Hyatt is making changes to its program for 2024 and those are mostly positive.

• All awards like upgrades and free nights become transferable
  
• More benefit choices are being added as members stay every 10 nights.
  
• It’ll be possible to confirm a suite and try out top tier benefits after fewer nights
  
• While their Guest Of Honor benefit will be more flexible – but no longer unlimited.

Hyatt currently lets Globalist members, those who earn 60 elite nights during a year, to confer their benefits like upgrades, breakfast, and late check-out as a gift when redeeming points for someone else to stay at a Hyatt property on a free night.

Under changes which go into effect for next year, this benefit is no longer unlimited. It becomes a Milestone Reward where members earn use of it. These become certificates which are transferable and usable not just on free night awards but on paid stays as well. And they become first available after 40 nights, making it possible for someone to gift Globalist status to themselves for a stay before they earn that status in addition to giving it to someone else.

However the conventional wisdom is that those who stay 60 nights and are heavy users of this benefit today may lose out.

• They’ll earn a total of 3 certificates after 60 nights (on average, most Globalists do not use the benefit more than twice in a year). So on an ongoing basis those using it a dozen times in a year won’t be able to do that!

• It means the end of unlimited ‘having randos transfer Chase points into Hyatt, moving their Hyatt points into a Globalist member’s account, and getting that Globalist to redeem the award for them.’

• As a transition benefit, for 2024 existing Globalists will receive (5) Guest of Honor certificates to start the year. And then they’ll earn more beginning at 40 nights, with more at additional 10 night stay increments.

What I did not realize, but that is buried in the terms, is that Hyatt is actually being more generous with Globalists during this transition than this suggests.

• Anyone with Globalist or Lifetime Globalist at December 31, 2023, whose status expires February 28, 2025 or later (i.e. who is supposed to have status for the 2024 program year) will get these 5 Guest of Honor certificates.

• But if they use all of the gifted certificates then they can fall back on the legacy benefit through February 28, 2025 to make use of unlimited Guest of Honor on free night award redemptions.

And if there’s anyone out there with status expiration past February 28, 2025 on December 31, they get to make use of the unlimited Guest of Honor on free night awards through February 28, 2026.

All available Guest of Honor Awards have to be used (gifted or applied to a reservation) before making use of the legacy unlimited Guest of Honor benefit. That’s way more generous than I had realized!