Last night I was fortunate to have dinner with Mommy Points at one of my favorite restaurants in DC, the Blue Duck Tavern at the Park Hyatt.
Food and service are good but it also has to be the best looking restaurant space in the City. And Hyatt now allows members to earn and redeem points at restaurants and spas even when not staying at the hotel.
The only downside is the lighting, not ideal for picture taking, especially with a phone.
But the food is excellent, I had the foie gras starter.
And the braised beef rib as my entree.
The apple pie is the diamond food amenity, for those top tier elites staying on property and opting not to take the points.
I grabbed the check, I’m a full-time professional with a business booking award travel on the side and she’s a stay at home mom. It just seemed the galant thing to do.
Plus, my real motivation was that I could test out Hyatt Gold Passport’s process for earning points at their restarants (and spas) while not a guest, they let you redeem points at both that way as well but I don’t consider the redemption side a good value.
So I threw down Bluebird and my Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond card so that they would have the account number to enter in order to give me the points.
The Park Hyatt in DC was one of the last Hyatt properties to convert their systems to be able to earn and burn points for non-staying guests.
And since the process is new, the server didn’t know what to do with it, he explained he hadn’t been trained yet but would get the help of a manager to process the points.
Shortly after, a manager came back, and in a hushed tone discretely told me he was having problems with my card. I assumed it was the card for payment, and was a bit embarassed as I dug into my wallet for my Hyatt Visa. But that wasn’t the problem — it was my Hyatt Gold Passport membership card.
He asked me for my city, state and zip hoping he could look up my membership information (he had my card, I would have thought the membership number on it would suffice..).
Then the manager returned and asked whether the membership card was new? He thought that a brand new Gold Passport number might not come up in his system yet. But, umm, it is a Diamond membership… Not new.
He asked for my email address. And he successfully found the account searching with that. I’m glad I knew which email account was linked to Gold Passport!
The great thing, though, about earning with Hyatt as a non-staying guest is that if processed properly points post instantly. The systems are live.
Starwood Preferred Guest pioneered earning points on property when not staying. I find that training isn’t very good, restaurant staff don’t usually know what to do with a membership number. But that’s alright, you just save your receipt, scan it, and email it in for credit later.
With Hyatt the processing is all done on site, and the program directs you to work directly with the restaurant or spa if points do not post. I like the one central email address to contact that Starwood offers better, but as long as the hotel handles things correctly with Hyatt it shouldn’t be an issue — since the points should be in your account before you leave (and could even verify this on your smartphone).
Interestingly, I don’t know local laws and customs in my home town, and points didn’t post for alcohol. That’s something that varies by jurisdiction, and brought down the average rebate from my points earning from about 20% to more like 15%.
But that’s alright, dinner with Mommy Points is still a treat!
That’s crazy, because I ate at BDT last night as well. It was my first time having dinner there, and I was really impressed with the food, though the service was not very good.
In fairness, there was a bit of a war minor world war over paying the bill, and you totally sabotaged my plan to buy dinner! It was a fantastic dinner though, and hanging out with you and your wife is always makes for a fun evening. Glad to hear the points posted. We did all totally think the problem was Bluebird at first – who knew it was the Hyatt card!
do you know if using the Bank of American Alaska airlines debit card to load at Walmart would receive points for Alaska Airlines? Does Walmart consider the load as debit or credit purchase?
“I’m a full-time professional with a business booking award travel on the side and she’s a stay at home mom”
I know this was meant in jest, but mommypoints is definitely not a stay at home mom
Does anyone know which OD in the Northern VA area carry the reload cards? It has been over 2 weeks since I have seen any.
Edit/Correction:
“I grabbed the check, I’m a full-time professional and make an extra $100k+ a year by incessantly pumping credit card referrals to my blog readers at any chance I can get, such as in this blog post, and she’s a stay at home mom………………although now that I think about it, she also likely makes $100k+ per year as she is almost as bad about pushing CC affiliate referral links on her blog as I am on my blog. Darn, maybe we should have gone dutch on this dinner”.
as you mention lack of training for crediting SPG points for dinner:
I _never_ managed to get credit to SPG for dinner at a *wood property (having said that: the dozen occasions I tried were 100% outside the US). I always faxed or emailed a copy with a short sentence asking for crediting. The points usually showed up within 48 hours. At some point I did not bother to ask the property to credit the points and just faxed/emailed them a few days later.
Gary,
Do you know how much pain and torture a ducks or geese, sentient beings, go through to make foie gras?! There is a reason it is banned in many countries and any ethical moral restaurants do not serve it! shame on you! there is more to life than just your happiness gary.
RJ
gary, your hyatt gold passport membership card looks much cooler than mine. did they change the design recently? also RJ shut up
RJ, quite possibly many people do not know that. Though I am not an animal rights activist, I would never order that dish either; there must have been better choices.
Foie gras is delicious! I’d gladly force feed the bird myself to add some extra flavor to its liver. What’s immoral is some people think they have the duty to deny me this pleasure.
“Shut up” is a bit rough.
BFrankley hopefully there aren’t several other sadistic things that society “immorally” denies you from enjoying. Where do you draw the line?
For the foie gras opponents (and proponents, for that matter), this is a worthwhile read.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/12/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-gras-is-not-u.html
For what it’s worth, it looks like SPG has decreased the processing time for earning SPG points w/o staying at a hotel. I dined at Trace at the W San Francisco on Friday and the points had already hit my account this morning (not sure if they posted today or over the weekend since this is the first time I checked my account since Friday).
I simply gave the manager my SPG # (waiter didn’t know what I was talking about) and that was it. I remember last time I did this in early 2012 (same location), I had to fill out a 3 layer carbon copy paper and wait a week or two for it to be processed and the points to post.
Well, I knew that Mommy Points’ kid was cute. But I didn’t know that Ms. Points herself is a babe. Thanks for the photo.
You guys are so cute. I love reading both of your blogs every single day!
Oh and btw, if you goto Spain again, DO NOT attend BULLFIGHTING! It is also a Sin you shal now enjoy! Thank you
Glad you enjoyed the dinner meal; I’ve had very poor consistency and yumminess while dining at Blue Duck for dinners. Breakfasts however have been wonderful! 🙂
The Tony Chi decor is great, just like your favorite Andaz in NYC. 🙂
Gary: I’m staying at Park Hyatt DC most of this week. Wish I had known in advance about the dinner!!!
@propaganda
I draw the line at NOT eating anthropomorphizing beings.
@mark: ok, maybe “shut up” was a bit rough. i just think it’s kind of pointless to bring this up in the comments section of a travel blog. i come here to read about miles and points.. not to see people trying to push their agendas on others.
hmm i have not tried this place yet. the great thing is that until Jan 31st, those on the SMD4 have a triple points promotion at the restaurant, so that next couple months is a good time to go try this place 🙂
Gary. A bit late to this points but it brings up a question.
With regard to you comments about SPG not knowing what to do with it and faxing it in later, can this be done to double dip when the restaurant is an idine? I ran into it once where they would only give points if i charged to room and not if i used my idine credit card.
@Tenmoc – the restaurant was in the wrong, you should not have any issue ‘double dipping’ as you describe