AMEX Fine Hotel & Resort and Hyatt Benefits
 

There was a recent clarification in the Marriott forum by one of their lurkers stating that Marriott will honor elite benefits, nightly credits, and points accreditation for travel made through AMEX for Fine Hotel & Resorts and The Hotel Collection whether prepaid or paid at the hotel.

This is specific for FHR and THC only.

Is Hyatt's policy similar as above or do they consider any booking outside of Hyatt as 3rd party and therefore no benefits/credits/points, is it up to the specific hotel, ...?

That is not correct. The last post in the relevant Marriott thread by the lurkers was basically "we can't tell you, check with AMEX." https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/31812977-post86.html There have been quite a few reports of the prepaid FHR rates NOT crediting to Marriott.

Hyatt has always given credit for FHR bookings. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hyat...resorts-2.html

Thank you for clarifying Kaycee

Hi, wanted to update this thread with a current situation I'm facing, but mods, feel free to create a new thread if that's necessary.

I'm booking through AMEX FHR to book 2 rooms at the Andaz Maui later this Summer for my family: 2 rooms w/ 1 adult in each and kids spread across the rooms. For the 2nd room I had to select the another adult (my spouse) and could not select myself a second time. After confirmation, I called Hyatt to attach my WoH account number to reservation. The representative said that the AMEX reservation is showing as two different reservations in their system: one in my name and the other in my wife. With that, they can add WoH to my reservation, but not to my wife's.

So... now I'm trying to sort out the best way to handle? What I care most about is accruing the base points for both rooms as this trip will help get me much closer to 100k base points for the year. My main concern is only receiving half of the expected base points.

Should I handle at the hotel at checkin? Should I cancel the AMEX reservation and rebook as two separate bookings to at least get my name on both reservations then deal with attaching/linking the rooms with Hyatt or at the hotel upon checkin?

Looking for some help/guidance on the bet way to handle. Thank you.

You *might* be able to handle at check-in, but my experience with FHR and Hyatt (I've only done about 3-4 such bookings) is that the communications between their two systems can be iffy at times.

Potential ideas:
1. Rebook the second reservation so that there's two separate FHR bookings under your name, and call WoH to confirm that it looks ok on their end.
2. This being an Andaz, did you consider booking as Prive? Prive can offer very similar benefits as FHR, you just go through a Prive agent vs AmEx Travel (and can pay with a non AmEx card to boot!) I don't recall how FHR rates are determined, but Prive rates are based on Standard rate.

I would have AMEX book another reservation.

Generally speaking expect FHR to be same as Standard rate unless AMEX has negotiated a lower rate.

Quick update, and thank you for the above suggestions. I spoke w/ AMEX and they were able to make the name change on the second room, but where unable to change one of the rooms to a King because of the 1 adult per room requirement and the ages of my kids indicating we need a total of 4 queen beds across both rooms. They did call Hyatt (Andaz directly I believe) to sort through this.

I now see both reservations in my Hyatt account although as two separate reservations. So I think that's similar to the suggestion of cancelling and rebooking two separate rooms through AMEX. BTW: I'm using AMEX not Prive or another service because I'm offsetting some of the spend with MR points.

I called Hyatt one last time to:

1. Confirm that I will receive base points on both rooms which is what I care about the most (they said I "should" which didn't give me warm and fuzzy)
2. See if the can link the reservations together as one (they couldn't because AMEX delivered it to them as two reservations although the hotel should sort that out at checkin)
3. Try to get an adjoining room which they only offer in a 1 K and 1Q layout so they noted a preference of the rooms being close together at the very least

My plan is to request at the hotel during checkin for the reservations to be linked and get an adjoining room 1K and 2Q.

Do you foresee any potential issues in accruing base points for both rooms irrespective of the reservations being separate or merged into one? I'm boiling this down to the base points for the two rooms because this trip will put me over the top as Globalist w/ 100k base points.

I'd hate for the hotel to pawn this off to WoH then have Woh tell me "sorry ,nothing we can do; them the rules". I don't believe I'm taking advantage of anything and am happy to cancel and rebook differently if it makes a difference.

Isn't Glob qualification halved to 50k base points for 2021?

From a base point qualification perspective no need to link.

You may want to have Amex or hotel put in a comment that these are NOT duplicate reservations (lower risk hotel thinking they are duplicate) and refer to the other in comments as well as adjoining rooms.

Don't bother trying to "link" your reservations. All that means is noting the confirmation number for one reservation in the other reservation. You should have no issues getting the base (and bonus) points for both rooms as long as they are in your name and your WoH number is attached. This assumes the AMEX FHR rate is an "Eligible Rate" ...

Yes they are, but I'm specifically wanting to collect on the milestone awards. I usually qualify through nights. I'll check into this reservations as Explorist (through nights), but come out as Globalist (through base points).

The milestone rewards are based on nights, not base points?

Whoops, I'm blind. Didn't see the grey text to the side and focused too much on the "Completely separate from elite status, Milestone Rewards are available to everyone and are based on the number of nights you stay in a calendar year." text above.

Not to mention that a number of paid nights at Andaz Maui is going to help noticeably getting toward lifetime globalist. If it were night based I'd probably be approaching it (~10 years as globalist), but since it's based on spend I'm nowhere near there. I had a weeklong stay at Andaz Maui that by itself ended up being something like 5% of what I needed towards LT Glob, so IMO it's definitely worth the hassle OP is going through.