Basic principle: sign up for promotions whenever you know about them, even if you do not think you’re going to take advantage of them. Plans change. You get rebooked or have to book a room elsewhere. A trip comes up. Odds of remembering that there’s a promotion to take advantage of at the time you’re changing your plans? Very slim. Registration is quick and easy, so just do it.
With that in mind, registration for Hyatt’s new promotion starts today.
Stays between January 15 through April 30th offer you a choice between bonus points and free nights.
In both cases you will earn rewards for every 5 nights you stay during the promotion period, for each 5 night increment up to 20 nights.
Here’s the bonus earning table if you choose to earn points:
At the upper end of 20 nights that’s 2500 points per night, which is pretty strong for the current environment.
If you choose to earn free nights you will earn one that can redeemed for any Hyatt hotel property up to category 4 (that’s the same restriction as the annual free night earned via the Hyatt Visa).
In many ways, the free nights are far more valuable than points — especially at the lower number of nights. A category 4 free night ‘costs’ 15,000 Gold Passport points, so here’s the effective number of points you would earn if you choose free nights over points:
If you stay just 5 nights, you can earn a free night ‘worth’ 15,000 points instead of earning a 5000 point bonus. That’s clearly the better choice for most.
Even at the top end of 20 nights, the free nights you earn are ‘worth’ 60,000 points — instead of earning a 50,000 point bonus.
However, there are several drawbacks to free nights compared to points:
- Free nights can’t be upgraded using more points or Diamond confirmed suite upgrades.
- Free nights expire. These will have to be redeemed by July 31.
- Free nights don’t count towards status, whereas points redeemed for Hyatt’s new cash and points awards will.
- The free nights are capped at category 4, while points can be combined with other points and redeemed for higher award category hotels.
- You might wind up choosing to use the free nights at hotels below category 4, in which case earning points might have been more lucrative.
I’m going to choose points as 50,000 are more valuable to me than four free nights at a category 4 hotel. I can combine the points towards higher value properties and I can use them for cash and points bookings which cont towards status and can be upgraded with Diamond confirmed suite upgrades.
Overall this is a pretty strong promotion compared to recent offerings from Hyatt and other chains.
- You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Several reports on MP that the registration is failing to function.
Update, I just had it work successfully for points.
@Gary — Two questions:
1) Can you make stays now, register in late March (before the March 31 registration deadline), and have your Jan 15 – March nights count towards the promo? That would help in making the choice between nights and points.
2) For the free nights, do you have to book or stay by July 31? If it is stay, then points look much more attractive to me.
@Gene – the T&C suggest to me that as long as you register, all your nights during the promotion period should count. I will check if Hyatt reads it the same way but it seems clear to me. I believe the free nights must beused by the expiry date but I did not re-read the t&c to check.