Now in effect as of Thursday, November 1, 2018 is the new policy is that only members of the World of Hyatt frequent guest loyalty program who book their reservations directly with Hyatt instead of through third parties will qualify for breakfast to be included with their stays when paying an eligible rate — about which I first wrote this article back on Wednesday, June 6, 2018.
New Free Breakfast Policy in Effect at Hyatt Place
“Show of hands, how many people know what an ‘eligible rate’ is?” asked Edward Pizzarello of Pizza in Motion in this article. “I happen to know because I’m a travel nerd. But, I’d suspect a large portion of every day customers don’t.”
He is probably right — but the official definition of an eligible rate is easy to find; and most guests will qualify:
An “Eligible Rate” is defined as any room rate for a participating hotel, resort, or other property that is published by Hyatt (including rates found on hyatt.com without the application of a discount code, and Hyatt’s “Standard Rate,” “Volume Account Rates,” “Senior Citizen Rate,” and the monetary portion of any Points + Cash Award (as defined in Appendix B) or, for Miraval properties or Oasis Homes, published by Miraval or Oasis, respectively. When applying an Oasis Stay Credit (defined in Appendix B) to a room rate that otherwise qualifies as an Eligible Rate per the above definition, a Member will earn Base Points only on the portion of the room rate that exceeds the value of the Oasis Stay Credit(s) redeemed, if any. A portion of an Eligible Rate may reflect taxes, service charges, gratuities, and third-party charges for certain included items, and those costs may not be eligible for points.
Interestingly, not even employees of a Hyatt Place in Houston know what is considered an eligible rate. “What’s not clear is what happens if you didn’t book directly with Hyatt and want breakfast”, according to this article written by Stephen Pepper — who decided to test the new policy for himself — of Frequent Miler. “I called the front desk to ask how much breakfast costs in that scenario, but they didn’t know. They advised that I’d have to call Reservations in order to get a breakfast price which seems bizarre.”
I stayed at the Hyatt Place Richmond/Chester hotel property earlier this year, which included the free breakfast. Although a trip report and review is in the pipeline as to the experience of my stay, I found the breakfast underwhelming at best — especially as it paled significantly in comparison to a competing hotel property only a few miles down the same road in Chester in Virginia: the Hampton Inn Chester, at which I declared that I arguably had the best breakfast ever at a Hampton Inn.
Summary
If you are not a member of the World of Hyatt program, you can simply take a moment to sign up for free and then book that “eligible rate” directly with Hyatt, which most likely is attempting to cut out the middleman third party entity to whom it would not have to pay a fee to get you as a customer.
As for if I were to stay in Chester again, I would have no question as to which hotel property I would choose again — especially if breakfast were a factor in the decision.
Photograph ©2018 by Brian Cohen.
