For five years, American Airlines and Hyatt have had a lucrative partnership that rewards each program’s elite members with extra points traveling with the other brand. That’s a great extra benefit – especially since the AAdvantage points that American status members earn staying with Hyatt also count towards status.
Unfortunately, the program is being restructured and this points-earning is out.
- In its place is the opportunity to redeem points or choice benefits for status with the other program, whether for a year or a single trip.
- As well as to redeem AAdvantage miles for Hyatt free nights, at a rate that represents a poor value of miles.
Seabird Resort Grand Estate Suite
The logic of this from the perspective of Hyatt and American is that awarding points on every elite member’s trip is expensive, and this new model works harder to target customers who are not yet loyal to a brand rather than rewarding everyone that is. Moving from awarding points to redeeming for benefits also shifts the cost of the partnership from the program onto the member.
Genius, right? Except that what they’ve done also creates an incentive for formerly loyal American Airlines customers not to be loyal anymore since they no longer need to earn status with American and can just redeem Hyatt points for each trip’s status when flying American. Those points can even just be transferred in from Chase.
The new program allows Hyatt Explorist and Globalist members to redeem Hyatt points for AAdvantage status for a single trip.
- 5,000 Hyatt points for AAdvantage Gold
- 8,000 points for Platinum
- 12,000 points for Platinum Pro
American Airlines Extra Legroom Coach
Gold gets first checked bag free, priority check-in and boarding. Platinum gets extra legroom seats (which include free alcoholic beverages) at time of booking, a second bag free, and lounge access when traveling internationally. Platinum Pro gets greater flexibility to travel standby, first class lounge access when traveling internationally, and a third checked bag free.
Platinum Pro Members Access The Soho Lounge at New York JFK on international trips
American AAdvantage allows their own elites to gift this status for a day by redeeming the same number of AAdvantage miles. But you need the status level to gift that status level, and AAdvantage doesn’t (yet) participate in a credit card transfer program.
I suspect that it will make sense for some Hyatt and American elite members to focus just on earning Hyatt status, transfer some Chase points to Hyatt and redeem for AAdvantage status for each trip you wind up making on American – and just travel on whichever airline makes sense on a given trip.
If you’d just be an occasional American traveler this may make more sense than striving for AAdvantage status – especially if you’re doing it now with spending on an AAdvantage credit card. Earn more and more valuable points (like Chase points) spending on a different card instead, and redeeming ad hoc whenever you need the status.
Not that interesting
The whole status for one day or one stay (aka Guest of Honor) is a bit of a downgrade in general for the whole program.
Very interesting! I stopped chasing status when it became harder to earn through legs, but the idea of just redeeming status for a trip using Chase points? Brilliant!
Makes Explorist more valuable…
Assuming you have the proper Hyatt status, this makes sense esp. for international flights.
Gary, Long time reader and first time commenter. This is an excellent post and why I enjoy reading your perspective. First, for highlighting that this change rewards people WITHOUT elite status, not people with elite status. And second, rather than chasing AA status, one could use a relatively minuscule amount of Chase points to achieve similar results. Yet another reason why the elite status Merry Go Round pursuit does not make sense for most people.
Another consideration you haven’t mentioned is how this provides notably less value for customers. That means that some people will leave due to this devaluation. I’m frankly surprised that AA and Hyatt are doing this as high spending elite customers are a lot tougher to entice than to keep so spending a little extra to keep your best customers happy makes sense while this move does the opposite.
I think I read somewhere that Plat Pro for a day won’t get you into Emerald level lounges worldwide, just AA lounges (which generally don’t distinguish between Sapphire and Emerald levels except the Soho lounge in NYC). As a LT Plat and a Hyatt Globalist, that would have been my primary motivation.
Also, as far as your picture in the article, we were upgraded to that suite at the Seabird and it is even nicer than the picture shows. There is a large outdoor table for six directly behind the outdoor seating area. That balcony is huge.