It pays to stay at hotels over the holidays (as an elite)!

Gosh, in terms of value, this trip has been unbeatable. I spent two nights at the Hyatt Regency Mainz for 108 Euro/night including tax. Because they’re short staffed during the holidays, the club lounge was closed in the mornings, though open in the evenings. In place of the meager breakfast in the club lounge, we were allowed to have breakfast in the restaurant for free, which would have retailed for 27 Euro/person. And it really was a fantastic spread. So while you always get restaurant breakfast when the lounge is closed at Hyatt hotels, we had the best of both worlds — we got the restaurant breakfast and the evening club lounge appetizers. The highlight had to be watching the crews of a major Asian airline at breakfast every morning, and how they interacted. While the flight attendants (with the exception of one older flight attendant, who I assume was the purser) all sat together, the pilots sat separately alone in the corner.

The InterContinental Frankfurt has been even better. For the first night I used a reward night, and for the second night I was on a 107 Euro rate. The club lounge has been open throughout the stay, though not serving anything other than the drinks in the fridge, except for the first night, where there was normal service. Instead, we’ve gotten restaurant breakfast every morning (retails for about 25 Euro/person), and the highlight no doubt was this evening, where we got to enjoy their restaurant Christmas buffet. As a club guest you got a table at the sold out 52 Euro/person buffet. Not a shabby deal at all!

And I’ll say that I’m quite happy to be returning to the US in the morning after a Nutella-pretzel-Fanta-wienerschnitzel overdose for the past several days.