Last weekend, I wrote about the new Hyatt Regency Taipei Taoyuan International Airport, which is being reflagged to a Hyatt Regency on January 1st (currently Novotel), and that award availability was missing.
We’ve been in touch with Hyatt and the corporate office contacted the property about the issue which has now been corrected and award bookings are available effective immediately.
You can access the page for Novotel TPE here and the Hyatt one here.
Hyatt opened bookings for this property a few weeks ago with the first date able to be booked as a Hyatt being January 1, 2025 but so far only revenue bookings have been made available – no awards. This was either due to a technical issue or an oversight of the award code not being loaded.
The Hyatt Regency is already bookable right now (actually since early December) if you want to utilize a revenue cash rate but for some reason the award bookings haven’t been enabled yet.
The rates are not exactly high, but they’re not cheap either (US$121 for Jan 1). Especially during the off-peak dates, I’d rather spend points (6500/8000/9500) than use cash at this property.
I wrote an email to World of Hyatt and my Globalist Concierge team in Japan and received the following reply:
Dear Sebastian,
Thank you very much for your continued support.
With regards to the reservation at Hyatt Regency Taoyuan International Airport, we checked with the hotel and they are in the process of preparing it.
We would appreciate it if you could wait for a while until starting point redemption reservations.
Should we be of any further assistance, please feel free to contact us.
Sincerely Yours,
It took only 48 hours for the hotel to reach and activate the award rate codes, which now reflects the award availability for all dates starting from January 1, 2025:
I think the rates using points are extremely reasonable for this hotel (Cat 2), especially in the current off-peak season, which makes it just 6,500 points/night.
You can also apply free night, club upgrade and suite upgrade certificates if you so desire.
The hotel has 516 rooms and is located near the airport and the China Airlines crew center:
A shuttle bus is available from the airport terminals to move passengers to/from the hotel. There is also a subway station nearby.
I’m currently looking at Taipei daily to see if a room pops up as redemption for a stay in January. Unless a reservation option pops up, leaving from my favorite option, Taipei Songshan Airport (close to the city center), I’ll probably spend a night at this new Hyatt Regency as one of the first Hyatt guests.
Customers with existing bookings made under Accor will no longer obtain benefits related to their Accor status, so this is something to take into account.
Conclusion
The Novotel Taipei Airport Hotel will soon leave the Accor chain (last night on December 31, 2024) and subsequently become a Hyatt Regency as of January 1, 2025.
It now shows up on the Hyatt App / Website for reservations, and redeeming points for award nights has finally been made available after we contacted Hyatt, and they got in touch with the hotel to rectify the issue. I guess this must have been something technical, and the property, as well as Hyatt, were willing and eager to fix it once being made aware.
From January 1st, the hotel is available for World of Hyatt members to use points and certificates, as well as revenue bookings earning points and stay credit.
