With hotel club lounge crowding having become an increasingly common problem over the years, here’s an interesting way that one hotel is addressing that issue…
In this post:
One Hyatt Regency’s unique lounge access approach
LoyaltyLobby has the story of how the Hyatt Regency Irvine is sending an unusual email to those with access to the Regency Club. Specifically:
Please note: All guests, including children, must have an OpenTable reservation for breakfast and dinner to ensure access during these times.
Kindly use the link below to reserve your table:
[link]
- Parties larger than 5 guests or with multiple rooms will require separate reservations.
- Your table will be reserved for 45 minutes, and will have a 10 minutes grace period.
- A casual dress-code is welcomed; wet swimwear is not allowed. For the comfort of all guests, shoes and shirts are required while dining.
Let me emphasize that the above isn’t a public link, but based on searching online, it seems that private OpenTable reservations links are also a thing.
As you can see, the hotel essentially seems to be giving guests a 45-minute period where they can use the lounge in the mornings and evenings (the busiest periods), to control crowding.
This is the first report I’ve seen of this, so I imagine this is only used during over days with anticipated high demand. In these situations, I’m not sure if people are rejected if they don’t have a reservation, or a reservation just gets you preferential access.
I’ve heard of some hotels in Asia limiting lounge access to a pre-determined length during the evening happy hour, and requiring reservations, when crowding is an issue. But I haven’t heard about this yet in the United States, and also haven’t heard of OpenTable being used for this concept.
This sums up the problem that hotels have with club lounges
Hotel club lounges are largely suffering from the same problem as airport lounges — crowding has become such an issue. The difference is that airport lounges are generally a tool in the credit card “race” and/or a profit center (at least in terms of how their monetization has evolved), while hotel club lounges are typically a cost center for the individual hotels, while the hotel groups try to monetize their loyalty programs.
In the United States, we’ve seen so many hotels simply not reopen their club lounges post pandemic, since the economics don’t make sense. Meanwhile those hotels that keep their lounges open are suffering from crowding, to the point that some people probably question how much value they really offer.
Bottom line
The Hyatt Regency Irvine has a unique system for club lounge access, whereby it uses OpenTable, and requires guests with access to make reservations in advance. It doesn’t seem like this system is always used, but rather, just during periods of anticipated high demand.
It’s certainly one of the more creative systems we’ve seen for managing crowding in lounges, as I’ve never heard of anything quite like that before.
What do you make of the Hyatt Regency Irvine’s OpenTable club access system?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Why don’t you just stick to your fake profit per equity partner story and leave the discussion to the adults?
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.
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.
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...
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.
“Why else would I be in Irvine?”
Ugh such a white supremacist take
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...
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.
You sure you're not a bot?
He’s not, he’s English which I respect actually. I’ve never met an unrefined Englishman
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!
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.
WRT "I’ve heard of some hotels in Asia limiting lounge access"
Irvine = closest thing to Asia in North America.
I guess you haven't been to Richmond, Canada, a suburb of Vancouver.
Or anywhere in SGV
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.
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.
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