Two months ago American AAdvantage and World of Hyatt announced a new partnership.

• American elites earn 1 AAdvantage mile per dollar spent with Hyatt (that’s a 20% bonus on top of base points offered)
  
• Hyatt elites earn 1 Hyatt point per dollar spent on American flights (that’s a 20% bonus on top of base points offered)
  
• American Airlines ConciergeKey members receive World of Hyatt Globalist status
  
• Each program is offering status challenges to elites from the other program

The program is now live and you can link your accounts to start earning on the American side or on the Hyatt side (it does not matter which you use). American AAdvantage elites can also register with Hyatt by October 1 for an elite status fast track.

As an Executive Platinum with American I’m not offered a fast track elite status offer with the airline. As a Hyatt ‘Globalist’ (I still abhor the name for the status level, even more than American’s 75k tier Platinum Pro) I get an offer to challenge keeping Globalist status.

The Globalist fast track offer is:

• Stay 10 nights within 90 days of registering to keep Explorist status through February 2021
  
• Stay 20 nights within 90 days to earn Globalist through February 2021

You can register any time through October 1, so consider when you’d want temporary status to start (e.g. if you have an upcoming Hyatt stay where you’ll use it) and if you plan to take advantage of the challenge to keep status consider when your Hyatt stays are most likely to cluster.

American’s Platinum, Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum are offered Hyatt status challenges, and Hyatt Explorists and above are offered AAdvantage elite offers (“[t]hese elite status offers will not, however, allow AAdvantage members to re-achieve the same elite status level they held in AAdvantage at the time of registration in these offers”).

As an American Executive Platinum I’m thrilled to earn bonus Hyatt points for the tickets I’m buying anyway, which may simply amount to, in George W. Bush’s words, ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. I consider this the best improvement American has made to AAdvantage in years. As a Hyatt Globalist I’m equally pleased to earn additional American miles for the nights I’m staying anyway.

For American’s ConciergeKey members getting comped to Hyatt Globalist is potentially huge. Hyatt’s great limitation is its footprint, they may not be everywhere you need to stay. But for guests that find Hyatt’s 700-plus hotels work for them (not to mention the hotels in their various alliance arrangements, such as MGM and SLH), Globalist is the most lucrative top tier of the major hotel chains. Notably, though, gifted Globalist status does not come with confirmed suite upgrades.

ConciergeKey members should absolutely be loving the improvements to their program over the last couple of years.

Update: as a Hyatt Globalist I’m offered temporary AAdvantage Platinum status and a challenge up to Executive Platinum status (which I already have).