Hyatt Gold Passport is offering up to a 40% bonus on purchased points through May 31.

It doesn’t appear to be one of their usual tiered offers: instead it’s a 40% bonus on purchases of 10,000 points or more. You don’t have to max out the offer to get the highest bonus.

With a 40% bonus Hyatt is selling you points at 1.71 cents apiece. I personally value them at about 1.4 cents apiece so this doesn’t make me a buyer (points would have to be priced at less than 1.4 cents for that).

You can get more than 2 cents apiece out of your points so if you were going to pay cash for a room anyway buying points can be used to get a room discount.

And topping off an account could make sense if you were close to an award.

40% is the Best I’ve Seen for a Hyatt Buy Points Bonus

The standard bonus offer from Hyatt for purchasing points in the past has been 30%.

In May and June the offer was 20%.

Even before the devaluation at the beginning of the year (which was heavily concentrated on a handful of hotels and otherwise modest overall), I was skeptical of the 30% bonus. I feel the same way now about 40% (which was also offered back in August) that I felt about 30% then.

Leveraging Buy Points With Cash and Points

One place where it’s a little better is with the new cash and points awards which are effectively discounted paid room rates (which count towards elite status and promotions, and can be upgraded to suites with Diamond confirmed suite upgrades).

That’s because if you need to top off an account to have enough points to make a cash and points award, then buying these points acts as a further ticket to buy points at an even greater discount — category 2 through 6 cash and points awards let you buy points at 1.2 – 1.3 cents apiece.

(Category 1 and 7 cash and points awards price the points you’re buying back at 2 cents apiece… but cash and points awards are still better than buying points at 2 cents because cash and points awards are themselves points/promotion/status-earning.)

So average the total cost of your points purchase with the cost of points when making that award and it brings down the total cost still… not to a price where I’d speculatively buy points, but to a place where you may be getting a good discount on a room you’d otherwise pay full price for.

Uniquely Valuable Offer Now

For stays through July 31 if you have or get the Hyatt Visa you get a 20% rebate on your redemptions.

If you don’t have the points you need for a redemption, a 40% bonus combined with a 20% rebate can be a particularly good deal especially on category 2 through 6 cash and points.