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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