Tag Archives: Park Hyatt Tokyo

Heading back to Japan for one more Selfish Trip!

09 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hyatt, Japan, Tokyo

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Hello! It’s been an embarrassingly long time since we last wrote something, hasn’t it? Just under 7 months if the date on the post below is to be believed.

7 months…

I can remember a time not too long ago where Mrs. Selfish and I were cranking out a post a day. Now I’m lucky if I get two done a year. That’s life with a busy toddler, I suppose.

Toddler Selfish

Toddler Selfish loving life at the playground.

Toddler Selfish has kept us so busy, that we’ve only managed 3 trips this year! One to Napa, one to San Diego to visit the zoo, and one to the East Coast to visit family.

Hippo!!

Hippo!! Also, Toddler Selfish.

So when my parents offered to watch Toddler Selfish over the Winter holiday, I immediately jumped at the offer and booked a trip to Japan.

Yes, Japan.

For the fifth time. Continue reading →

Keeping it Short and Suite at the Park Hyatt Tokyo

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hyatt, Japan, Tokyo

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Mrs. Selfish and I stayed at the Park Hyatt Tokyo twice before – once during the Selfish Year trip, and a second time during our trip to the Maldives. It’s one of our favorite hotels in the world, and one I was looking forward to sharing it with Baby Selfish.

During our first two stays, we had temporary diamond status (back when Hyatt was overly generous with their diamond trial), which meant we had free room service breakfast, access to the sauna, and free admission to the NYC bar during the diamond happy hour. Amazing benefits, to be sure, and ones which we were not going to get this time around as lowly Platinum members.

Upgrading to the Suite & Guest of Honor status

Since I still had a diamond suite certificate to burn, I booked the three of us into a king suite for two nights on a severely reduced paid stay using a combination of the Best Rate Guaranteed 20% discount and buying Hyatt gift certificates at 15% off.

In the end, we ended up paying something like 55% of the rack rate for the room and were upgraded to a suite. Pretty great.

Since we wanted to spend a total of 4 nights at the PHT so Mrs. Selfish’s parents could recover from jetlag, I booked the remaining two nights in a standard king, transferring points over to Cousin Selfish’s account so we could try out the Guest of Honor status.

If you’ve never tried Guest of Honor status you basically get to partake in a diamond member’s benefits if they book the room for you with points. Hyatt’s transfer policy is fairly generous, though a member can only receive points from another member once every 30 days, so make sure to transfer all your points at once!

I was secretly hoping that the Park Hyatt Tokyo would give us the best of both worlds and keep us in the suite for 4 nights while giving us diamond status, but didn’t have high hopes since this IS Japan after all. As expected, they followed the rules down to the letter.

Baby Selfish enjoying the view.

Continue reading →

Baby Selfish’s 1st International Trip: Japan!

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hilton, Hyatt, Japan, Kyoto, Tokyo

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Mrs. Selfish and I decided to take our Selfish Year journey as an end cap to our fading young-adult years. We had always enjoyed traveling as young professionals, and decided a year abroad together would be a great way to “get it out of our systems” prior to having a kid.

Boy were we wrong.

A year later and I’m more addicted to traveling than ever. In fact, after settling in San Francisco, we ended up spending over 3 of the next 15 months outside of the country.

So when we found out Mrs. Selfish was pregnant, I immediately did what any other miles & points enthusiast would do in my shoes and started planning Baby Selfish’s first international trip.

Yep, back to Japan!

Continue reading →

Pumping Iron at the Park Hyatt Tokyo

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hyatt, Japan, Tokyo

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Mrs. Selfish and I were originally planning on skipping Tokyo altogether, having gone there twice before. Unfortunately, I had some difficulty finding a business award flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. Availability was limited at the time I booked our tickets, so I opted to book economy, with the hopes that 2 business class awards would open up closer to our travel date.

After checking back every day for two months, I finally found 2 business class awards. Unfortunately, they were 4 days after our connecting flight from Okinawa. Fortunately, we love Tokyo.

Having had a wonderful 5 night stay at the Park Hyatt Tokyo last May, I decided to book 3 nights at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. While I wasn’t surprised that the hotel was still amazing, I was surprised by who I ran into at the Park Hyatt’s gym – let me set the scene.

The Park Hyatt’s gym is small, especially the weight section, which can’t fit more than 6-8 people comfortably. Just check this puppy out:

tokyo-park-hyatt-022

So it didn’t take me very long to realize that the hulking man doing bicep curls to my left was none other than the Governator himself, Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger. After a few awkward glances, I fell into my normal routine until the man left, without saying a word to him. After I told Mrs. Selfish what happened, she told me to wake up her up the following morning, should Arnold be at the gym a second time.

