A tale of two Hyatts Place

Last week I took a road trip to neighboring Delaware to check out some of the beach communities we missed on our trip to Exmore in August. It was a fun time, and since neither of us had ever been to Delaware before we built the trip around completing the Discover Delaware Trail. We saw a lot of Delaware, and got some great ideas for stuff we’d like to do next summer assuming the vaccination campaign is up to speed by then.

But I don’t want to talk about Delaware today, I want to talk about “brand standards.” Except when American Express is running offers that are only valid at specific property types, I’m basically indifferent to the sub-brands each hotel chain licenses, not because I don’t acknowledge there are differences, but because there are just too many for me to keep straight. At the low end who cares if it’s a Hyatt House or a Hyatt Place, in the middle can anyone keep straight the difference between a Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, or Hyatt Regency, and even at the most luxurious properties, how do you decide between a Waldorf Astoria and a Conrad (the Maldives is host to both)?

Like any sane person, I decide between hotels based on location and cost, taking into account any points balances, free award nights, and credit card promotions. Which is why I was so surprised by the totally different practices at the two Hyatts Place we stayed in the same state during the same week.

Hyatt Place Dewey Beach versus Hyatt Place Wilmington Riverfront

To get it out of the way: these are two different properties in different parts of the state, they opened 6 years apart, and they have different ownership groups. Obviously the properties are going to be different. Dewey Beach is a party town just south of Rehoboth Beach, and relies on summer vacationers and hard-partying future Supreme Court Justices. Wilmington is a financial center that brings in conventions and business travelers year-round (until this year).

The Hyatt Place Dewey Beach was happy to sell us some beers to take out back and watch the sunset over the bay, but they didn’t have a kitchen, instead offering a few packaged snacks next to the reception counter. The Wilmington Riverfront had a “grab and go” pantry, but also a bar and restaurant, which served both lunch and dinner until March (they now open at 4 pm and close at 9:30 pm for an extremely limited dinner menu only).

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the stuff that goes to the core of so-called “brand standards,” and three things stuck out to me:

• Coffee. In Dewey Beach, the Hyatt Place had removed coffee makers from the rooms. This seemed perfectly reasonable: coffee makers are high-contact surfaces and relatively difficult to thoroughly clean (we occasionally run vinegar through our home coffee maker and it doesn’t work particularly well). Instead, they offered coffee all-day in the lobby, which worked fine for us. Imagine our surprise when we arrived in Wilmington and the coffee makers, difficult to clean and all, were still in the rooms.

• Breakfast. Stays at Hyatts Place include breakfast, and when we checked in at Dewey Beach the receptionist informed us that they were offering one “hot item” and one “cold item.” The next morning I went down and discovered that the hot item was a Jimmy Dean sausage sandwich. Not a Jimmy Dean-style sausage sandwich — it was literally still in its microwaveable Jimmy Dean wrapping paper. When I mentioned this to the receptionist in Wilmington, she was shocked, since they have someone come in every morning exclusively to cook breakfast in order to meet “brand standards,” a rotating cycle of french toast sticks, oatmeal, and something else.

• Toiletries. Another weird one: our bathroom in Dewey Beach was set up with shampoo and conditioner, but not skin lotion, which I’ve come to expect at even the most basic chain hotels. And sure enough, the Hyatt Place in Wilmington provided it.

None of this would have been of more than passing interest for me at all, except that while I was waiting to pick up a few things for dinner in Wilmington, the receptionist wandered over and I told her I was surprised by the difference between the two properties. She got more agitated than I was! They had worked so hard to meet “brand standards” since they opened in October, and this other property in the same chain 90 miles away was just phoning it in. I guess I’d be upset too.

Conclusion

Nothing on Earth could convince me to learn the differences between the 28 post-merger Marriott sub-brands, and in general I’m going to stick to booking the cheapest properties in the locations that best suit my needs. But the fact that two properties in the same sub-brand, in the same state, could have such different interpretations of “brand standards” has at least given me pause. Where prices and redemption costs are similar, I might start occasionally picking up the phone to find out in advance how individual properties are implementing them.