Hyatt has published a list of hotels that will be increasing or decreasing in award category for 2016.

Last year’s program changes were a reasonably big deal although very much not across the board. This year’s on the other hand isn’t bad at all.

All in all 70 hotels or about 15% of the program is changing award category. And many more hotels are going down — costing fewer points — than going up.

22 hotels are going up a category, 48 hotels are going down a category, and only a single hotel is moving two categories — the Grand Hyatt Shenyang drops from category 4 to category 2.

• 7 hotels go from category 1 to category 2. These are mostly Hyatt Place properties including two in Denver.
  
• 14 hotels drop from category 2 to category 1. These are mostly Hyatt Place properties including two in Orlando and the Hyatt House Colorado Springs.
  
• 7 hotels go from category 2 to category 3. These include Excalibur and the Hyatt Regencys in Santa Clara and Toronto.
  
• 14 hotels drop from category 3 to category 2. These include the Park Hyatt Chennai, Hyatt Regencys in Montreal, Osaka, and Orlando/Universal. Chennai is the least expensive Park Hyatt across the board including ~ US$40/hour spa treatments when I was there.
  
  
• 2 hotels go from category 3 to category 4 – the Grand Hyatts in Sao Paulo and Taipei
  
• 1 hotel goes from category 4 to category 2.
  
• 11 hotels go from category 4 to category 3. These include the Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency is San Antonio and the Hyatt Regency Pier 66.
  
  
• 3 hotels go from category 4 to category 5, including two I have an interest in – the Grand Hyatt Macau and Park Hyatt Seoul.
  
• 6 hotels go from category 5 to category 4, including the Grand Hyatt DC and MGM Grand. Those are nice wins.
  
• 2 hotels go from category 5 to category 6 – the Hyatt Regency Nice and Andaz Amsterdam. Those are not surprises.
  
• 2 hotels go from category 6 to category 5 – the Park Hyatt Washington (nice!) and Mandalay Bay.
  
• 1 hotel goes from category 6 to category 7 — the Park Hyatt Maldives, which should have been category 7 when the category was introduced though I am grateful was not.
  

Representing an overall annual hotel category shuffle, with more hotels going down than up, there’s not much to complain about here — even if the hotels I’m most interested in are going up (Maldives, Seoul, Macau, Nice).

Drops in points prices at the Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt DC and Park Hyatt Chennai are quite nice.

The hotel industry as a whole is doing quite well. I only hope this level of non-change is maintained as other programs release their new award categories for the coming year.

These changes go into effect January 22nd. So you can still book awards into the future (through end of published calendar for each hotel) at current rates even for hotels that will be going up in category.

(HT: Pizza in Motion)

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