The second morning I woke up and bam!, there he was again. After a quick phone call, Mrs. Selfish arrived with camera in tow, so that we would have photographic evidence of our encounter with Mr. Schwarzenegger.

Behold!

Park Hyatt Tokyo 001

Mr. Schwarzenegger was in town promoting his new movie, Escape Plan, and was a guest at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Though he seemed like he had a packed day, he still took the time to pose for a picture with us, which was pretty cool. Though I never saw him outside of the gym itself, I did see his Japanese bodyguard on several more occasions.

Anyway, back to the hotel itself.

Continue reading →

Now THIS is Living: The Selfish’s Top 10 Stays

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Africa, Asia, Australia, Best Of, Europe, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Oceania

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Prior to our year of reckless traveling, Mrs. Selfish and I only splurged once on a hotel, staying at the Sofitel Hanoi for our Honeymoon. Otherwise, business as usual was a 3-4 star hotel using sites like hotels.com.

And then I discovered the world of miles and points.

With a bank roll of millions of hotel points, spread out over 5 different hotel programs, Mrs. Selfish and I decided to spend our year abroad in style – hitting up some of the travel hacking community’s go-to destinations.

Here’s the 10 best places we stayed in chronological order. Some are miles and points accessible, though some can only be paid for with cold, hard cash!

Room with a view: Airbnb in Paris

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Mrs. Selfish and I spent an amazing 6 weeks in Paris in Montmartre, the same Arrondissement where the movie Amelie takes place. Taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of Paris was something I’ll never forget, and certainly nothing screamed “Paris” quite as much as waking up to a view of the Sacré-Cœur every morning.

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Anyone interested in renting the same flat can do so at Airbnb.

The Riad Pachavana: The full Moroccan Experience

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Mrs. Selfish and I arrived in Marrakech, disoriented and utterly confused. Marrakech’s old town is maze of twisting streets and Aladdin-style scamming street rats, children who try to get you lost so you’ll pay them to take you to your hotel.

Nevertheless, we quickly succumbed to Marrakech’s charms – especially after staying at the lovely Riad Pachavana, which we saved $150 on thanks to three Expedia BRG coupons.

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For more, check out our full post on the Riad Pachavana.

Staying in Protected Palawan: El Nido Resorts

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In the Philippines we were fortunate enough to stay at El Nido, located on Palawan – a protected island south west of Manila. Accessible only by a small private plane (max capacity of < 50), El Nido is a beautiful, isolated paradise. Despite being an all-inclusive resort, the food and activities were pretty great. Plus they have a killer happy hour with an amazing view.

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For more information on Palawan check out our full trip report.

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5 Nights of Pampering in the Park Hyatt Tokyo

01 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hyatt, Japan, Tokyo, Travel Hacking

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For our last five nights in Japan I booked us at the mother of all hotel redemptions – the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Famously shown in “Lost in Translation,” the Park Hyatt Tokyo has become a point-collector’s dream redemption: a luxury hotel in the middle of Tokyo, with killer food, killer views, and a killer price tag.

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Just what is an App-o-Rama?

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Travel Hacking

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“App-o-Rama” is one of the phrases you see thrown around a lot in the travel hacking scene.  Simply put, it’s when someone applies for multiple credit cards in one day.  The amount someone is willing to apply for varies by person. While most people apply for 2-4 at a time, I’ve read reports of people applying for upwards of 12 credit cards in one day!

When applying for multiple credit cards, it’s good to keep a few things in mind:

  1. Your credit score should be over 700: once you go over 760, however, having a higher score doesn’t really help much more.
  2. Apply for all cards at once: it’s usually best to apply for all of your cards in one sitting, since doing so prevents the credit card companies from seeing the other cards you’re applying for.
  3. Diversify your applications: make sure you don’t hit one credit card company too hard.  The major credit card companies are Chase, American Express, Citibank, Bank of America, and Barclays.  Each has different rules about how many cards you can get approved for at once, and how many total cards you can have. In general, if you apply for 1 personal and 1 business card (or less) per company you should be fine.
  4. Apply every 91 days: every time you apply for a card, the issuer makes a hard pull on your credit.  While it takes 2 years for these to fall off your credit report, too many recent requests for credit mean you’re a risk. By applying every 91 days you reduce the chance of getting rejected for “too many requests for credit.”
  5. Persistence is key: even a rejection can be overturned.  I’ve received a number of rejections, but have always managed to get the card I wanted.  As per my last post, you can read more on how to get a rejected application repealed at Million Mile Secrets.

Continue reading →