Next year’s Hyatt devaluation is going to be even worse than this year’s. That’s what Senior Vice President of Global Marketing & Loyalty Laurie Blair shared in February when detailing the changes that they were making to the award chart that went into effect on Wednesday.
- They were putting the new 5 price levels for each award category into effect in 2026
- But initially, she said, we wouldn’t see much of the changes right away.
- The May 20 changes were just a preview. They wanted to get the structure in place, but were holding back on the real effect until next year.
So while members are reacting strongly over devaluation – there are now 78 price levels for hotels on the award chart, with some properties having gone up in price 67% – it’s important to remember that Hyatt told us to expect next year’s changes to be even bigger with more hotels going up into the 4th and 5th tiers of each award category.
The good news is that any given night gets assigned to “lowest, low, moderate, upper and top” points price levels for a hotel only once and doesn’t change dynamically like we see at Marriott. Pricing for hotels over the next year is, essentially, fixed today.
So far it appears that for most properties, devaluations are modest. Hyatt appears to have mapped many ordinary and off-season dates conservatively to the new levels for a majority of properties. But the aspirational places many people are inspired to be loyalty to Hyatt, in hopes of redeeming their points, saw brutal damage.
Category 8 is where things get especially brutal. Most nights are more expensive and only a few haven’t changed. If you wanted to stay in aspirational properties in Japan, in Paris, or at places like Park Hyatt Beaver Creek expect to pay 75,000 points a night instead of 45,000.
Thrifty Traveler reports that more than 40% of Japan award nights are now pricier than before.
- Andaz Tokyo increased on 82% of analyzed nights
- Grand Hyatt Tokyo on nearly 85%.
Meanwhile, Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme’s cheapest available night is now 45,000 points. That used to be the maximum. 44 of 53 reviewed nights were more expensive.
It’s likely, then, that future damage happens in the lower and mid-tier properties in the program.
I’m amazed how many people still are loyal to US based hotel chains that are overpriced and underwhelming. We stopped staying at Marriott and Hilton properties 3 years ago and instead stay at independent boutique properties around the world and book via our travel agent (who we get all the perks like breakfast included) booking.com for 8x Rakuten or Amex travel. Caring about hotel points is dumb. It’s Jonestown level dumb. Pay cash and book properly and you save money and stay at better properties
@Matthew,
I travel for work and rack up a ton of points throughout the year. Booking most stays at Hyatt allows me to take some incredible vacations that cost me nothing. So how is paying nothing “Jonestown level dumb?”