Overall Hyatt has the most rewarding hotel loyalty program of the major chains, largely as a result of its top tier Globalist elite level – which offers confirmed suites at time of booking and a real full breakfast (that specifies what it includes rather than leaving it up to the hotel, and even includes tax and tip). Meanwhile, Hilton and IHG don’t even guarantee late check-out. You can currently get free Hyatt status.
Hyatt rolled out the World of Hyatt program in 2016, and it was controversial. There were some improvements, but we lost things like a check-in amenity (like choice of food and beverage) and elite status became harder to earn.
In the past 7 years there have really been just three noteworthy improvements to the program, the introduction of premium suite award redemptions, the SLH Hotels partnership and the double dip for elites with American Airlines. There’s really been no program improvements, though, in the past four years.
Meanwhile there’s been several devaluations, from the introduction of a new higher category 8 redemption level to the introduction of peak and off-peak pricing. Some hotel award nights have gotten 50% more expensive in just a couple of years, but points-earning opportunities haven’t grown as much. That makes Hyatt less rewarding for stays, and the Hyatt co-brand credit card less rewarding for spend.
There are ‘easy wins’ and fixes to pain points that Hyatt could pursue to make the World of Hyatt program more attractive, and more competitive, to drive more business. Here are things I would focus on.
- Free night certificates need to account for inflation, with category 4 awards changing to cap at category 5 and category 1-7 award nights taking account of the introduction of category 8. Each year these certificates – earned from Hyatt’s credit card, for reaching 30 nights, and for completing stays at each set of 5 brands, as well as for hitting 60 nights – become less valuable.
- Confirmed upgrades on free night certificates. I avoid use of these certificates that I earn, because I’m not going to redeem them on business stays (when I’m traveling solo) and on stays with my wife and daughter I want a suite. The most compelling element of the Hyatt elite program is access to suites, but while you can use a a suite upgrade certificate on a free night award, you can not use a suite upgrade certificate on a free night paid with a category 1-4 or category 1-7 free night certificate. The only time I would use one of these certificates, it means having to accept a lesser room. That makes the certificates no longer a reward.
- Allow use of two confirmed upgrades for a premium suite. This would actually save World of Hyatt money, since they pay hotels less than two standard suite upgrades costs them for an upgrade to a premium suite. Hyatt members can spend points to upgrade to premium suites, why not allow use of confirmed suite upgrades too? The process already exists!
- Address hotels playing games with award availability by carving out small categories of room for redemption, a handful of “1 King” rooms versus “1 King Garden” (i.e. no – view) and then imposing minimum stay requirements on those 1 Kings. Too many hotels have figured out how to benefit from World of Hyatt while not honoring it, making spending points difficult.
Andaz Maui is a well-known scofflaw, so is Park Hyatt Aviara, Hyatt Centric Waikiki, and Andaz West Hollywood to name just a few.
Andaz Maui - Fix My Hyatt Concierge, requests I make often go into the ether and then I have to check their work after I do follow up several days later to make sure reservations are booked at the correct hotel. Delays have cost me confirmed suites. My experience is not an outlier and lack of resources in this program has been well-known within Hyatt for years.
Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur - Fix the confirmed suite booking process. Reservations has to contact the hotel to actually block the room, and this happens during the hotel’s business hours. For different time zones they send an email… which may be ignored.
Park Hyatt New York - Define what a suite actually is, as many hotels choose larger standard rooms and call them standard suites. A suite has a separate living room, with a wall and a door.
- Allow use of confirmed suite upgrades for room types below a standard suite, so when no suite is available you can still confirm, say, an ocean view – and hotels that don’t have standard suites might still participate in the benefit – such as an Opera Deluxe room at the Park Hyatt Sydney.
Park Hyatt Sydney - Meaningful mid-tier level. There’s really very little value in Hyatt status below Globalist, other than for 2 p.m. late check-out and perhaps avoiding ‘the bad rooms’ at a hotel. Hyatt could give Explorists a boost by allowing club lounge upgrade certificates to be redeemed for free restaurant breakfast at hotels without lounges. Admittedly this would come at a cost, especially since club upgrade certificates often expire unused today, but the program can’t compete for these members today and should be able to turn this into a positive-yielding investment.
Park Hyatt Paris - Fix the elite points bonus. Top tier elites earn just 30% more points than base members. Hilton Honors Diamonds earn a 100% bonus plus point bonuses for hitting stay thresholds, while Marriott’s top level offers a 75% bonus. While Hyatt’s effective rebate is strong for base members, it’s not as lucrative for top elites. 30% is weak compared to the competition.
