Hyatt Offering 500 Bonus Points Per Stay Booked Through New Mobile App

by Gary Leff

Hyatt has launched their new mobile app for both Apple and Android devices and to encourage you to use it they’re offering 500 bonus points per stay booked and completed between August 1 and September 30 through the app.

  • All Hyatt brands along with MGM and Small Luxury Hotels stays are eligible
  • Award nights count, so this is effectively a 500 point discount per award redemption during the promotion period
  • The bonus may take 3-4 weeks to post after each stay

This means I need to cancel and rebook my next two months’ of stays, provided of course that hotel rates haven’t gone up since I made my reservations.

The new mobile app includes several features that are only available at some hotels:

  • Stream personal content to your in-room TV through Chromecast
  • Mobile room key
  • Hotel chat feature to make real-time requests

In addition it offers the ability to “[r]equest items directly to guestrooms” and “[a]ccess the schedule of meetings and events happening at the hotel during the member’s stay.”

I rarely use the Hyatt app today. I always have my laptop with me, and use it for bookings that I don’t need to work with my concierge for [such as combining multiple rates in a single reservation, confirming upgrades].

I’m more likely to watch content on my laptop as well rather than streaming it to the TV in the room. That’ll be more useful, I suppose, for families traveling together on a leisure trip than for business travelers (unless they prefer the TV experience for watching you-know-what).

Mobile room key is great for late arrivals on short stays when the feature works. I look forward, though, to trying out the interactive hotel chat feature — whether this is useful depends on the execution at the property level.

When I first stayed at the Andaz Fifth Avenue they offered a service like this by text. I found they were sometimes responsive, sometimes not. Then they stopped promotion it. The Andaz Papagayo encouraged interacting with them via WhatsApp. I’ll be surprised and impressed if Hyatt manages to develop a consistently responsive, helpful in-app request feature. If they do, they’ll have finally made the app a useful integration into my stays.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. Crappy UX design here and/or limited testing. On booking a hotel be sure to enter your Country FIRST. Otherwise the State value doesn’t populate and then once you do enter the country it wipes out all the address info you just put in. Not to mention that it forced me to put in my address even though I was logged into my WOH account.

    Terrible way to kick off a new app

  3. It mostly seems like they just switched a few things around. In the prior apps, for quite a while, you could make requests for things like slippers and toothpaste and use the Chromecast feature and use mobile key at hotels where it was enabled.

    So it seems like they just switched around some of the screens, as these companys often do, and they are calling it a brand new app.

    Also one hotel I stay at a lot it is not showing their direct text message phone number, although maybe you need to be in an active stay.

    Also I find the app did not update if Hyatt upgraded you i.e. the displayed room category did not change. That would be a nice feature.

    You also have been able to view your room charges in the app for the past 1-2 years at least.

  4. Do you know if I have to rebook my stays on the “new app” in order to get the 500 bonus points – if I already booked my stays originally using the “old app?” And – Do I need to register for a promotion to get the bonus points? Thanks!

  5. Same question re registration. I assume not, as there is no registration link. But just booked award night through mobile app. Can cancel, register, and rebook if needed.

  6. Marriott has had the chat feature for a while. I generally like it and it’s usually well executed. It’s nice to message them while I’m out of the room and then have the extra toiletries /pillow/ etc there when I return.

  7. Thanks for mentioning this, Gary! I received the e-mail last night but did not read it closely enough to see the 500 bonus points. Re-booked all of my upcoming trips!

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