So luxury might be everywhere in some form, but you probably won’t find it at a Hyatt Place… however you still may find yourself at a Hyatt Place one of these nights. Hyatt Places are springing up everywhere, consuming more and more of the Hyatt portfolio. If you use Hyatts at all you probably have found yourself staying at a Hyatt Place here or there, simply for convenience or because you needed to overnight at an airport or something. They can be useful and good value in circumstances like airport stays, or in smaller towns where nothing else is available. But here’s the thing: the longer that Hyatt Places are around, the stranger and funnier their design seems. Why? Here’s why:

When Hyatt Places were first launched in the mid-late 2000s, they used a palette that at the time was one of the going palettes used by mid-range hotels like Westins. Lots of brown tones mixed with green and sometimes a bit of yellow or purple. It wasn’t a pretty palette but it was a familiar palette that was used in many hotels and restaurants. It was supposed to mean “modern” then.

Fast forward to 2017 and nearly every restaurant or hotel is using fresh neutrals, like white and gray and black, or fresh organic colors like blue, spring yellow, and wood tones. So walking into a Hyatt Place with its brown, green, and purple palette is starting to feel like time-traveling to the 1990s or 2000s. In the photo of the Hyatt Place bar above, it looks like a coffee bar straight out of Friends, lol. But that’s not even what’s so funny about Hyatt Places. What is so funny about them is that it is pretty obvious that Hyatt wants the Hyatt Place to look outdated.

Why? Some Hyatt Places are pretty indistinguishable in architecture from an urban modern hotel like a Hyatt Centric. The big difference is in the color scheme at Hyatt Place, which is more outdated than a Hyatt Centric or another of the mid-end urban modern chain hotels.

So nowadays when I walk into a Hyatt Place and see the extremely outdated brown/green/purple tones, I think about how they are doing it absolutely on purpose nowadays. I wonder if they have a particular designer whose job is to make a Hyatt Place as studiously low-end and 90s looking as possible? It’s hilarious to think about having a job where the point is to make a hotel avoid looking too nice or aspirational. Because think about it, if the low-mid end hotel looks nice, it might as well be a Hyatt Centric or Hyatt Regency, and then they’ll have to charge too much to stay within Hyatt Place brand standards. So, green and purple it is.