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My wife, son, and I recently returned from a four night stay at the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht hotel. It was great. It’s a great hotel in a fantastic location. We had to book two rooms for our stay. Regular rooms only accommodate two people and there were no regular suites available that could be booked with points or with upgrade instruments. And the suites that were available were far more expensive than two regular rooms. This may be the only area in which I wish Hyatt would follow Marriott’s lead and allow booking rooms with points plus a cash copay to cover room upgrades (see:Hotel award booking for 3 in London. Marriott to the rescue.)
The Room Rate
The Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht is a category 6 hotel, so they charge 25,000 points per night for a standard room. They would alternatively charge 40,000 points per night for a standard suite, but none were available for our stay (and yes, I checked paid rates to make sure that was true — it was).
The room rate at the time I booked was $341 per night all-in (e.g. after taxes). That meant that a points-stay would get only 1.36 cents per point value. With Hyatt points I can usually do much better. Plus, I was able to book a room through the Citi Prestige Concierge in order to get the fourth night free. That brought my per-night average down to only $256. Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t currently have a Prestige card and they only allow one room to be booked with this benefit per stay.
I tried a number of hotel discount sites and other tricks to lower the second room’s price, but with no success. In the end I decided to book the second room with points. I didn’t get great value that way, but I did get to do an experiment that might help readers…
Globalist Bookings
Hyatt gives their top tier elites full free breakfast every day of their stay for up to two people per room. In order to secure free breakfast for all of us, I needed to book both rooms as a top-tier Hyatt Globalist, but I’m merely a Hyatt Explorist. In a hotel with a lounge, Explorist status isn’t bad. Explorists do get 4 lounge upgrade certificates each year. But this hotel has no lounge. So, I needed another option.
Guest of Honor Approach
Hyatt offers a unique benefit to their top tier Globalists. Globalists can book award stays for their friends under the Hyatt Guest of Honor program. When an award stay is booked this way, the friend (me, in this case) is supposed to get all of the same benefits that a Globalist would get during their stay. Plus, Hyatt allows free point transfers to friends once per month. So, the trick is to transfer points to a Globalist friend and have them book your stay under the Guest of Honor program.
I’ve written about this benefit before: How to get Hyatt Diamond benefits without status. When I had top tier status, I even booked a few awards for friends using this benefit. But I never experienced the benefit from the other side. Would I really be treated like a top tier guest? While it worked out well for my friends, I’ve read complaints from people who did not get the benefits they expected. I wanted to experience this myself.
Keep in mind that this approach only works for award stays. I checked that awards were available and then asked a Globalist friend to book it for me. He had enough points in his account to float the award for me so that I could pay him back later.
Second Guest Approach
Another option for borrowing elite status is to have an elite friend book a stay (paid or award, it doesn’t matter) and explicitly add you as a second person to the room. It’s a good idea for the elite friend to have the hotel add a note to the reservation stating that you will be arriving first and have permission to check in. When you check in, you then use your own credit card to pay for the stay. If all goes well you will enjoy elite benefits during the stay and you’ll earn credit card points. And your elite friend will earn hotel points for your stay plus elite nights to help them re-qualify for next year’s status. When it works, it’s a win-win. I have heard some tales of this sort of thing going wrong, but I believe that it usually works fine.
| UPDATE 3/2/2018: This approach is NOT recommended. Hyatt has recently sent emails to Globalists who have booked stays this way warning them that their accounts may be closed down if they continue to book reservations for others without showing up in person. See: Hyatt cracks down on second guest approach to sharing status. |
Second Guest Approach… With a 4th Night Free Twist
In my case, in order to get the 4th night free, I had to book the stay myself through Citi under my own name and Hyatt account. I emailed Citi Concierge (instructions here) to book the stay. Within hours they replied with confirmed booking details.
