Question on Certs...
 

I looked at the Hyatt website and can't find anything regarding this. Can I use more than one gift certificate per stay? I saw another post somehwere on these boards that makes me wonder. Having just bought 2,000 dollars worth, I was hoping to be able to use my $100 gift certs to pay for the entire stay.

First you buy $2000 worth of certs and then you ask about the rules of use??

All of this stuff is clearly explained on the Hyatt site, but...

For your short cut, yes you can use any amount you want during your stay. For ease of use, charge everything to your room. You will have to go to the desk to check out, no video. You will not be offered "change", that is why the certs are sold in various denominations. Say your stay is $2,100. You give the desk your $2,000 (all you have) in certs and pay the balance with cash, check or credit card. Say your bill is $1,833.45. You can give them $1800, or 18 $100 certs. If you have smaller certs ($10's, 20's) then you can pay even more with certs. But unless you want to pay more that your bill, you must UNDER pay the bill (unless it comes out even) with certs and pay the difference another way. In the above case of $1,833.45, use of 19 $100 certs would leave you over paying by $66.55

First you're a rude ......., then you answer my question?

Very nice

One other tip that the KC Hyatt taught me the last two stays:

Do NOT surrender the certificates in advance. The same completely clueless front desk clerk two stays in a row in a period of 3 days gave me grief for not surrendering them up front when I checked in. (She also didn't know how to process them, and had to get a manager both times)

She insisted over and over that I needed to hand them over up front when I checked in. I responded back that
1. Hyatt is -not- a gas station in a bad neighborhood. One shouldn't be forced to pay cash up front at a decent hotel.
2. I've used them at about 10 properties, and have never been asked to do that before. What makes the KC property different?
3. How am I going to guess what my exact total is, with room service and other charges? Is it like the gas station in #1?
4. What if I check out early and you've already endorsed/lost/filed them? I'm not that stupid to leave a couple grand in cash for them to "hold", either.

Tino -

Next time show the clerk the back of the certificate. Starting on the 7th line of the fine print: "Goods and services must be charged to the room and the Hyatt Check Certificate should be redeemed at the hotel desk at check-in or check-out."

One more clue about these certificates: when you get your Gold Passport statement, make sure that you get the correct number of points.

'nuff said.

Another area to be careful. On two occasions this year, both at the Hyatt in Chicago and in West Holywood, I paid the majority of my stay with the certificates, and the balance with a DC.

The two transactions were posted on my folio, showing the smaller balance charged to DC and the larger to "Transfer Credit". After my DC statement arrived, not only did they have the certificates in thier posession, but they also charged me for the entire amount of the stay - two transactions, one for the certificate amount, and the other, which was authorized, for the remaining balance of the folio. A quick call to DC resolved the issue.

One benefit, I suppose, is that they actually give your pts on the shipping charge, when you buy the certificates on the Hyatt site.

Most of the time the staff know what to do - and the times they haven't were sorted by a call to the GM or Gold Passport

True, but unfortunately the KC Hyatt does not have a desk manager (or really anyone else) on staff until 7 am. They actually had to fax me a receipt later in the day when they figured out how to process a gift cert. Pity the business person who gets caught in the monumental check-out line at 6:45 am.