Hyatt’s international properties have a special program called Club at the Hyatt that offers special discounts at property restaurants as well as on other services like on-site florists. (In Germany, there is a variant of this program called the Hyatt Gourmet Club). Club members also receive discounted rates worldwide, excluding Canada, the U.S., and the Caribbean. Yes, there’s a membership fee and an application to join, but with all these discounts, it sounded like something I would use as a frequent Hyatt guest and Diamond Gold Passport member.
There’s just one catch: You have to be a local resident near one of the sponsoring Hyatt hotels. As an American, I’m not eligible to join, and most of you probably don’t qualify either. I know I have a few international readers, however, so I would be interested to hear if any of you have purchased a Club at the Hyatt membership and have found it valuable. Maybe a few North Americans have even managed to find their way around these restrictions.
Dining Discounts
The major benefit of Club at the Hyatt is dining discounts, which makes sense as this would be the most likely reason a local resident would want to visit a hotel in his or her own city. These participating properties are high-end hotels and often have very good restaurants. In general, it’s a small discount if you dine alone and in larger groups your portion is free. This is a representative example of the sliding scale:
- 1 diner = 10% discount
- 2 diners = 50% discount
- 3 diners = 33% discount
- 4 diners = 25% discount
- 5 diners = 20% discount
- 6+ diners = 10% discount
These discounts are on food only, and usually a separate discount rate applies to beverages. One example is 10% across the board, regardless of the number of diners. Sometimes you’ll also find that Sunday lunches only earn a 15% discount, again regardless of the number of diners. Clearly, you should take your spouse out to dinner and leave the in-laws at home. 😛
Other Hotels
Yes, discounts do apply at other hotels, including room rate discounts and restaurant discounts. The numbers may be different, however, and the list of participating properties always seems to be changing. I would expect the “big name” properties like the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong and Grand Hyatt Bangkok to always participate, but smaller names like the Hyatt Regency Tsim Sha Tsui might drop out.
Application
Each international Hyatt property that participates in the Club at the Hyatt program has its own application process and fees. You can usually find one for your hotel by contacting them directly or by searching for it online. Just by Googling “Club at the Hyatt” I found some results on the first page like this for Club at the Hyatt at the Grand Hyatt Singapore.
Because the program is managed individually, finding details on price is difficult, but my source at Hyatt PR gave an example of $300 to $600 for some Chinese properties. The Grand Hyatt Singapore posts their prices as SGD 454 for the first year and SGD 388 for each subsequent annual renewal ($367 and $314, respectively). Spouses can receive an additional card at a discounted rate.
Conclusion
I think I would definitely use this card if I lived in Asia or Europe and did a significant amount of travel staying at Hyatt properties. Paying $400 to get 50% off meals sounds like a great deal. If I’m with Megan and spending $100 on dinner each night, then I get my $400 back after eight meals ($100 x 8 x 50%). Including the value of room discounts would make that faster. I’ve found that my AAA and Costco discounts work no magic at international properties, so this would be one of the few ways to save some money on a paid booking.
The downside is that if I were living in Asia, I probably would not stay at a lot of Hyatt properties because they have a more limited international presence, even though that number is growing. I haven’t run into this problem yet, usually visiting major urban centers, but you can see how it might be an issue.
What confuses me about Club at the Hyatt is why they run these membership programs through individual properties when other hotels are recognizing and extending benefits. Doesn’t that contradict the logic of attracting business from locals? On the other hand, some hotels have stopped taking applications, so an independent process may better manage the locals who would be most likely to maximize the restaurant discounts.
For now I’ll hold out hope that one day Hyatt will offer similar memberships to non-locals like me. I would gladly pay a few hundred dollars a year to augment my existing Diamond status and earn additional discounts on rates and meals when I travel internationally. What about you? Have you ever been able to take advantage of these benefits and found the program useful?
