In September, we wrote about Accor being about to lose its only open property in Taiwan when it was announced that the Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport would be reflagged to a Hyatt Regency.
Since this morning, the hotel actually shows up in the search results and even features a (rather basic) website even though the reservations are still closed for the time being.
You can access the page for Novotel TPE here and Hyatt here.
Accor has had a 15-year management agreement with the owner – China Airlines – to operate the hotel, and the contract is due. According to local media China Times (access here), Hyatt has given existing employees retention notices about this change.
The hotel has 516 rooms and is located near the airport and the China Airlines crew center:
I’m currently looking at Taipei daily to see if a room pops up as redemption for a stay in January, and the search (for the first time) showed up with the new Hyatt Regency this morning:
Starting January 1, 2025 the Novotel is no longer bookable (the last night possible to book is DEC 31-JAN 1) so it’s either going to switch over to Hyatt on January 1st or the hotel will be closed for a few weeks to change a few things in order to bring it up to Hyatt standards.
I could imagine that they’d want to change the signage and possibly even bedding, plus other amenities. It’s been literally a decade since I last stayed at this hotel when I completed a few Taipei-Jakarta mileage runs on Cathay Pacific. The hotel was okay, but I remember the lounge was very basic. A Hyatt Regency is usually a few steps up from that.
I don’t expect them to close down because they will most likely have in-house guests with existing reservations.
Conclusion
The Novotel Taipei Airport Hotel will soon leave the Accor chain (last night on December 31, 2024) and subsequently become a Hyatt Regency.
It now shows up on the Hyatt App / Website, but reservations aren’t open yet. We shall see in the next few weeks if they will make the hotel available from January 1st or if there will be some kind of gap.
A few weeks ago, there was a Taiwan travel fair in Bangkok with a booth from Hyatt Taiwan, and I asked them about this hotel. They told me it should be available starting in December, but that’s obviously not the case. It seems like January will now be the start.
The project in Xinyi with the Andaz/Park Hyatt still seems to be dead. No news whatsoever which is really strange given how long it’s been since they first announced it. When Taiwan reopened post-Covid I walked by there and took a picture of the skeleton building.
