Hyatt opening a hotel in Santorini this summer

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• Coleslaw says:

  9 Feb9 February 11:07

  “hotels must offer standard rooms for reward nights as long as they still have standard rooms for sale for cash”

  Not quite accurate – hotels must offer standard rooms for reward nights as long as they still have standard rooms for sale for *standard rate*.

  If they’re selling a standard room under a different rate (EG bed and breakfast or some other package) then they don’t need to make it available for points.

  • Rob says:

    9 Feb9 February 11:11

    True, but this rarely happens. More common is classifying rooms so that there are only a couple of ‘standard’ ones ….

    I had no trouble picking up Park Hyatt New York for 30k points for an upcoming stay, vs a $1,395 rack rate, and in general it works as promised.

  • Prins Polo says:

    9 Feb9 February 11:34

    Echo that, Hyatt often plays tricks in the US so there’s no reward availability even though standard rooms are available. Less of an issue outside of the US.

    • meta says:

      9 Feb9 February 18:11

      It happens sometimes. I had an issue like that at Park Hyatt Kyoto. If you contact the hotel/Hyatt CS they’ll let you book on points if you ask nicely.

• TimM says:

  9 Feb9 February 11:34

  Santorini (strictly’ Thira’) and Mykonos are the original spoilt Greek islands. It is of not surprise that chain hotels are now moving in. Awful but inevitable. Many of the Cyclades have been ruined by tourism. Then, if you are looking to stay in a chain hotel, it doesn’t really matter where on Earth you are.

  I would head for the Mani, as Greece was 30+ years ago or one of the Dodecanese without an airport.

  I fear the days of finding a characterful room for £5/night when arriving by ferry at the port are a distant memory. Chains!!!!

  • Lady London says:

    9 Feb9 February 12:30

    I’ve not been to Santorini but Tim M my thoughts were the same. Seeing the coverage above I finally crossed it off my list. Mykonos was on there too but also crossed off for similar reasons some time ago.

  • Paul says:

    9 Feb9 February 12:50

    I went to Santorini in 1981 with a back pack and all the enthusiasm of an 18 year old ,and slummed it in a youth hostel. Went back last August and was genuinely horrified at what it has become. The only backpacks are Luis Vuitton!

    While there we met people who had just fled Mykonos where prices to eat were at Premier league player levels and with the same level of sophistication!

    Crete, especially the Chania area is nice but I must admit my last visit was 2004.

    The tip of going only to islands without an airport is spot on. Just make sure you travel in comfort on the ferry, especially if going overnight, which is a very civilised way to travel. My days of slumming it are long gone and my wife insists on hot and cold running hairdryers, but a comfortable Taverna, as we found last year, is perfect for a relaxed if basic stay.

    • Dubious says:

      9 Feb9 February 15:56

      I disagree. Plenty of nice Greek islands that do have airports. Perhaps it’s better to focus on those with mostly/only domestic flights and/or PSO routes.

      A quieter time of year helps too.

      • meta says:

        9 Feb9 February 18:15

        The key is to go slightly off season. Early to mid-May, late October when the weather is nice. Just Or in the middle of pandemic…

• ADS says:

  9 Feb9 February 12:42

  Is there any hope of integrating Forums and article comments?

  It seems such a shame not to use your new forums to manage article comments

  • Rhys says:

    9 Feb9 February 13:09

    They are integrated – you can use your forum login to comment.

    • ADS says:

      10 Feb10 February 02:04

      Ah, ok

      And do you then get notified of replies to your comments, as you presumably do in the main forum?

      • Chas says:

        10 Feb10 February 07:55

        You can’t – not even in the main forum. And whilst they’re integrated in so far as they have an integrated log-in, they’re not integrated from the perspective of the positioning of replies being consistent between the forum and the articles.

• Lady London says:

  9 Feb9 February 12:48

  The forum still occupies as much vertical space as before on my Samsung Android.

  The typeface of posts has changed to a larger one and now there’s a longer block with login boxes etc occupying most of the screen vertically when a different thread is clicked on

  The system simply not loading a thread at all problem is continuing, where the system has chosen to create a further new last page on a thread but it’s blank. Current case in point is the Creation Bashing thread which has an empty page 29 but clicking on that last page won’t load the thread it just loads the (not very useful) Search screen instead.

  It’s happened on other threads and was reported by someone but still happening.

  Something good must be happening though as the Creation Bashing content is now all on 29 pages instead of 44 🙂

  • Rob says:

    9 Feb9 February 13:31

    I don’t have an Android to hand but it is fine on iPhone – line spacing smaller (and font same), quoted text smaller, removal of grey padding in quotes text etc.

• Joan says:

  9 Feb9 February 13:38

  Well I’m seriously being put off Santorini now !
  Mind you the thought of calling BA to change my destination fills me with more dread ! 😖

• Rob says:

  9 Feb9 February 17:25

  They don’t know. In truth you’ll be fine.

  If that’s the wording then I was mistaken. I don’t have the offer anywhere so I was reliant on what I was told by others about the small print and I was told that EK was excluded (in reality, of course, you’d be fine if qantas.com processes it, but I need to repeat what I’m told).

• Andrew J says:

  9 Feb9 February 17:37

  Flights are the one thing that all the routing details are passed to Amex – if you look at your PDF bill it shows all this information for airline transactions – so they could apply exclusions, whereas for shops they don’t know you’ve bought a gift card etc. I’ve also noticed that on the Qantas website it sells the Dubai flights with a EK flight number not a QF one.

  • Dunc says:

    9 Feb9 February 22:35

    Thanks for the info – I see I was wrong about the flight numbers so it makes sense. Unfortunately the offer runs only until 9th February (on my card anyway) and the Qantas website won’t let me book flights (error 500) – so I won’t be able to make use of the offer – I’ve complained to Amex, but to no avail.

  • Nick says:

    9 Feb9 February 23:12

    Travel… and also petrol. If you buy that, the station has to pass your credit card company the number of litres/gallons you used.

• Jo says:

  10 Feb10 February 13:55

  Looks like the Lava Suite upgrade option has double from 680EUR to 1.2kEUR now! Pricing error from their side? 🙁

  • Rob says:

    10 Feb10 February 14:17

    Hmmm … these are upgrades from the base room. If there are no standard rooms still left at €680 (fully flex rate) then it will price off whatever the cheapest room left is. At least, that’s the plan.

    If the website is showing standard rooms (fully flex) for less than €1280 then something is up.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.