The iconic Park Hyatt Tokyo, location for the Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson film Lost In Translation, is a favorite among World of Hyatt members. Globalist breakfast here is incredible, both in-restaurant and through allowable room service. And standard suites which are eligible for upgrade are lovely.
However it has become generally no longer possible to redeem points at this hotel. The hotel is one of the very worst in all of Hyatt for spending points.
A year from now they will close for a year to do a needed renovation. And that’s the reason being cited for why they continue to sell rooms, and host guests, but won’t accept World of Hyatt members spending points. I asked Hyatt to flesh out a bit more the logic here and this is what they shared:
As Park Hyatt Tokyo prepares for its upcoming renovation, the hotel anticipates that certain preparation work may prevent the hotel from offering guests in certain rooms the experience they have come to expect from Park Hyatt Tokyo.
In an effort to care for our guests, the hotel proactively removed those rooms, including all standard rooms, from both paid and award inventory as a precautionary step until it can determine if it can host guests in these rooms without any disturbances.
Park Hyatt Tokyo will continue to evaluate the impact of this preparation work and make this inventory available when it is confident it can provide guests with the proper Park Hyatt experience.
This might seem reasonable to some people: the hotel isn’t sure which rooms are going to be affected by work before construction begins when the hotel closes a year from now, so they’re limiting which rooms that they sell. Funny how it’s the award rooms that they’re taking out of service (and, in fact, we don’t know that these rooms aren’t going to be used by guests – just that they aren’t selling this room type).
Meanwhile they certainly know what their construction plans are for the next several weeks (I’d be surprised if the entirety of their standard room inventory is, in fact, affected) yet the hotel is restricting even much of their close-in inventory.
However the real takeaway here is that Hyatt doesn’t have rules requiring hotels make a minimum percentage of their rooms available for redemption. This is in contrast to Marriott which requires a hotel designate a minimum percentage of its inventory as ‘standard’ rooms that are available for redemption (except at ‘all suite’ hotels, which do not have to do this).
This is a loophole that is wide enough to drive a truck through and increasingly hotels that prefer not to host award guests are figuring out how to game the program. Simply taking a room type out of inventory for long-term renovation means, apparently, not having to make rooms available on points. The correct approach ought to be of course that a hotel offers at least a minimum percentage of its active inventory – whatever number of rooms that is – for redemption. Period.
Some Marriott properties have done something similar with suites. Suites are never available for free upgrades or on points because a property only makes suites sellable through the property directly, meaning they never show up in the Marriott room inventory.
@ Gary — Very un-Hyatt like. This is a great way to drive away business.
Well said.
Can you blame them? It’s basically only Americans who get this insane advantage of hundreds of thousands of points.
No offense, but I don’t want to stay at the PH with someone there on points they got at the Dolla Store.
Sara – can’t help it if we are the only ones with the wealth and opportunities to accumulate large sums of points.
Their bigger problem is all the tourist guidebooks send people there, so there are tons of people wearing t-shirt and jeans trying to hang out at the bar.
@Sara LOL! Those who can, do; those who can’t, whine in the comment section about those who are doing. Hahahaha
Keep working 100 hours a week just to barely afford a weekend at the PH while we continue to accumulate enough points with very little effort. Such a hater you are.
2808 Heavy – “keep working 100 hours a week” – lol, as a European I can only say we’re not the ones getting fat at the office while our bastard children are being gunned down in schools.
Good riddance.
Have never commented here before … but Sara, the U.S. is a country of over 300 million people. There’s no need to insult the entire population or even worse randomly target obese, diabetic and transgender people with hateful rhetoric. Please do better.
(If you want to attack individuals, go ahead I suppose … but the way you are insulting millions of people and minority groups is categorically hateful. I trust it was unintentional.)
I know some think Sara Smith is a troll, but I’m loving her comments. Americans really are diabetes addled piggies who love either gunning down their children or grooming them.
@Sara, we’re not getting fat at the office, we’re getting fat while partaking of our delicious breakfast that we get free from being a Globalist at the PH. LOL! But please, if you see us out in public, be polite and don’t stare, it’s rude!