Granted this would be costly to offer, but it’s an area where they’re spending less than competitors, and the recent points devaluations should be able to fund improvements for the chain’s best customers.
World of Hyatt is a better program than peers, but it needs to be, because Hyatt still has a smaller footprint than similar efforts at Marriott, IHG, and Hilton. A customer has to choose Hyatt, and that takes effort, so they need to give customers a reason to do so. And that means finding ways to reduce pain points and deliver on promises. So I think it makes sense to prioritize items like these. What would be on your list?
11. Build, acquire, or coordinate with more hotels. WOH is basically fine with me but most of the time Hyatt is not where I am going.
Thanks Gary. I’m hearing a lot of consternation surrounding suite upgrades.
I think you forgot an equally important issue…awards that are earned expire 1 year after they are issued. So if you earn a category 1-7 certificate in June for making Globalist, for example, they expire in 12 months. They should all expire at the end of the following membership year, just as Airline or Hotel status does.
Agree on all. Similar to your point about being able to use suite upgrades on FNA’s, should also include using club awards on FNA’s
I am a WOH Lifetime Globalist. On the whole Hyatt has been good to me. I don’t care about suites as i am usually just 1 night in a hotel and i get upgraded anyway. What i do care about: i miss the amenity and I really, really miss the lounges. In my last 20 or so stays I can remember 1 lounge (Chicago downtown). Bring them back.
On the suite upgrades what about having one of the four being for a premium suite and the three others for standard suites. That could be combined with the idea of letting people use two upgrades at once for a premium suite. Let’s be real – premium suites usually sit empty.
Longer expiration dates on milestone awarded certificates should be pretty high on that list. I’ve had too many of these expire because I didn’t have enough time to make them useful. I’m going to have to burn a cat 7 cert on a low value stay this year. Meanwhile, I have stays during the validity period at cat 7 hotels where I want suite upgrades, stays during the validity period at cat 8 hotels, and stays that fall just outside of the validity period.
The concierge service is rarely useful. Generally takes a week to get a response, meanwhile I can get immediate help from the Twitter concierge, available to everyone, to do 90% of what I need.
I had planned to hit 60 nights this year and am well on my way. The Bilt promo offering Glob-lite for 20 nights happens to fall during a heavy stay period for me, so I’m now assured of extending my status. With the cat 7 cert and concierge delivering little value, I’ll stop credit card spending to get to 60 nights – the milestone benefits are just not valuable enough anymore.
It’s a good program that just stopped innovating. I hope they get back to being as member-friendly as they used to be.
Gary,
Another great article. We gave up on Hyatt long ago due to the frustration. It would be nice as we are AA but the spend to earn and keep is better spent elsewhere.
Spot on, very good article Gary and I agree totally with what you wrote.
Hopefully Hyatt will read this post and take it seriously.
I had a matching offer from American Airlines status to Hyatt Globalist.
I never had a Hyatt account before. Created account. Linked AA and Hyatt and waited and waited and waited and nothing happened in 7 days. I called Hyatt. The most unresponsive smug arrogant customer service people I have ever talked to. They threw up their hands and referred me back to AA. AA saw the promotion and had no idea what went wrong. Total clustFCK. AA gave me 30,000 miles for all the aggravation. Hyatt lost my potential business for being singularly non helpful and smug because I only had member status. (Hugest status in Hilton and Marriott)
” Allowing club lounge upgrade certificates to be redeemed for free restaurant breakfast at hotels without lounges” would be a huge benefit. If you are in the US (as I am), there are approximately no hotels with lounges, which makes the club lounge award very low-value.
Give all users of Marriott Rewards and IHG a free subscription to point.me.
The frustration of using it would make them hate the brands so much they would stay at Hyatt.
Any idea what’s keeping them from allowing a suite upgrade with a certificate?
I’m guessing technology. Any thoughts, Gary?
As Globalist, I don’t really need suite upgrade certificates. Would be nice to have an alternative.
Leaving aside the crowning of a program that does not give its members the 4th or 5th award night free — quantifiably, the single mos valuable perk in hotel loyalty — “the most rewarding”, I would like to demonstrate why Hyatt cannot grant the wish of increasing the % bonus earned on base points without the program going belly-up the way of SPG (R.I.P):
Believe it or not, points currencies of the major hotel loyalty programs form what can be called a “points currency peg“, in which other programs set and then fix the values of their points relative to a Hilton point being assigned the value of 1 penny — it’s the price at which Hilton point sells when offered with no bonus. When Hilton sells its points with a 100% bonus, the cost is 0.5cpp, which is also the public or “face” value of a Hilton point.
