Hyatt offers better top tier elite benefits than rival hotel chains. Free breakfast is actually full breakfast, and defined as full breakfast including coffee and juice and including tax and tip (only IHG comes close). Late checkout is guaranteed outside of resorts (only Marriott comes close). And going far beyond any other chain, Hyatt offers confirmed suite upgrades at time of booking.
After 50 nights stayed, World of Hyatt members receive 2 confirmed suite upgrades each valid for up to 7 nights (this is even before achieving Globalist status). Then members earn two more at 60 nights stayed, and another suite upgrade award as a choice benefit after each of 70, 80, 90, and 100 nights.
- The benefit was first introduced way back in 2009
- The change from Hyatt Gold Passport to World of Hyatt made these upgrades valid on award stays, not just paid stays
- And they come out of revenue inventory. Whenever a standard suite is available for sale members can confirm the suite with an upgrade certificate.
Park Hyatt DC
While Hyatt is frequently good about identifying what a standard suite is on each hotel’s website, and suites and even premium suites can be booked as full awards using points on Hyatt’s site, confirming upgrades has been a manual process.
- You have to contact Hyatt. I used to email my concierge (a benefit at 60 nights) but they take too long to respond if at all. So I usually direct message @HyattConcierge on Twitter.
- They have to contact the hotel to block the suite. Time zones can be a real challenge and the process can take a day or two for some properties.
Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi
This appears about to change. Spencer Howard writes at The Points Wire that Hyatt is rolling out confirmation of suite upgrades online.
Hyatt Regency Bellevue On Seattle’s Eastside… [had] the option to book a standard room with points and add a Suite Upgrade Award all from the app…we confirmed that Hyatt is rolling out the ability to book Suite Night Awards online. You should start to see this option at more properties going forward.
Park Hyatt Chennai
Frequent Miler confirmed this in the Hyatt app, but it no longer seems to be appearing when I check.
This is a big advance in convenience for using these suite upgrade awards. I always worry that inventory will disappear during the time it takes to confirm a suite. I also worry that the manual process won’t be completed correctly. On points bookings upgraded to a suite the reservation currently still reflects the original room booked.
Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur
While we’re on the subject of IT improvements at Hyatt, I’d love to see a real points calendar that shows not just how many points a hotel would cost if it’s available, but that reflects real-time availability. Third party site Awayz can do this for Hyatt, Hyatt should be able to accomplish it themselves (or acquire Awayz).
Meanwhile, the three changes I’d like to see even more to suite upgrades are (1) allowing use of an upgrade to a lesser room when no suite is available (for instance, to an Opera View Deluxe room at Park Hyatt Sydney which is exempt from the suite upgrade program) and (2) allowing use of suite upgrades on category 1-4 and category 1-7 free night certificate stays (I often do not want to use these certificates, as my redemption stays are usually with my wife and daughter where I want a suite), and (3) use of more than one suite upgrade certificate to confirm a premium suite, which can today be accessed via points but not upgrade certificate.
Hyatt Globalist and Marriott Ambassador. I was going to redeem points for 3 nights at the Renaissance St Pancras in London. Every category of rooms and suites were available, including their highest category suite. Property blocked suites from suite night award redemption. I called my Ambassador agent and asked her if she could call the hotel to block me into a suite. This was 3 days before arrival. Hotel refused to block me into a suite even though every suite category was available for booking with cash and points. Meanwhile, Hyatt gets me a suite 6 months in advance.
This is exactly why I don’t stay at many Marriotts. Hyatt is the best with their suite upgrades.
Surprised your Hyatt concierge doesn’t respond quickly. During the week mine is back to me in usually under an hour. And very responsive if I call as well.
What? Only 3 comments so far to a post that yet again reaffirms World of Hyatt’s superiority and supremacy?
That claim, made up and self-serving wishful thinking, won’t suddenly become true no matter how often it’s recycled.
Every single program sets aside a limited number of standard rooms/suites for redeeming with points or elite upgrades, except (a) Accord ALL where points and cash are interchangeable (2,000 = 40 euros) so that any available room/suite can be booked with points; or (b) Hilton Honors “premium awards” for which points and cash be used interchangeably by using a fixed conversion factor that varies by property, location, season. For instance, at WA Maldives the conversion factor was 1HH = $0.0021 a couple of years ago when I checked. Therefore, if a ‘premium’ villa costing $3,473 per night was available for booking with cash, the same villa was also available for booking with points , with no questions asked, but it cost a bundle — exactly, $3,473/($0.0021/HH) = 1,653,810 HH points
Therefore, until Hyatt makes such a direct equivalence between their points/certs and cash, it is simply a pipe dream and disingenuous to keep perpetuating the lie that in World of Hyatt “whenever a standard room or suite is available for sale members can book the room with points or confirm the suite with an upgrade certificate”. In fact, everyone knows that is not the case at all in the real world.
Reductio ad absurdum: Park Hyatt New York has 210 rooms, including 92 suites. According to the quoted claim, if, say, half of those suites are standard suites and they are available for booking with cash, then the hotel is required to confirm them with upgrade certificates, with the possibility that all suites could be occupied by only people who booked cheaper rooms and got upgraded using certs!.
However, because Globalists have a hard time confirming upgrades with their certificates at this property, or at practically every property with standard suites available for booking with cash, we are told that properties “play games with availability”, when the reality is that standard rooms for booking with points or suites for confirming as elite upgrades with certs are “revenue-managed.” Therefore, when a property runs out of standard rooms or suites that it sets aside for awards/upgrades, then that’s it. No additional standard rooms can be booked with points or suites confirmed with certs even though standard rooms or suites can still be booked using cash. That is uniform across programs. Period.
Shut up DCS about how great Hilton supposedly is
-Everyone on this blog who *was* a HH diamond member
@John L — My comment was not at all about the greatness of Hilton Honors, which I have never claimed. For such claims about any program, just read the post or come often to this site. However, your brain is so thoroughly cleansed of any “vestige of intelligence” you barked up the wrong tree, like a Pavlovian dog salivates when presented only with cues that it associates with the appearance of a juicy steak. It’s called a “conditioned reflex.”
Wish you well.
I’m annoyed at the games that some hotels play with their standard suites. The Park Hyatt in Paris has the standard suite (Park Suite King) available, but during my planned stay, they only make it available if you’re staying 6+ nights. Search for my 4 nights, no standard suite; add 2 days to make it 6 nights, standard suite is available. So Hyatt won’t confirm a suite upgrade for me because the Park Suite King isn’t available for just my 4 night stay. I love Hyatt, but that’s BS.
As a Globalist for many years, I rarely have problems reaching my concierge or someone on the Globalist line. I’ve also had very high success rate using my Suite Upgrade Awards by contacting either my concierge or someone on the Globalist line. Not sure why some folks have such a difficult time.
In contrast, I have not been able to use my Marriott suite upgrades during the same time frame, even with lower-category hotels (e.g., Sheraton, Westin, Marriott, etc.). After this year, I will have lifetime Platinum with Marriott, I will stop staying there and focus on Hyatt and IHG since IHG, while their upgrades are lackluster, at least has begun offering real breakfast benefits.
I had to abandon Hilton completely because the Diamond status gets you nothing that matters to me. If you can’t do upgrades well, at least do free breakfast well. Hilton utterly fails on both fronts.
@ DCS – I have never been denied a suite upgrade that met Hyatt’s stated rules. Either I have been very lucky or you are grossly exaggerating when you say “or at practically every property with standard suites available for booking with cash.”