An Interesting (Annoying?) Quirk Of Hyatt Club Access Awards

Using Multiple Hyatt Club Access Awards

The Hyatt Club Access award does not get a lot of fanfare. If you have Globalist status then they seem kind of useless / redundant (although you may be wrong about that). It seems like more and more hotels are shuttering their lounges too. Then you throw in the addition of Guest of Honor awards, and lounge access certificates are kind of left in the dust. Well, I just so happened to need to dust mine off, but I ran into an issue during the process. If you are like me, then using multiple Hyatt Club Access Awards on a booking may not go the way you think it will.

My Situation

We have an upcoming stay where there is a lounge available. It is an all inclusive hotel, so I didn’t really look into it at the time of booking. I figured there wouldn’t be much to it with free food and drinks everywhere, but I change my mind when doing a little pre-trip snooping. It may still end up being nothing, but I figured I have the Hyatt club access awards – so why not use them? If it ends up being a decent spot that is less crowded, then great. If not, then I won’t really miss the lounge access certificates anyway. Our friends traveling with us are Globalist as well, so I know they’ll have access.

Reaching Out To World Of Hyatt

I decided to reach out to Hyatt customer service to have the awards attached to both of our rooms. We try to avoid cramming the four of us into one room as much as possible these days. I guess you could say that we have kind of aged out of that mess of a situation.

Booking two rooms makes even more sense at an all-inclusive hotel. Most of them charge for more than two people in the room, so I would rather just book two rooms with points. That is in part how I picked our destination. I was looking for an affordable Hyatt all-inclusive hotel location. That is a lot more difficult than it was three or so years ago by the way!

I settled on Dreams Karibana Cartagena Golf & Spa Resort. A hotel in a place I wanted to go anyway, and it was only 20,000 World of Hyatt points a night. A win-win in my book.

Running Into Issues

When I got a Hyatt customer service rep on the phone I figured this would be a pretty simple process. I was just trying to add Hyatt club access awards to multiple rooms after all. It should be just a few clicks here and there, right? Nope. I forgot about Hyatt’s terrible IT situation.

After some back and forth, the customer service agent said she could only add the lounge access certificates to one of the rooms. The other room would have to be in someone else’s name to add it. I thought that was kind of a dumb rule. They are my certificates, and I booked two rooms – what does it matter if I use two lounge access awards?

The Workaround – Didn’t Work

She said there was a workaround to this “issue” though. I could transfer the Hyatt club access awards to someone else in the traveling party, and then we would be able to use them on multiple rooms. She would have to change the room reservation to that person’s name to pull this off. I knew that would be where we hit a snag, but I hoped they could work some magic on the backend.

After a few minutes on hold she came back and said they couldn’t make the second room work. I figured this may be the case because the hotel has a terrible 30 day cancellation window (which we were within). My thinking was they would likely need to cancel the room and rebook it under my wife’s name. I imagine their system doesn’t let them just swap out the names / accounts easily on a reservation.

They had to even rebook the first room at a higher rate to get the club access award attached. Because all Hyatt awards (like a suite upgrade awards) require a re-booking versus just flipping a switch. That could cost you extra points if you’re not paying attention.

In Part, My Laziness Led To This

Looking back on all of this, I realized I could have done better with this booking. I should have transferred my wife points to book the second room initially. That would have gotten her account the Dreams brand explorer from it. I just didn’t want to jump through the hoops of transferring points to do it. If points transfers had been online already (supposed to be coming this year) then this would not have been an issue.

That would have given me the proper set up to quickly transfer a Hyatt club access award over to her World of Hyatt account. We could have then booked multiple rooms into the lounge with our access certificates.

Hyatt Club Access Awards Rules

Just for fun I did a little digging after my phone call. I wasn’t sure if the rep was just misinformed at first, but there were multiple reports of having issues booking multiple rooms with Hyatt club access certs on Reddit. They came up with the same solution that the customer service agent did.

I think the horrible 30 day cancellation window from the hotel likely got in the way. I guess I could have tried to push harder for them to pull it off, but it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. We’ll have to see how closely they monitor people coming into the lounge when we are there.

After that I decided to look at the terms of one of my certificates to see if this was mentioned:

• Reservations for Club Access Award redemption are subject to availability.
• Club Access Award is redeemable only at participating Hyatt hotels and resorts that have a Club lounge and is not valid at Miraval, Caption by Hyatt, Hyatt House, Hyatt Place, Me and All Hotels, Hyatt Studios, Destination by Hyatt Residences, or Hyatt Vacation Club hotels and resorts.
• Access to a hotel or resort’s Club lounge is subject to the individual hotel or resort’s lounge maximum capacity.
• Club Access Award is valid for access to the Club lounge on nights for which the Member has paid an Eligible Rate or has redeemed points for a standard-room Free Night Award, Suite Free Night Award, or a Points + Cash Award (as those terms are defined in the World of Hyatt program terms), up to a maximum of seven (7) consecutive nights.
• Club Access Awards must be redeemed for the entirety of the Member’s stay and are redeemable only when Club Lounge access is available for the entire length of the Member’s stay.
• Not valid in connection with any Free Night Award other than those identified above, including, without limitation, Hyatt Credit Card premium and anniversary Free Night Awards, Brand Explorer Free Night Awards (as defined in the World of Hyatt program terms), or any other promotional Free Night Award.
• Breakfast will not be provided to a member at participating hotels or resorts without Club lounge access available.
• Club Access Award is not redeemable in connection with hotels or resorts that have not yet opened when you make your reservation, even if reservations for such hotel or resort are otherwise being accepted.

Something Is Missing Here

I didn’t see anything about only being able to use it on one room per stay. I even checked the main World of Hyatt terms page and didn’t see it in there. To be fair, I didn’t read the terms cover to cover and could have missed it.

Can we also mention how these should be breakfast certificates? With so many lounges closed it would make earning these a lot more enticing. The fact that it is called out in terms means that will likely never happen. Plus, I have asked Hyatt a few times about it already.

Using Multiple Hyatt Club Access Awards: Final Thoughts

Yes, not being able to use multiple Hyatt club access awards on one booking is a dumb rule. The silver lining is that at least there is a work around for it. As long as you are not lazy like me that is! Booking the extra rooms under a different World of Hyatt member, and transferring your lounge access certificate to them, is the way to pull this off. We should be able to use them on as many rooms as we want! Until then, this is the way.

Let me know if you have run into a similar issue trying to use multiple club access awards down below, or over in the MTM Facebook Group.