Starwood and Marriott have Moments. Marriott doubled down on experiences by investing in PlacePass. IHG Rewards Club has auctions and so does Hilton.

United has Exclusives and Chase has Experiences while Citi has PrivatePass.

For a company invested in being an experiential brand outside of hotel stays, trying to earn a revenue premium by ‘helping you be a better you’ through acquisitions live Miraval and Exhale Spas, Hyatt has been behind its competitors in offering experiences outside of its hotels through its loyalty program.

Hyatt tried outsource their experiences offering to IfOnly. They offered 3 points per dollar spent at IfOnly, or burn points for IfOnly packages at 4/5ths of a cent per point in value.

That partnership is over, and Hyatt now has its own experiences platform which is a limited subset of IfOnly albeit with a higher redemption value and more points for spend.

• It’s small, so far around 100 experiences.
  
• Earn 10 points per dollar or spend points (at ~ 1.4 cents per point)

Designed to go beyond the guide books and into deeper parts of the world less known, FIND brings to life various experiences centered around food, drink, fitness, relaxation and exploration. Eligible World of Hyatt members can choose from over 100 experiences focused on restoring, reenergizing and self-care, and experiences will continuously evolve in the U.S. and international markets including, but not limited to: Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Sydney, India, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Some of the experiences try too hard. There’s a dessert cooking class from a plant-based chef; vegan cheese tasting; goat herding with a picnic lunch in California; create your own organic beauty products in Berkeley. There’s a lot of yoga, including with the founders of Goat Yoga.

Paying with points doesn’t earn points. And with Hyatt points worth around 1.4 cents apiece, that means giving up the 14% rebate on paid experiences. So the ‘real’ value paying with points is closer to 1.2 cents.

The best implementations of experiential offerings,

• Leverage scale and relationships to provide members with access to experiences they can’t buy themselves.

• Sometimes they go for plenty of points, but they’re once in a lifetime kinds of things and worth it (like throwing out the first pitch in the final game of the World Series). Or just a few points, perhaps to attend a sold out event at no more than published ticket prices priced in points.

• Have a wide array of choices, all over the world, so they’re relevant to the largest number of members.

More options are better, and it’s worth giving these a scan. There isn’t the exceptional value, scale, or true scarcity to the bulk of these experiences. But some of them are going to be interesting, and the value per point is fair though not outsized.