Originally Posted by
lighthouse206
Interesting. IME the lounges are very similar between the two brands, but I don't claim to be an expert on that. That said, I think there's more to it than event space size/quality that determines whether an HR has a club. For example, basically all the HR's in Texas have no clubs (HR Dallas, HR North Dallas, HR Houston Downtown, HR San Antonio, etc.)... Some of these are truly iconic properties, too.. like the HR Dallas (which for a decade was featured prominently during the intro to the TV show Dallas) and it does a mammoth event business.... Oddly, they DID put a club into the brand new HR Houston Galleria, which does NOT strike me as an event-centric property....
NO, I'm not saying that the convention space requires whether or not a HR has a lounge but rather that having a lounge isn't part of being called a HR, but having sufficient quality and quantity of event space is a criterion. This is based on a conversation with a GM at the time the property was changing from a Hyatt to a HR, a couple years ago. There could be grandfathered HRs without much event space.