Why book through a Hyatt Privé travel advisor?

You get over $100 worth of value if you eat at the hotel, and are not a Hyatt Globalist member. Existing Hyatt Globalists will pay more for nothing.

Details

Many hotel chains offer off additional benefits to you when you book through travel advisors. For Hyatt, there is a program called Hyatt Privé offered to travel advisors. After all, the more valuable your time is, the more likely you desire a luxury hotel, and you are more likely to delegate travel planning and booking to someone else.

You can connect to a travel advisor through Virtuoso. I will use travel advisor and Virtuoso interchangeably in this post.

Luxury hotels in the Hyatt portfolio include:

• Park Hyatt
• Alila
• Miraval
• Impression by Secrets
• The Unbound Collection

Additional benefits when booking through a travel advisor include:

• Upgrade on arrival, subject to availability
• Daily full breakfast for up to two guests per bedroom
• $100 USD food and beverage credit valid during the stay
• Early check-in or late check-out, subject to availability
• Free Wi-Fi

Are the additional benefits worth it?

Let's break it down:

Upgrade on arrival. This benefit is subject to availability, but occasionally at time of booking. I read that as when the hotel is not that full, otherwise it depends on how many Hyatt members with status there are and when you check-in. The upgrade may also just be a higher floor. Don't expect a suite upgrade, and if there is a suite upgrade, it's a standard suite and not premium suite. It's a roll of the dice, so manage your own expectations and assign this a value of $0.

Daily full breakfast. If you or your travel companions value breakfast, this is a tangible benefit of about 1% off your total cost of the stay at the hotel.

• Booking through Virtuoso, it's $386.22 per night when booking a 2-night stay at the Park Hyatt in Shanghai.

• Booking direct yourself via the Hyatt app it's $411.31, which is ~6.5% higher. The price includes breakfast although it doesn't show in the screenshot below.

$100 USD food and beverage credit. This might sound like the best benefit and reason to use a travel advisor, but this benefit isn't really free. You pay for it up front.

You should also note the fine print: this F&B credit is only available during your stay, and cannot be redeemed for cash. In other words, use it or lose it.

If there is a particularly good restaurant at the hotel you were planning on trying, this may sound pretty awesome. However, if you plan to go on a tour, were planning to eat out and savor local restaurants, or your travel schedule doesn't align, you just threw $100 away.

Many hotels will only offer the F&B credit with a 2-night minimum or even pro-rate this benefit. This means it might be $0 (no benefit) with a 1-night stay or $50. The longer you stay, typically the lower the value to you. e.g. if you stayed 5-nights, the $100 seems like a $20/night benefit. Few hotels may offer a daily F&B credit, e.g. $50/night for $250 over a 5-night stay.

The same hotel booked directly without breakfast ~$56/night less than booking through Virtuoso. $330.27/night direct vs $386.22 through Virtuoso.

Early check-in or late check-out. This benefit is subject to availability. Just like the upgrade on arrival benefit, availability depends on how full the hotel is, as well as how many Hyatt members with status there are. Manage your expectations.

• Early check-in may be 2 to 3 hours earlier. Most likely noon. However, many luxury hotels do wish to please the customer, so you may be able to check-in as early as noon anyway. Unless you're in urgent need of showering, I'd value this at $0 as you can always drop off your luggage at the hotel free. I'm skeptical you'd be in this for the extra sleep time if you're a luxury traveler; you probably slept just fine on the plane.
• Late check-out is subject to availability, so there is no guaranteed availability nor definition of lateness. It could be no late check-out, 2pm or 4pm. This could be valuable as it may mean a few extra hours of using the hotel amenities such as the gym or pool before check-out if you don't already have Hyatt status. Hyatt status will get you a late checkout, not subject to availability, except at hotels with casinos and resorts. See more Hyatt details here.

Free Wi-fi. As I have previously shared, free wi-fi is a joke, not only because Wi-Fi is so prevalent, but you probably want internet when you leave your hotel right? That means you have a data plan anyway, not to mention hotel Wi-Fi can be less secure. There's no way for you to verify the hotspot you connect to after checking in is really from the hotel. I'd bet you'd click on anything with the word Hyatt in there.

Another call out. Many Hyatt properties offer free internet. It is only Premium Internet that may cost extra unless you're a higher membership tier than free. Premium Internet is for higher bandwidth usage and use cases such as streaming movies, conferencing or using VPN.

You should buy a phone that supports eSIMs to save time and money. You also don't need to spend much time deciding on which eSIM provider.

Conclusion

The table below summarizes the benefits and costs:

So what should you do?

Save money booking via Virtuoso if you don't have Hyatt Globalist status. You'll get up to $158.40 worth of benefits in the example above with Virtuoso:

• $58.40 savings vs booking direct ($959.17 - $900.77)
• $100 F&B credit

I say "up to" because you are guaranteed to lose $100 worth of F&B value if you don't use it. The only certainty is the $58.40 (~6.5%) total cost savings, if you're willing to deal with a person instead of using an app to book.

Hyatt Globalists should skip Hyatt Prive. You pay more for nothing. Booking direct and then spending $100 on F&B is still cheaper by ~$30.

$900.77 - ($770.19 +$100) = $30.58