Questions and Answers

Hello Lucky,

First let me start by thanking you for your help last year.
Grand Hyatt Incheon’s award night availability has been improved slightly, while Grand Hyatt Seoul, which owned by the Hyatt, is still not honoring Elites benefits on their pick seasons including this summer.

Back to the new topic.
I have been dealing new issue with Hyatt Gold Passport for few months now regarding Hyatt properties in South Korea refusing points accumulation on Alcoholic beverages.
As far as I discovered, this issue has been going on for years.
Many of elites in Korea has been asking questions to HGP and all of them received same short email telling them South Korea is part of their excluded list.
Again, a language barrier. Since many of them have hard time communicating with HGP directly, they just give up after initial responds.

On May 26, I sent email to HGP and Hyatt’s Consumer affair asking for them to provide detail explanation of why Korea is part of excluded country and asking for the list of excluded country.
I also included link and quote of their own T&C on their website which says following:

[INDENT][I]Points will not be awarded on tips, service charges, taxes, gratuities and alcoholic beverage purchases in certain jurisdictions. (Alcohol excluded where prohibited by law). Other exclusions may apply.[/I][/INDENT]

* Consuming alcohol is not prohibited by the law in South Korea.

On June 04, 10 days later, I received following email:

[INDENT][I]Thank you for contacting Hyatt Hotels and Resorts. My name is XXXX and it is my pleasure to assist you.

I do apologize, but we do not have a list of the hotels that prohibit the earning of Gold Passport points for alcoholic beverages. I certainly understand your frustrations with this and assure you that I have passed along your feedback to the appropriate departments. [/I][/INDENT]

Next day, I replied with a link to their T&C, telling them my email wasn’t a feedback.
I asked them to forward it to appropriate departments and ask them to contact me.

That was June 05.
Sent to both Hyatt Gold Passport and Hyatt Consumer Affairs.
Haven’t received a single email after.

Excluding points accumulation on Alcohol consumption including in-room minibar without any prior warnings or statements anywhere including on-site. Not even at the checkout or on the folio. Then refuse to provide list or detail information of their excluded countries/properties.

What’s your thoughts?

Since I’m not getting any responds via email, I tweeted and after first respond, again no responds.

Hyatt’s first respond:
[INDENT][I]….earning points on alcohol purchases is not available where prohibited by law. 2/2 ^LP[/I][/INDENT]

I replied saying it’s not prohibited in South Korea.
No respond after that.

I guess Hyatt is shutting me down because they know they are doing it wrong.

p.s. South Korea consume twice as much alcohol as Russia, more than 4 times much as USA. So yes, it’s a lot of points over the past 10+ years and continuing by not giving points to their customers.

Hi Cipas –

You might be confusing their terms. I believe (based on working in the alcohol industry for the better part of the last 10 years), that they are not saying alcohol is prohibited by law, but that awarding points on alcohol is prohibited by law. For instance, the chain TGIFriday’s has a loyalty program, where you earn points for every dollar spent and can redeem them for free entree’s,desserts, etc. Unfortunately, you can’t earn or redeem points on alcohol in certain parts of the world because a company cannot, by law, discount or give away alcohol.

Does that make sense? They are not suggesting the consumption of alcohol is prohibited (it obviously is not), but rather that the idea of giving someone a bonus based on alcohol consumption is illegal.

Hope that helps.

[QUOTE=”rickyw, post: 19356, member: 1436″]Hi Cipas –

You might be confusing their terms. I believe (based on working in the alcohol industry for the better part of the last 10 years), that they are not saying alcohol is prohibited by law, but that awarding points on alcohol is prohibited by law. For instance, the chain TGIFriday’s has a loyalty program, where you earn points for every dollar spent and can redeem them for free entree’s,desserts, etc. Unfortunately, you can’t earn or redeem points on alcohol in certain parts of the world because a company cannot, by law, discount or give away alcohol.

Does that make sense? They are not suggesting the consumption of alcohol is prohibited (it obviously is not), but rather that the idea of giving someone a bonus based on alcohol consumption is illegal.

Hope that helps.[/QUOTE]

Hello rickyw,

Thank you for the reply.
And yes I do know exactly what you mean.
But unfortunately that’s not the case since every other major chains except Hyatt is giving points for alcoholic beverages in South Korea.

Hi cipas,

Fair point. Here’s another example to show you that just because one location does something, doesn’t mean the other can. I worked with 2 liquor stores who were across the street from each other. One could not sell liquor on Sunday while the other could. The reason? The district required you to show invoices totalling $50,000 in cosmetic improvements to the store in order to be granted a license for Sunday sales.

It sounds like you are missing out on potentially a significant amount of points. So, I’d encourage you to keep pushing Hyatt. However, my advice as a points enthusiast (like you) who has worked for a beer company, a wine company and a spirits company, is to be prepared that Hyatt’s response does not make any sense at all, and you might have to accept that and move on o_O

rickyw,

Again, thanks for your comments.