In the last couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to twice use the Hyatt Guest of Honor Globalist benefit – once for each of our grown kids. I can definitely see using this benefit more and more so I can leverage Globalist benefits for my family even in rooms that I am not using myself.

I already wrote in my NYC Trip Report about how our youngest daughter and her boyfriend joined us for a night. I booked them a room at the Andaz 5th Avenue using Hyatt points and asked my Hyatt concierge to transfer it to her name and her Hyatt account. The advantage of doing so is that they would get my Hyatt Globalist benefits which ordinarily would not apply to a second room booked in my name. These include: a room upgrade, guaranteed 4pm checkout, possible early check-in, and breakfast for two people.

As I mentioned in my review of the hotel, I actually liked the layout of their room a bit better than the layout of our Andaz Suite. They were supposedly upgraded to a city view, but it was just a bunch of office buildings. It was nice that they could join us for breakfast on Sunday morning and everything was covered. They also took advantage of the late checkout.

For our older daughter, she was looking for a one night stay also in New York City the following weekend. It was her boyfriend’s birthday and she had planned to take him to the city for a night. At first, I planned to just give her one of my IHG free nights, but the choices were kind of limited and the reviews weren’t great. I remembered that I had a Hyatt Category 1-7 free night certificate expiring in early April and no real plan to use it anywhere. NYC is a bit of a weird place to use it right now as the Park Hyatt is a Category 8 and the other hotels were Category 6 (at least before the upcoming category changes). In the end, we decided on the Thompson Central Park as it checked the boxes for them. They needed a hotel with it’s own parking facility so they could take advantage of the Globalist free parking benefit because they were driving in from Connecticut.

They really enjoyed their stay. They were upgraded to a junior suite with plenty of space.

They enjoyed the free breakfast the next morning. Only her boyfriend grabbed a picture, but everything (parking, breakfast) was comped at checkout without having to ask.

I was happy to be able to give each kid the treat of a nice hotel room in Manhattan for the night. Thanks to me being a Globalist, they got a lot more out of the experience than the typical non-status member staying at a hotel.

One more quick note on using Guest of Honor: I was also able to use it for my friend and his wife for their upcoming trip to Amsterdam. They are spending two nights at the Andaz there and will get all the Globalist benefits including hopefully an upgrade for their first trip to the city.

Guest of Honor is a unique and valuable Hyatt benefit. It’s great that you can use it for stays on both points and free night certificates. I plan to continue to take advantage of this benefit for my kids and for others in the future.

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.