There are enough great places to stay in Tokyo, so I personally don’t see this as a loss. Japan is just one of those places where even the budget properties are usually very good, and I see using points as being a waste assuming cash rates at these budget properties are cheap.
I don’t normally say this about Choice properties, but the ones in Tokyo are one of the few that I’m happy to stay at. When I went in 2016, the best value/location combination that I could get was at the Comfort Inn Tokyo Kanda, mostly thanks to the “Significant Organization Savings Rate”. It was around $85 USD per night for a twin room – and slightly less than that for a room with a double bed. It was worth the extra for a twin because the rooms with one bed did look pretty cramped, but the twin room was a decent size for Tokyo standards. It was quite basic in terms of amenities, but breakfast was actually very good.
I stayed in 3 star accommodation throughout my stay in Japan, and it varied wildly from very sleek and modern with few amenities to dated with tons of amenities. The shocker is that none of the places I stayed at were over 85 USD per night when I went – for single occupancy. The place I stayed at in Beppu was the cheapest, and it certainly was nothing to write home about, but for around $35 USD for this really tiny room (85 square feet – and at a hotel that doesn’t offer any non-smoking rooms!) it served its purpose – and I’d say I got great value because the hotel had its own Onsen, which, while basic and quite sulfury, was great to have. It wasn’t that much more than staying in a capsule hotel, and it was certainly a million times better because I didn’t even have to share a bathroom.
Having seen pictures of the Ritz-Carlton in Kyoto, I still think I would rather stay at the more modest (but still stunning) Hotel Anteroom Kyoto again. You could probably stay 4 or 5 nights at Hotel Anteroom for the cost of one night at the Ritz and still have a fantastic experience. All I can say is look it up – It really is as good as the photos show.
It just goes to show that you are probably best avoiding places like Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott while in Japan because you’re really not going to be spending that much time in the room anyway, and you can get a perfectly comfortable stay at some of these more budget-oriented places.
If you want to have an authentic Japanese experience, by all means go and stay at a fancy Ryokan for a night or two and spend your money on that, but I would probably never consider staying at a Hilton, Marriott, or Hyatt property in Japan because it’s just not worth it.
Those are my few cents.
Hyatt continues to aggressively market its World of Hyatt program and then make pathetic excuses why they have no inventory and let hotels continue their scams to say no standard rooms available.
My respect for this once great company has diminished vastly by their dishonesty.
In the non corporate world they are called thieves.This is simply greed on Hyatt’s part
Imagine if Hyatt was a bank and it decided when you could withdraw your balance.
Points are a currency and there has to be reasonable expectations.
If this was isolated to this hotel I could overlook it.Now add Hyatt Centric in Honolulu and a whole list of others as mentioned previously in View from a Wing and other social media sites.
I can’t speak for the rest of the membership base but I have put my money into other programs and no longer the 100 night a year guest I was for decades.There is a cost for dishonesty and I choose not be their honored victim going forward.
I stay in Hyatts for over 100 nights a year, almost exclusively on points, and regularly get >2cpp in value. This applies in urban, suburban, and rural hotels. It applies in aspirational properties and roadside Hyatt Places. It is absolutely insane to me to see the complaints in this thread.
Points are simply another type of currency, like Euros, USD, CNY, JPY, they are never really free because you have otherwise gotten other things, including cash, instead of points. I really dislike it when airlines and hotels call them “free”. They are not.
This has been going on for at least 9 months now. It has been impossible to book the PHT except on very last minute reservations since at least september/october 2022. Nevertheless I was able to blow my Globalist free night there in January and there are now better hotels in Tokyo. After 110+ nights at the Park Hyatt I even prefer the Centric over PHT at this point. New York Bar is nice but same thing, it lost it’s allure.
Hey Gary your comments section is a cesspool. Why don’t you fix
It?
Same in Milan. Park Hyatt and Hyatt centric have cash availability but refuse to allow award booking.
Just checked into the PH Tokyo (on points) for four nights. Honestly, this place is a DUMP. At least the common areas are nice. But wow, these rooms look to have almost everything original from the 80s. Surprised there’s not a VCR in the room.
Likely going to check out tomorrow and move to Grand Hyatt.
Huge waste of points and until it’s remodeled, not worth it. I feel like a dupe: they’ve been hoarding money for 40 years with almost no upgrades. Pure greed.
