File this under old news that I never thought to share, but a Shutterwhale post caught our eye this morning and was a good reminder that this tip is worth sharing: The Hyatt Twitter team is no longer capable of converting reservations to Guest of Honor bookings. Hyatt cites this as a change to protect privacy, but I’ve found it disappointing since I first ran into this back in April. You will unfortunately need to call or email to transfer an award to someone else.
Again, this isn’t a new development, but the post from The Shutterwhale reminded me that we hadn’t posted about it.
For those unfamiliar, Hyatt’s Guest of Honor program is a way for Hyatt Globalists to treat friends or family to the elite experience at Hyatt. Globalist members can make an award booking for a friend or family member and designate it as a “Guest of Honor” booking, which means that the recipient will receive Globalist benefits on the stay (including free breakfast or lounge access, guaranteed 4pm late checkout, free parking, etc). This can be an awesome way to treat someone to an extra special stay. Note that only award bookings can be turned into Guest of Honor bookings (not paid stays). It’s also worth mentioning that members without Globalist status can still transfer an award booking to someone else (we’ve previously written about gifting your free night certificate(s) to another member), but no elite benefits are transferred unless it is a Globalist Guest of Honor booking.
In the past, it was easily possible to make a booking on the website (or directly with the Twitter team) and then contact the Hyatt Concierge on Twitter to convert it to a Guest of Honor booking if you were ultimately booking the award stay for someone else. Unfortunately, since at least April, the Hyatt Concierge on Twitter has been unable to help with this. Again, they cite privacy concerns, though I’m not entirely sure I see what makes the Twitter team different than the phone or email team on this one.
The good news is that you can still call to do this (and I rarely ever have to wait when calling the Globalist line) or if you have a My Hyatt Concierge, you can reach out to them via email. I much preferred the near-instead turnaround time involved with contacting the Hyatt Concierge on Twitter and I find it inconvenient to have to call as I’m often making award reservations late at night or early in the morning when I’d rather not be on the phone disturbing those who are still asleep on the home front, but unfortunately this is just the way it is now apparently.
Ultimately, this isn’t a deal-breaker, it’s just a bit of a bummer for those of us who have long considered Hyatt’s Twitter team to be the Gold Standard by which other businesses should measure how they handle customer service (I’ve often said that Hyatt should sell social media training to other companies!). What I have long enjoyed about the Hyatt Concierge Twitter team is how they are empowered to get stuff done. Surely there is still plenty that they can do, but I hope Hyatt doesn’t intend to erode their powers further.
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With mobile check-in and mobile key, this is almost moot as anyone can get into the room with the Hyatt app.