Next, I changed the primary guest on the reservation to my Globalist friend. This was super easy. I needed my confirmation number and my friend’s full name, address, and Hyatt number. I sent Hyatt Concierge a direct message on Twitter to request the change. It was done within a few minutes:
Now I had a great little experiment. At a single hotel I would check into two rooms and both should get Globalist benefits. In one room we would use the Guest of Honor approach and in the second we would use the Second Guest approach (for lack of a better name). Plus, I would get the 4th night free for the second room.
Check In Experience
When we checked into the hotel at the beginning of our stay, Henry (I don’t remember his actual name — it might have been Henry) had no trouble finding both reservations. He mentioned that one room was booked as a Guest of Honor. For the second room he looked up my status and said that he saw that I was an Explorist. He then apologized sincerely for not upgrading our rooms. He said that they always upgrade rooms (presumably for mid to top tier elites), but that every single room in the hotel was booked solid. I offered to trade in both rooms for a single suite, but he declared that every single suite was booked too. This was true. I had checked earlier that day.
Interestingly, even though one of the rooms was booked under my friend’s name as the primary guest, Henry never asked about him. He checked us into both rooms with the assumption that there would be just the three of us.
Henry then led us to our rooms on the third floor. The room booked with points was an interior room with a pretty darn cool atrium view, and the other had a view of their garden. We put our son in the interior room. On the way to the rooms Henry said that our son’s room comes with free breakfast since it was booked under the Guest of Honor program. Confusingly he then said that since there was only one guest in the room we were only supposed to get one free breakfast, but he had set it up to allow for two. That way, he said, we can get 2 of our 3 breakfasts for free.
Wait… what? I told Henry that the other room was booked under my friend’s name and that since he was a Globalist we should get free breakfast with both rooms. Henry nodded and said “I changed that room to be under your name so that you would earn the points… I’ll put it back.”
Breakfast
While this isn’t a review (I’ll get to that in a future post), I’ll mention that service during our first breakfast could best be described as complete chaos. We found out later that a woman who works at the restaurant is absolutely awesome and seems to be the key to keep everything running smoothly. She wasn’t there that first morning.
The Andaz charges a whopping 35 Euro for their full breakfast, which includes a buffet plus a hot item from the menu. When different servers asked for our room number (this was part of the chaos), I was careful to say that my wife and I were in room 319 and my son was in room 310. Since we were only allowed two free breakfasts per room it was important to clarify this.
Eventually, the bill was brought to our table: 35 Euro for our son’s breakfast. I didn’t think this was strange. Some hotels charge for breakfast and then later remove the charge for their top tier elites. But then I asked about the bill for our room and was told that our breakfast was free so we wouldn’t get a bill. Uh oh. I decided to deal with that issue later. I knew from experience that upon check-out it is usually easy to get these issues resolved.
On all future breakfasts, the system worked perfectly. We gave both room numbers and were able to walk out at the end of the meal without receiving a bill.
Upon check-out, the agent quickly removed the one breakfast charge when I pointed out. I asked why it was there and she said that it was because only one person was in that room and we had charged two breakfasts to it. I think that the guy who keyed in our breakfast details that first day had messed up. No big deal.
Wrap Up
While we encountered very minor hiccups in the process, both approaches worked well. I believe that both rooms would have been upgraded if any upgrades were available, but I can’t prove that. If just one upgrade was available, I got the sense that it would have gone to the paid stay rather than the points stay, but that’s just conjecture. The one guaranteed benefit for our stay, free breakfast, was delivered as expected.
| UPDATE 3/2/2018: The second guest approach is NOT recommended. Hyatt has recently sent emails to Globalists who have booked stays this way warning them that their accounts may be closed down if they continue to book reservations for others without showing up in person. See: Hyatt cracks down on second guest approach to sharing status. |
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[…] I had the opportunity to try out both approaches described above (Guest of Honor and Second Guest approach) at the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht hotel. While there were a couple of hiccups, overall it worked out great. Please see the full story here: Borrowing Hyatt top tier status: Experimenting with two approaches. […]
Will the Borrowing work with SPG? My Platinum status has ended for a while. My grown son has SPG Platinum. If I transfer points to him , and he books a room, with me as the second guest, will my wife and I be able to check in and receive Platinum benefits, upgrade and breakfast. We have a big trip to Europe in the planning stage.