Good Day. Am I the only hotel worker on this thread? Sadly, this article is wrong. You assume that hotels don’t want to give free nights because they don’t collect revenue for them, but this isn’t right. Points on the hotel side of things are like one big pool of cash. When you stay and earn points, that hotel that you stayed at pays money into the pool. When you use your points, the hotel gets money out of the pool.
The reimbursement rate on a low occupancy night is usually lower than the hotels average rate, but it is not unsustainable and more than covers the room costs. All the major hotel chains (the ones that I have worked for) will pay out either the full average rate or nearly the full average rate at high occupancy. High occupancy is usually 85-90 percent.
I have worked in a hotel that was suites heavy and had a lot of points stays. Getting a lot of points stays was better than selling at standard rates because once you hit that high occupancy, you get the full rate reimbursed. As an example, let’s say I have 100 room hotel and all 30 of my rooms are point stays and 60 of my rooms are a mix of suites (higher rates) and standard rooms with and average rate of $375 – but my standard rooms are selling at $269. Those 30 standard rooms on points are reimbursement at $375.
If PK Tokyo is truly a popular place to use points on standard rooms and hitting occupancy thresholds, it is to their benefit to have you use your points.they actually make more money that way.
One last thing. Because of this reimbursement, chains can claim no blackouts on points and there is no mechanism to close out your hotel for points unless you truly take all of your standard rooms off market. Given that standard rooms account for at least 50% of any hotels inventory with most being 90-95% it would be unthinkable to do this unless you could not sell standard rooms – i.e. renovation.
In the future, I highly suggest you make a good friend with a hotel insider so you understand the system from the inside. With this knowledge you would see that the PK Tokyo is most likely being earnest about why you cannot use your points. I understand why you made this post as a traveler, but it just isn’t how hotels work.
@Gabriel W – “You assume that hotels don’t want to give free nights because they don’t collect revenue for them”
Not at all, I have written extensively on the revenue model for award redemption stays.
Roughly speaking: when a hotel is empty, they get low value compensation. When they’re full they get their average daily room rate. But that’s lower than what they can get selling last rooms on peak demand days.
@Andrew: As a Marriott Ambassador and IHG Diamond Ambassador, I played around with Hyatt for a year as a Globalist. In my experience, the vast majority of Hyatt properties were old and tired.
From Hyatt Place to Park Hyatt, the majority had that blonde wood decor that was popular about 20 years ago; think Nordic minimalist and assemble-yourself Ikea.
One of my last Hyatt full-service stays was burning a free night at the Park Hyatt in Washington, D.C. I was upgraded to one of their best suites. It was so outdated. The furniture looked like something assembled from a thrift shop.
Hyatt doesn’t seem to be investing in full-service brands. They seem to be pivoting completely toward limited-service brands, luxury resorts and all-inclusives.
I mean, Sara does have a point about how we Americans gun each other (including kids) down at schools, malls, banks, offices, homes, and everywhere else. But it’s okay, it’s just a mental health problem we have.
@Ryan what the hell does gunning down folks have to do with the topic of this article?
Just like @Sara, you both brought your own personal view of America into a conversation about hotels playing games with availability.
You should join @Sara in whatever country she resides in, and you both can coddle each other while talking shit about America. Kick rocks clown.
@FNT Delta Diamond – for somebody with the subtle brag that they stay in a lot of hotels, baffling you don’t understand the difference b/w hotel ownership and branding.
Sara is proud of being a “European”, but you can’t claim moral high ground to look down on other countries when you won’t even acknowledge your own nationality.
She wants to be a snob but sadly her xenophobia gets the best of her.
Is easy to point out what’s wrong with any country in the world. But this is not the blog for that.
@BonvoyedAgain: I do. But unlike IHG, Hilton or Marriott, Hyatt owns more properties across brands and manages a majority of its properties. Because Hyatt owns and manages more than other brands, there’s no excuse for old products.
Marriott only manages a majority of its high-end full-service brands because it doesn’t really franchise or license outside North America and the United Kingdom. If you see a full-service Marriott in the rest of Europe, Africa or Asia-Pacific, it is generally managed by Marriott.