Update: Rebranded Hyatt Regency Taipei-Taoyuan Airport Now Open For Revenue Bookings (No Awards)

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.

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.

You can access the page for Novotel TPE here and the Hyatt one 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 late November.

Starting January 1, 2025 the Novotel is no longer bookable (the last night possible to book is DEC 31-JAN 1) and they will switch over to Hyatt brand on January 1st which should be quite a task for management and staff.

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 not cheap either (US$121 for Jan 1). I’d rather spend points under Category 1 (3500/5000/6500 points) than using cash at this property.

However when you try to use points it’s impossible:

I contacted Hyatt about this but haven’t heard back yet. Let’s see what they say, I would actually stay here just for the fun of it but if it’s not meant to be then I’ll simply fly out of Songshan Airport which is much closer to the city anyway.

The rebranding will be interesting. 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.

In September, 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 obviously wasn’t the case and January 1st will now be the start for this new hotel.

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 for reservations but redeeming points for award nights isn’t open yet for whatever reason. It can’t be availability related because standard rooms are obviously available. This must be something technical. We shall see in the next few days/weeks if they will finally make the hotel available from January 1st for World of Hyatt members to use both points and certificates.

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. I’ll write an update about this when I had a fresh look myself next week.

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