Hah: Hyatt Club Lounge Requires OpenTable Reservations

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…

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 periods of 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?