Without getting too deep into my modeling, I will simply present the startling results.
It is not by coincidence that, including bonus points from their entry co-branded CCs with an annual fee,
Hilton Diamonds earn 32 HH points/$ on revenue stays;
Bonvoy top elites (Platinum to Titanium) earn 23.5 BVY points/$ on revenue stays;
Hyatt Globalists earn 10.5 WoH points/$ on revenue stays.
Take Bonvoy top elites’ earn rate of 23.5 points/$, for instance. isn’t that a weird number? Isn’t WoH Globalist’s earn rate of 10.5 points/$ also strange? Why not 10 or 15 or another whole number?
Well, no, those values are not strange at all. They are set by each program to maintain a fixed “face” value relative to the “face” value of a Hilton point of 0.5cpp. In other words, the “face” values of the points currencies of WoH, Bonvoy, IHG, and Radisson Reward (America) are “pegged” to the value of a Hilton Honors points. Here’s the proof:
Starting with 0.5cpp as the “face” value of Hilton point and knowing the earn rate of top elites in each program (co-brand CC bonus points included), we can calculate the “face” value of each of the other programs’ points currency (rounded up or down) as follow, using simple dimensional analysis:
1. Hilton Honors: 0.5cpp (value “pegged” to)
2. WoH: 0.5cpp * (32HH/$)/(10.5 WoH/$) = 1.5cpp
3. Bonvoy: 0.5cpp * (32HH/$)/(23.5 BVY/$) = 0.7cpp
4. IHG: 0.5cpp * ((32HH/$)/30 IHG/$)/ = 0.5cpp
5. Rad Rewards: 0.5cpp * (32HH/$)/(40 RR/$) = 0.4cpp
The values I just calculated above are identical to the mean values that one gets if one averages the values published by this site, by OMAAT and by TPG, to take out the “noise”.
Now, suppose Hyatt begins awarding Globalists 100% bonus points on earned base points. Without adjusting anything else, Globalists’ base earn rate would jump from 10.5WoH/$ to
5 (base) + 5 (100% of base) + 4 (Chase WoH visa) = 14 WoH points/$
Leading to a “face” value of a WoH point of: 0.5cpp * 32/14 = 1.1cpp
If Globalists were to be award 100% bonus points on earned base points, the “face” value of a Hyatt point would decrease a whopping 36% relative to the competition…unless, e.g., the earn rate of the WoH Chase visa were decreased from 4x to 0.5x to return the base earn rate to 10.5x.
Beware what you wish for… 😉
A worthy wish that would fix the lackluster program would be for it to begin awarding all its elites the 4th or 5th award night free, like the competition does, because it is the surest “devaluation buster.” Somehow, the post left out that desirable “fix” from its wish list!
Some of us won’t drink the “Hyatt is best” kool-aid because we know better… 😉
Agreed on updating the free night certificates to account for point inflation. I don’t have any category 4 hotels near me that I’d like to redeem at these days, and when I do a big trip, like you I want top hotels and suites. I’d further like to see allowing the use of points to top off a certificate, like Marriott offers.
@Jeff — Or the program could simply issue unrestricted certificates, à la HH, that are redeemable for free nights at any hotel that has standard awards available. 😉
@dcs I like your suggestion of 4th or 5th night free
Also the category 1-4 certificate is practically useless in major cities
@FlyingFromNY: Not at the Andaz Vienna Am Belvedere.
For accuracy:
The Radisson Rewards (America) top elite’s earn rate is 45points/$ and not 40points/$, though the result rounds up to the same value:
5. Rad Rewards: 0.5cpp * (32HH/$)/(45 RR/$) = 0.36cpp = ~0.4cpp
Globalist for many years, huge WoH fan despite top status in the others (M, IGH and H), but I have no use for Club Access Awards. 8 expire unused every year. Get notices I have an award expiring and it’s always those. ANY alternative use – even transferrable to a family member – would be a HUGE plus.
Explorist really is useless. To your point, it would be nice to see some value beyond 2pm checkout.
The only improvement I would like is to be able to use a TSU on a free night certificate stay. Other than that I couldn’t be happier than I am with Hyatt. As a lifetime Globalist I’m treated like a king no matter which full service Hyatt I visit although sometimes more as a peasant at Hyatt House and Hyatt Place locations. My Hyatt Concierge always answers my e-mails within 30 minutes on weekdays. I love and use all of my confirmed suite upgrades.
