Reader Email: Some Hyatt Affiliated UrCove Hotels In China Do Not Accept Foreign Guests Or Credit Cards

Today, we have a rather interesting Reader Email concerning the UrCove by Hyatt brand in China that reached me this morning, and I have never heard of anything like that before, so I want to bring it to our reader’s attention and also ask for their own experience.

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A reader noticed from the last post that I was in China and had the great idea to let me know that trying the UrCove brand is probably not the best idea for me, to say the least.

For a bit of history, Hyatt started a joint venture with a new hotel brand in China called UrCove By Hyatt, and that was widely promoted in the local market and even abroad. These hotels also show up in searches for awards.

You can access the brand website here.

Following that, Frank wrote me the following email:

Hi Sebastian,

I noticed you’re in China right now so just a word of warning if you’re planning on staying at Hyatt’s UrCove properties – not all of them actually accept foreigners even though they take reservations.

This happened to me at the UrCove Beijing Wangfujing where I had a reservation but when I showed up they were unable to check me in. What might have contributed to the confusion is that I’m Canadian-Chinese with a Chinese first and last name. They accepted my reservation but when I presented my Canadian passport they were not amused or least told me immediately “Foreigners can’t stay here”. My wife is still a Chinese citizen so she checked in but they wouldn’t accept her U.S. credit card and she paid via ePay instead.

FYI: Many hotels in China aren’t set up utility wise to accept foreigners and that’s due to the reporting requirements to the authorities. But I was surprised to run into this with a brand touting their affiliation with Hyatt, an American brand.

I didn’t encounter these problems at other UrCove properties such as Shanghai Jing’An, but a word of warning should you decide to go there: It is a VERY select service, and the employees often speak very little English or none at all. Respectfully: I think you’d go mental there!

Enjoy your trip in Shanghai and let me know if I can be of any help!

-Frank

Wow – that really blew my mind as well. I mean it makes sense because what he says is indeed the case. Chinese hotels strictly have to report every foreigner staying at the hotel to the Public Security Bureau through an electronic system. If you stay at a private address you have to go to a designated office in the local district to do the reporting yourself.

This is not a loose requirement; they do follow up on this, and if there are unexplainable gaps (several nights or weeks unreported), you’ll be picked out the next time you leave or enter China and questioned.

I checked the property in Beijing Frank mentioned here, and it isn’t offered on the Hyatt website. I assume he made that reservation locally through their own systems, so I don’t hold that against Hyatt in this case. But maybe it would be best to equip and train all their hotels to accept foreigners if the brand carries the Hyatt moniker.

I was motivated by that email to try the Urcove Shanghai Jing An yesterday. As he said, it didn’t go well. I reserved the hotel for 5,000 points (it was over US$100 last night so good value) but first there were communication issues, they wouldn’t provide an upgrade and then there was a heater constantly blowing warm air into the room.

They also had some issues registering me because my passport didn’t have a visa, but all was fine in the end. Until I left, that is. Everyone was friendly and helpful though; it wasn’t a bad experience based on staff.

As a remedy, they said I should open the window (bad pollution yesterday). I left after 20 minutes and stayed at the Conrad on points. Hyatt refunded the 5k within an hour after emailing Consumer Affairs.

Have any of you experienced a problem with this UrCove brand?

Conclusion

There seems to be a problem with these UrCove by Hyatt hotels in China as far as catering to foreigners is concerned. English capability of the employees is close to zero, and there are some properties that don’t accept foreign guests or foreign credit cards. Amazing that Hyatt would allow this. Why not make all properties compliant?

The design at the JingAn property was actually pretty nice, and even the room was functional, but I couldn’t sleep with hot heating air in the room, so I had to leave. Maybe I try the Pudong property this week before leaving, and even if I don’t stay there the entire night, I book it until leaving late to the airport and at least clock in the brand.