I’d expect it to work, but keep in mind that not everyone has as smooth of an experience as I did.
I have needed to get two rooms for several years with Hyatt. They offer a second room at half price of the standard room rate if you pay for the first room at any available rate i.e. AAA, etc. (no points reservations though). You just have to call in the reservation and ask for the family rate on the second room!
That’s an awesome tip! Thank you!
[…] Some good info about Hyatt in this post: Borrowing Hyatt top tier status. […]
I think the globalist benefit is 2 adults and 2 kids breakfast per room. We booked 4 rooms at Hyatt Regency Cartagena (3 with points, 1 pts/cash) – I’m the globalist and used my points – everyone got a suite upgrade and club access – we were a party of 9. As a Cat 2 hotel – it’s a steal. 4 out of 6 nights we ate dinner for free in the lounge. See you in Chicago in October!
Yes you’re right that it is 2 adults and 2 kids breakfast per room. In my case my son is too old to be counted as a kid.
Utilizing a program to its full benefit, even finding loopholes, is the reason we all do this hobby. What Is explained here is defrauding the company by booking a room that no globalist had any intention of entering and bragging about eating breakfast you weren’t entitled to and then complaining about the service you didn’t pay for. Just because you didn’t get caught shoplifting doesn’t mean you didn’t steal.
This was very disappointing to read.
Holy crap. Was just at Hyatt andaz Amsterdam too , wonder if we were there at same time. Had to burn 2 free hyatt nights from signup bonus so decided to use em there.
By atrium do you mean the room facing the checkin station? I wasn’t a huge fan of that myself … plus we were in the (2nd) floor so basically 20ft away from the staff haha at all times which was kind of weird.
Cool side note , Jim harbaugh was staying at the hotel at the same time as we were.
We were there Friday through Tuesday. Yep, saw Jim Harbaugh while we were having breakfast and discussing our son about to go to U of M! I was going to introduce myself, but then he disappeared and I never saw him again. At least we got a good photo of our son with Harbaugh in the background 🙂
By atrium I mean the part of the hotel that you see as you go up/down the elevator.
Why not just stay at the Hyatt Regency Amsterdam? They have a club lounge, maybe suites, as well.
On a separate note, failing to add the letter “s” to pluralize euro is one my big pet peeves.
How many dollar did your hotel cost?
I picked the Andaz based on reviews and recommendations.
Regarding plural euro vs. euros, it seems that both are correct. This is from Wikipedia:
Official practice for English-language EU legislation (not necessarily in national legislation[1]) is to use the words euro and cent as both singular and plural.[4] This practice originally arose out of legislation intended to ensure that the banknotes were uncluttered with a string of plurals. Because the s-less plurals had become “enshrined” in EU legislation, the Commission decided to retain those plurals in English in legislation even while allowing regular plurals in other languages.[20] The Directorate-General for Translation now recommends that the regular plurals, euros and cents, be used.[21] The European Commission Directorate-General for Translation’s English Style Guide (a handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission) previously recommended the use of regular plurals for documents intended for the general public but now has no restriction on usage.
Prior to 2006, the inter-institutional style guide recommended use of euro and cent without the plural s, and the translation style guide recommended use of invariant plurals (without s) when amending or referring to original legislation but use of regular plurals in documents intended for the general public.[22]
There has been a limited development of the term “eurozoner”, as a demonym for people in the eurozone. Although it began to appear at the turn of the 2000s, its usage is still rare.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]
Get ems coach
Just because there is an active debate about which is a better way to go doesn’t mean saying “10 euro” does not make you sound like a pretentious weirdo
I don’t mind sounding like a pretentious weirdo
I’ve had trouble sharing my status at times. Normally if it is my wife it is not a problem, but if I make the reservation in my name and add a friend, the friend frequently runs into issues of getting the benefits. I am glad it worked out for you.
