I book a lot of hotel reservations but I never read the email confirmations.  I delete them as soon as I receive them and manage my reservations through the hotel’s respective iPhone app or website. For some unknown reason, I decided to actually glance through an upcoming hotel reservation and it caused a last minute change to my Q1 hotel strategy.

The next few months I will have several hotel stays in the Baltimore Washington metro area.  In analyzing each of the Q1 promos currently running and the hotels available, I decided (without much excitement) that my Q1 Hotel strategy would have me on a series of three night SPG stays.  Pretty straightforward. No Hassle. I had a couple months of no hotel hopping to look forward to.  That, of course, was only the plan until I booked a one night stay at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore in late December and noticed something buried deep in the reservation confirmation email.

Bottom of the Hyatt Reservation Confirmation Email

A closed Regency club…..for two full months?!  If you are a Hyatt Diamond member, you may understand my excitement.  A closed Regency club equates to 2500 Bonus Points per stay plus breakfast in the restaurant for each registered guest.  This is on top of the 1000 Point Diamond Amenity and whatever you choose to do with your spend–based earnings (I had been crediting to 1500 AA miles but that expired 1/15/2012).  The Diamond Amenity itself has only been posting about 25% of the time, which can tack on an extra 500 Points  for having to place a call in to Hyatt.

So now my Q1 hotel strategy shifts to Hyatt 1 night stays.  It includes the everyday hassle of hotel hopping and putting in several calls to the Hyatt Diamond line. But hey, it’s points.  You got to play the game.