Great list that is easy and relatively inexpensive to Hyatt to implement. To address properties playing games with award space, I wouldn’t mind an elite-only block of rooms, similar to United’s expanded save availability. That would provide additional benefit to Discoverists and Explorists and hopefully keep resort properties from filing up on points redemptions.
I do really like the suggestions for Premium Suite upgrades and suite upgrades on Award certificates. Ideally, Hyatt would move to a Marriott style system where certificates, points and cash bookings could be booked seamlessly.
I agree with comments about all the closed lounges in the US. Bring back the lounges. Most Hyatts are now renting them out for private functions.
Most are good ideas. Frankly, I’d be happy enough with 1 and 4.
People can try to math their way into justifying Hilton Loyalty, but at the end of the day you still have to stay at a Hilton.
Anyway, the most valuable rewards to me are the premium suite upgrade awards. I’m constantly booking into Diplomatic or Presidential Suites at a minimal points cost.
Meanwhile, my most recent experience at a W.A left me sour when they refused to give me an upgrade to even an upper tier room as a Diamond (despite plentiful availability).
Award availability: Maybe add in the contract that whatever formula they use to determine award rooms, at least xx% of rooms at a hotel must be in the base room category.
Free 4th or 5th night: Definitely missing from your list.
@Fatetta, Actually the 1-7 certs are only good for 6 months. It’s a bad policy.
Another ridiculous one on the tier list is the Club Access Awards, which you can’t give to anyone else and which we get anyway as Globalist, assuming there is a lounge… DUMB DUMB award that almost everyone (Globalist or not) finds useless now.
Whomever mentioned tech, yes, Hyatt’s IT is awful. The worst. I live in one, and even though I have unique reservation numbers for each month, Hyatt FORCES me to check out for 24 hours before I check back in or it counts a 6 month stay as ONE STAY. My GM doesn’t understand. MHC suggested the hotel maneuver various ways, or that I even check out and they comp a night, or I pay a night a different way, etc etc. Like why does the hotel have to fix your bad IT? I do this to avoid taxes (legally) since in my state I am tax-exempt; it’s treated like I am renting an apartment. This messes up my record keeping receipts because what is available in the app doesn’t match what the hotel has, and Hyatt can’t provide me with a receipt that is correct (WHYYYYY?) It messes up promos, AA points, and me being able to track points earnings accurately.
Now that EVERYONE GETS TO BE A CONCIERGE, I really wonder what I am doing? I don’t care if my hotel is a Cat 1 or 6 right now, I just want the blasted receipt to be accurate, dangit. But I am with Gary about combining a SUA with a cert.
I have two suggestions to tack on:
1) if a hotel has suites, and *particularly* if they avail themselves of the “standard suites points + cash” scheme, they should have to be fully in on the upgrade system. there are countless hyatt place and hyatt houses that sell suites, and that let you upgrade to suites using points the same as full-service hotels, but the moment you ask for the complimentary globalist upgrade at check-in or ask to use a suite upgrade certificate, you’re tersely pointed to the terms and conditions and told that those aren’t offered/applicable. HP and HH are allowed to pick and choose which of the brand requirements benefit them and offer none of the ones that obligate them to be loyalty customer-friendly.
2) globalists should be able to convert club upgrades to points. they are wholly worthless to (really, well, everyone, now that no place has clubs anymore) globalists especially because it’s a benefit already included. Even a nominal amount of points would be welcome.
They are stuck with Chase as a CC partner. I quite co-brands with Chase during the Continental days when they screwed up the posting of miles, to my detriment, one too many times. I stepped back in with Hyatt and it happened again, when they mistimed the posting of the 2 nights for hitting 15K and the issuance of the free night cert. As a result just missed Globalist in spite of calling multiple times before the end of year, being assured that all was well, then being told after review that no, not all is well. Back to a free agent after 3 years so I can try some of those other hotels out of the networks.
As a Globalist, I’d obviously enjoy getting some benefit from my now worthless Club upgrade certs (like how about a $25/food & beverage credit?). But that’s just correcting a silliness in the program. My real beef is the lack of ANY real recognition when I stay at Hyatt Places, which are at least half my Hyatt stays (how else would most folks ever qualify for Globalist given Hyatt’s limited footprint?). Other than a free Aquafina and a late checkout (I need this maybe 15% of the time, I try not to linger at Hyatt Places unless I need to work from my room), I get absolutely NOTHING as a Globalist at most Hyatt Places. It would certainly seem like I should get something to acknowledge my loyalty, like a couple of cookies or drinks.The other major chains — even Choice! — do this.