This is weird. Points and stay credits from the paid stay posted to my account today. That’s not good for my friend.
Very weird. So you were able to get the breakfast/glob benefits, but the points/stay still posted to your account?
Yep
I just returned from five nights at the Hyatt Regency Coconut point. I’m Globalist and booked one room for my family on a paid rate and another room for my sister’s family using points and called WoH to have them put the room in her name as a Guest of Honor. It was a supervisor at WoH globalist line who made the Guest of Honor change, so I assume that part was done correctly. However, when my sister arrived at the hotel several hours before me, they did not give her club access and when she asked they said she was ineligible. I don’t think she pushed back too much since we were arriving later in the day and she figured I would take care of it. When I arrived and found out about the problem after checking in, I called down to the front desk to ask them about it, and they and they said that room was under a different profile than mine and thus not eligible/connected to Globalist benefits. After some persistence on my part, they put me on hold and came back and said they could extend the benefits to that room, but it sounded like they thought they were doing me a favor. When I lose globalist status next year, I would like to be able to find a globalist friend who could help me out, but this experience makes me wary. If I hadn’t been there on site or was unavailable for any reason my sister would have been out of luck. Next time I will try calling the property directly to confirm that the globalist benefits are noted before my guest of honor arrives.
I’ve heard stories like this (that’s why I wanted to try it myself). In general, I’d recommend asking to speak with a supervisor. If that doesn’t work, try sending a direct message to Hyatt Concierge via Twitter.
The Guest of Honor program works with points and cash, too. I’ve been able to book Guest of Honor points and cash reservations, as well as award nights.
Maybe you got someone new. It’s not supposed to work that way. It’d be awesome if it did though.
That’s surprising. Who earned the points and stay credit?
I’ve done it a few times. The friend gets the stay credit and the globalist benefits, and pays the cash part at the hotel.
So when this was booked over the phone, you specifically said Guest of Honor? The bookings you describe above sounds like the second person method that Greg described above where the second person is checking in first.
I specifically said over the phone that I’d like to make a Guest of Honor reservation, using points and cash. My friend got free breakfast, was upgraded to a suite for his last night, and got 4 nights credit, noted on his bill at check out.
Thanks Jenny, that’s great to know!
Very helpful post Greg. I’m not sure the second person approach would work in Asia though, especially Japan. When I checked in at the various Hyatts in Japan (and other Asia hotels), they always ask to see the passports of all guests registered to the room. I did something similar for a friend that was staying at the HR Tokyo.
Because my name was on the reservation, they needed to see my passport later on even though my friend was checking first. They let my friend check in, but they didn’t forget about me. I understand Japan is very by the books, so it makes sense. I expected this. I was at Tokyo at the same time, but at a different hotel close by. I was able to come, but I’m not sure what would’ve happened if I wasn’t there. Maybe this will work in Europe, but I’m not sure about Asia.
Thanks for that info Angie. Yes, I’ve heard that Asia can be more difficult but I haven’t tried it myself.
“They would alternatively charge 40,000 points per night for a standard suite, but none were available for our stay (and yes, I checked paid rates to make sure that was true — it was).”
Does this statement mean to imply that Hyatt is obligated to allow someone to book a standard suite using reward points if it is available on a cash basis? I ask because I recently tried to do exactly this — book a standard suite on points, after confirming that suites were available for cash rates — but was told that no suites were available for award bookings. If this is contrary to Hyatt policy, it would be useful for me to know (and if there is any language in any T&C’s I can point to, even better!).
No, I don’t think they’re obligated to make suites available, but you can often get them to open them up if they are available.
Does that mean your friend ends up getting the points and stay credit for your paid room? If so, I should offer to do this for a lot more of my friends.
He should have earned points and stay credit, but something messed up and I got the points and credit instead.