Hyatt Guest Brought Tupperware To Clear Out Club Lounge — Just As Hotels Are Killing Them

A guest at the Hyatt Regency Tulsa Downtown says a family of five turned the hotel’s Regency Club into a grocery pickup order. According to the eyewitness account, a mother arrived with four children. She and the oldest child were carrying reusable grocery bags and the family took most of the Dr Pepper and all of the muffins, then filled reusable Ziploc-style containers with Gardetto’s and Goldfish from the club’s “snack towers of sadness.” When he asked them to leave something for other guests because staff were unlikely to replenish the lounge that night, the mother responded with profanity saying she had paid for club level and the snacks were hers, too. He called the hotel’s management from a courtesy phone in the lounge. Club Access Isn’t A Deed To The Pantry Hyatt advertises club rooms at this property including complimentary nonalcoholic drinks and snacks. It does not how much a guest can consume, and doesn’t publish a rule against taking items back to a room. This creates the Potter Stewart problem. There’s a huge difference between taking away a drink or muffin and showing up with grocery bags and food storage containers. But where, exactly, is the line? It’s hard to articulate, but we ‘know it when we see it.’ A family with four children may prefer to eat in its room rather than occupy the lounge and other guests may prefer this, too. Taking one item per person is not the same as clearing out the entire lounge inventory. So I guess one simple test is whether the lounge continues to function if every guest behaved the same way (Kant’s Categorical Imperative). The hotel may share some responsibility here. A one review this summer complained that paid club access produced only cheese sticks and no milk for cereal. A family of five can make a poorly stocked room look ransacked even without behaving badly. Is This Why We Can’t Have Nice Things? Here’s a report from the Hyatt Regency Waikiki where a couple filled Ziploc bags with cookies and loaded bananas into backpacks. At the Hilton Diagonal Mar in Barcelona, an employee was photographed stopping a guest who tried to leave with containers of lounge food. We see this repeatedly in airport lounges: At the Miami Admirals Club, a member was photographed loading snacks into a Hefty bag. An influencer advised Delta passengers to bring Tupperware and fill it to the brim. A couple at the Chase Sapphire Lounge at New York JFK filled two duffel bags and ordered six burgers to take away. Sapphire Burger Two British Airways lounge guests were caught on video taking more than 20 cans of beer and five bags of chips. Some people think taking anything at all is inappropriate, while others feel like one piece of fruit, one drink or a wrapped snack for later is fine. Once you’re bringing in specialized equipment you’ve crossed the line. But Bad Guests Aren’t Why Hotels Have Ditched Clubs The original poster from the Hyatt Regency Tulsa argues that incidents like this are why Regency and Grand Clubs are disappearing. That’s not the driver. Hotel owners have openly discussed eliminating club lounges as “amenity creep”. Lounges require labor, occupy valuable space and don’t usually generate enough revenue – they’re a cost center serving elite guests. Elites like them, but that’s a benefit to the chain itself which then spills over into future stays at other hotels. It’s a public good for the program but a direct cost to the hotel. So properties convert them to guest rooms or meeting space, generate revenue, and save on food costs and staffing. Topics on this page