Hah: Hyatt Club Lounge Requires OpenTable Reservations

I don't think these private OpenTable reservation links would earn points in OT's program 🙁

Those points haven’t been useful in a decade or more

Yuck! The lounges aren’t that great that I’d want plan ahead for it. I think I’d contact the hotel and ask for complimentary breakfast at the main restaurant instead of lounge access.

When everybody is an "elite", nobody is. It works for hotels the same as it does for airlines. The status and its perks are too easy to acquire.

WRT "I’ve heard of some hotels in Asia limiting lounge access"

Irvine = closest thing to Asia in North America.

If the lounge is consistently overcrowded, this sounds like a reasonable solution.
There is no point in making 100 people show up when they can only accommodate 50 people.

I guess you haven't been to Richmond, Canada, a suburb of Vancouver.

They must have implemented this policy fairly recently. I was there last fall - it's a brand new lounge, and definitely one of the nicer ones! Busy but not overcrowded when I visited. I'm not a Globalist but I used Club Access awards, totally worth it in this case. Word must have gotten out!

Ben Schlappig, please be advised that subversive elements are being allowed to bring your website into disrepute.
By not providing sufficient monitoring of the website comments, by not putting sufficiently robust measures in place to prevent a user from hijacking the login credentials of someone else, you are endangering your business and your good name.
It has been clear for all to see that certain individuals have been bullying and harassing Tim Dunn on your site. As a result you suspended the victim, while allowing those responsible for the harassment to move onto other targets.
For your own protection and to ensure compliance with your responsibility to other website users, you might like to consider strengthening your website policy.
It will be a great shame if you allow the bullies to continue to control your website content by intimidation and the dissemination of terrorist propaganda.

This is total bs. Traveling on business (and why else would I be in Irvine), there's no way I'm making a breakfast reservation for the lounge. If the lounge is too crowded, they should send people to the restaurant for breakfast. The basic cause of the problem is they only have about six small tables indoors, all of them 2 tops.

I told them that if they implemented this, I would stop staying at this property, and that's simply a fact. It's not like the lounge breakfast is any good - typically meh HR lounge spread.

Sounds like a breach of the terms of both the loyalty programme and any reservation made with lounge access. If confronted with this policy at check-in I would immediately cancel and walk out.

How can people put up with this on top of the ludicrous puritanical/money-grabbing charging for alcohol via honor bars?!

Clearly a hotel to avoid at all costs.

You sure you're not a bot?

As someone who stayed there earlier this month, crowding at this lounge is not remotely an issue. Hotel was sold out during my stay, lounge was mostly empty all day. There's also no public link to reserve this on OpenTable, so it's probably a private link due to something odd happening --- or a spam email not actually from the hotel.

Have you been to this lounge? They have way more than 6 tables inside, and nearly all of them have more than 2 seats.

Dumb approach to the problem. Open table costs the hotel for each reservation, versus simply requring reservations during peak times which can be managed by the hotel.

Yes, becoming very common across Asia. Seen it in Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Japan. However, I think this is only a real problem at opening when there is a surge.

I'd love to be turned away as a Globalist as I'd insist on using the restaurant, which isn't allowed when there is a lounge.

Or anywhere in SGV

Great solution and I really like (not) the entitled people that feel so offended. Just book it around your schedule. No big deal. BTW it isn’t all about you - they are trying to ensure everyone gets access for a reasonable time.

I stayed at the Sheraton Grand in Taipei recently. They have a great lounge with Western and Asian breakfast plus a happy hour with free drinks and a mix of Asian and Western foods (we never left for dinner over 5 days - it was that good). They time you during the afternoon happy hour ( 1 1/2 hour limit as I recall) which is more than enough)

“Why else would I be in Irvine?”

Ugh such a white supremacist take

He’s not, he’s English which I respect actually. I’ve never met an unrefined Englishman

Taiwan is China. You don’t need to list it out separately. It’s like saying you took a trip to Washington DC and the US.

I can see the reasoning and I don't think it's a huge deal if the lounge is consistently that crowded. Only lounge I've ever been in that was that crowded though was the Prince Sakura Tower in Tokyo, and even then we got a table pretty quick for our breakfast.

Why don’t you just stick to your fake profit per equity partner story and leave the discussion to the adults?

Uh oh. I have a reservation at GH San Diego in early June for a conference. That place was a zoo pre-Covid. Lounges in hotels are *worse* now? I guess I'll be taking things back to the room.

I stay here at least once a month and have not received this e-mail. The club is very nice and while the food service has been cut back just a notch since it opened, it's still quite good for a domestic RC. The hotel seems to be popular with families. I'll keep an eye out for this.

You think my story is fake?

You consider yourself an adult?

Charles, you’re an overgrown manchild who will go to hell, and for you it will be a crowd of Chinese, or, okay, if you must, Taiwanese, women with diarrhea splattering all over you 24/7.

Doesn't say that they have to pay for the reservation, just make one.

Imagine someone claiming to make that much as an equity partner wasting their valuable time calling strangers on the internet a manchild. If we’re just making unsubstantiated claims now, how about this. I will offer $25 Million to Arps if he can post actual, verifiable proof that he’s an equity partner at Skadden making anything close to what he claims.

I think you'd be surprised how emotional stunted and petty rich people can be.

Every hotel hosting a conference is a zoo.

Is it the credit cards that give status which leads to the overloads?

Your editorialization in the title adds nothing to the article.

I think we will see more and more high-end properties build a separate, exclusive, lounge (but not call it a lounge) that can be used to provide an actual premium experience for their guests who are actually paying for suites, while shifting the club lounge to truly be a bare minimum "meets the franchise standards" offering. Accessibility to the base level club lounge is too widespread and becoming a massive drain on hotels, but they still have a desire to appeal to the well-heeled clients.

Some hotels I have stayed at have a more simple solution with guests being asked to choose a time slot and being given a card...

Usually, folks take their food and beverage back to their room. That and there aren’t usually that many elites to cause overcrowding at the same time. It does happen though but not at every hotel.

Once again your editorialization degrades the title

I recently drove past this hotel, there are much better places to stay in the area