brand but still don’t like Hyatt and don’t think the blogger hype is warranted. Limited footprint, as you mentioned. Find premium brands are overpriced compared to comparable brands at other chains, especially in Europe. A generous loyalty plan paid for by inflated rates really is not compelling for people that pay for most of their hotel nights (unlike most bloggers). If not top tier, loyalty program is actually pretty stingy. Most of US footprint are Hyatt place properties, which really aren’t differentiated from similar brands at other chains but still charge a (small) premium. Hyatt is better about upgrading to suites. This is the clearest advantage. Suite upgrades make for better blog reviews. As a business traveler, I truly don’t care how big the room is. I’ve turned down suite upgrades to be in a quieter room location. Breakfast benefits are nice but I’m typically on an expense account or per diem and find going to a local coffee shop more interesting and enjoyable. I just want a clean, quiet room that is not depressing and has functional hotel services. A+ if the location has a nice restaurant for dinner. I just find bloggers don’t talk enough about price / quality trade offs between chains. Hyatt consistently prices as if it is a premium option. Very few of the locations I’ve stayed at really deserve a premium. Most are pretty average compared to other brands in similar market segments.
+1 for your entire post, especially the price premium. hyatt program’s value proposition is a total moot point exactly because of that. being in Asia, the price premium over other big 3 chains’ comparable properties is just as obvious if not even more so. like you, I also wonder why no bloggers addressed this gigantic elephant in the room.
The value in World of Hyatt is transferring points from credit cards, and staying for free in those cash-expensive rooms for way fewer points than at other hotel chains. That is why bloggers are so enamored of Hyatt. Hyatt Place has more meal times and better breakfast buffet than other limited service hotels. The other Hyatt brands in my experience are more architecturally interesting than most other hotels. Finally, Hyatt focuses on the premium leisure and lifestyle segment, not business travel. Marriott and Hilton and even IHG are generally better for business travelers.
I have another situation with my Chase United Club Visa. When I signed up for the card (with a $525 annual fee) in April of 2022, one of the bonuses listed was a $75 statement credit for a stay at any IHG property. In June I made a reservation for a Holiday Inn Express in Burlington, WA. The cost was $92 (which was charged to my United Club Visa) and 5000 miles. For months I have been trying to get this credit. Every time I speak with a customer service rep they escalate the problem to a supervisor. I have gotten letters from Chase saying they will credit my account but it does not happen. The latest is now they are saying this promotion is not valid using points and cash. No where in the fine print does it state this! I am fed up with it and will not be renewing my Chase United Club Visa this April.