Hyatt’s Hôtel du Louvre in Paris all of a sudden stopped offering free night awards on points. Searching for stays, it appears the King Standard Room was gone entirely, and all rooms at the hotel that were for sale came with views. And those rooms aren’t standard rooms eligible for redemption.
I reached out to Hyatt to see what was going on, and whether the hotel was compliant with Hyatt’s rules since I wasn’t able to find a single free night award in the coming year. Up until the end of May awards were easy to come by.
Hyatt shares that the issue is the hotel’s renovation, specifically affecting the base level rooms at the hotel.
[S]tandard rooms are more limited right now as many have been removed from inventory during some external renovations to the building façade that are on-going through the rest of this year and into next year. We anticipate that the work will be completed by Summer 2023 and standard room inventory will resume normal levels.
I asked them to point to any dates on the calendar where one is available. They didn’t, but said award space does exist.
[Awards] do still exist and we are working with the hotel to see if we can get additional room types (non-façade facing) added to the list of standard rooms. We anticipate higher inventory in the next several weeks.
Hotels are usually required to offer some rooms as standard inventory, bookable using points. We can expect to see an additional room type offered on points – better than the usual standard rooms – soon enough. That means for a period of time, once this happens, Hyatt points should be worth more than usual at this property since they’ll book into better rooms for the same price.
There’s some disagreement, though, on whether there is actually any award space at the moment. I haven’t been able to find any and the hotel General Manager reportedly shares that standard room inventory is currently zeroed out,
Indeed, all our standard rooms are currently closed. We are facing technical issues in these rooms and we will be launching renovations of these rooms from January for several months. We will be reopening these rooms once the renovations will be completed, most probably from August next year.
I’d probably bet on end of summer rather than by summer for when normal award inventory can be booked for stays at the Hôtel du Louvre.
Meanwhile it’s a shame award stays cannot be booked at this hotel right now, since it’s one of the few (~ 10%) properties eligible for the 20% points rebate offer for Chase Hyatt consumer cardmembers.
Thanks for following up on this. Seems like a pretty obvious attempt to circumvent the program rules.
It’s incredibly hard to believe that the only rooms impacted are the ones eligible for point-stays. This hotel was just renovated a couple years ago before taking up the Hyatt flag. That renovation included the facade.
Seems ridiculous. This is one of the better properties in Paris. Preferable to PH actually. Their second floor junior suites have 20 ft ceilings.
Similar problem I am seeing at Hyatt Regency Étoile.
Oh well…..
Someting is rotten in Denmark or in this case Paris and it’s yet another
World of Hyatt scam regarding redemption rooms
There Was a time Hyatt wouldn’t allow this
Oh no! Matthew reports the excuse is spreading to other hotels!
To the barricades!
I can’t believe Hyatt lets properties get away with this…. really impacts the image of the program.
Andaz Maui does almost the same game, somehow the base room type almost never available but the next room category not available on points but likely more or less the exact same room is available for a cash booking.
The Hyatt Centric Jumeirah Dubai is another not releasing any points rooms at the normal level only suites
As all the other big players move to floating award charts with increasingly limited room availability, Accor’s Southwest-like ‘use points for a cash discount for any room at most room rates’ structure is starting to become more attractive. I recently used Accor points to cover 2/3 of the bill for a suite in a twee Alps ski village property while the Tour de France is in town. Any other award program would have zero award availability within 24 hours of when the race route was announced.
Also noticing no availability at The Cellars Hohenort in Cape Town
In May, I stayed at two Paris Hyatt’s using Hyatt points.
Hotel Madeleine was a small zero-view room for 28,000 points per night.
Park Hyatt Paris was a best-in-house non-suite room with balcony for 42,500 points night.
Since rack rate for these rooms is 800-1200 euros per night, I thought the Park Hyatt Paris was a reasonable redemption value.
En route to Paris, I stayed at the nice but pretty standard Montreal Centreville Hilton Garden Inn for 33,000 points per night, which I thought a pretty mediocre redemption.
Capital One double miles points transfer 1:1 to Hyatt, and purchase eraser pays for cash hotel stays when cash rates are more favorable than points redemption rates, so Capital One is what I am accumulating for hotel stays ATM
Note that the Madeleine does not participate in Hyatt’s suite upgrade program. I much prefer the Madeleine location to the Louvre location. Much quieter/calmer and fewer tourists.
Hotel is very much in need of renovations. Stayed there before the pandemic, and no air conditioning in late May. Very uncomfortable. Carpet was tired., as were room furnishings.
@Mike Feldman: Cap One doesn’t transfer to Hyatt
I’ve previous stated at this hotel. The location is the ONLY thing good about this place. Nothing spectacular and there are many other hotels in Paris that offer much more than the Hyatt. JMO and of course, YMMV
This is a great hotel and we stayed for seven days in March 2022, Perfect location and the Empire Suite is perfect for a family with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and large living room. Was easily worth the cash price. The room had been renovated and the staff went way above and beyond to make my twin daughter’s birthday special.
@Matthew That’s interesting. I saw regular rooms available on points there (Hyatt Regency Etoile) yesterday, but they seem to be gone today. It’s only showing club access rooms and suites for the same dates now.
At some point next year hotels are going to wake up to the fact that revenge travel is over, a global recession has set in, and business travelers don’t have to necessarily travel like they did before. That’s when they realize…”Oh, crap, now what?”
In the meantime they will have angered anyone who was once loyal, alienated their core, and be begging for whatever rates they can offer on the cheap. I, for one, will remember those properties that maintained integrity throughout (Park Hyatt Vienna as an example). The rest, I will never forget what they did and will never go back.
Stayed in that hotel last June, seems just finished a round of renovation.