Hyatt Revamping Award Charts—With 78 Price Levels, Free Nights At Top Hotels Get Up To 67% More Expensive

Hyatt is revamping its award charts starting in May, and they’re teasing benefits changes to allow members to share points electronically (no more faxing in paper forms) and for elites and credit card customers to be able to book free night awards a month earlier than they can today.

The World of Hyatt program will expand its award charts from three to five price levels per category, creating 78 possible redemption prices across their standard and all-inclusive charts. The most expensive points redemptions can cost up to 67% more points than before. While the lowest tier prices actually fall on some properties, the new structure lets Hyatt charge far more at peak demand, potentially changing how members will value and redeem their points in significant ways.

Hyatt Regency Aruba

Each Award Chart Category Is Getting 5 Price Levels

Starting “some time in May” – they don’t have a go-live date yet other than to say it will be “before the end of May,” according to Hyatt’s Chief Marketing Officer Laurie Blair, World of Hyatt will move from 3 price levels at each award category to 5: “lowest, low, moderate, upper and top.” Their standard award chart will keep 8 categories, but the price ranges for each will change.

Blair shares that in 2026 we’ll see very little changing to prices for hotels on most nights. Hyatt is still assigning just a single price for a given hotel night for the full year in which it can be booked. The price of a night on a specific date doesn’t generally change. There’s no dynamic pricing. We’ll see more hotels and nights changing their pricing in this new framework starting in 2027 and beyond.

A category 1-4 free night award will still be valid at the ‘top’ points price for a category 4 hotel (25,000, up from 18,000), and a category 1-7 free night award will still be valid at category 7’s top price (55,000, up from 35,000).

Note also that this new higher pricing will not mean better award night availability. This is a change to the price World of Hyatt charges members for free nights. New 5-level pricing within each category does not change the reimbursement rates for free nights that Hyatt pays to hotels.

Park Hyatt Paris

Here Are The New Award Charts

Here’s a comparison of the current chart with 3 price levels for each category, and the new 5 price level chart.

Here we can drill down just to the new 5-level chart that will go into effect some time in May:

This is the six category all-inclusive chart with 5 levels:

And here is the new Miraval chart:

Comparing Standard Room Award Charts

The lowest price for 5 of the 8 categories actually goes down under the new chart.

Here’s a comparison of the current and new lowest prices for each category, how much each has changed and what percentage that represents.  You’ll note that the lowest price for a category 7 and 8 hotel never goes down from current lowest prices.

1	3,500	3,000	(500)	-14.3%
2	6,500	6,000	(500)	-7.7%
3	9,000	8,000	(1,000)	-11.1%
4	12,000	12,000	–	0.0%
5	17,000	15,000	(2,000)	-11.8%
6	21,000	20,000	(1,000)	-4.8%
7	25,000	25,000	–	0.0%
8	35,000	35,000	–	0.0%

Now let’s look at how the highest price for each category changes:

1	6,500	9,000	2,500	38.5%
2	9,500	15,000	5,500	57.9%
3	15,000	20,000	5,000	33.3%
4	18,000	25,000	7,000	38.9%
5	23,000	35,000	12,000	52.2%
6	29,000	40,000	11,000	37.9%
7	35,000	55,000	20,000	57.1%
8	45,000	75,000	30,000	66.7%

Every category contains the potential for hotel redemption prices to go up significantly – with top prices going up by one-third at category 3 to a whopping two-thirds at category 8. We do not yet know how many nights at any given hotel that might be in 2026, or beyond.

Park Hyatt London

For completeness, here’s the new chart for redeeming a free night in a club level room:

This is the new standard suite chart:

And this is the premium suite free night award chart:

No Changes To Upgrade Pricing

Hyatt tells me that there are “no changes to the upgrade pricing.” The cost to upgrade an eligible paid room night remains the same and as follows:

Hotel Category Changes Will Become Less Significant – After This Year

Blair describes the structural change to the Hyatt award chart as a “long-term sustainability effort” where they will “be able to live in this new award chart in the years to come.”

And with more prices they will be able to “manage peak demand at the property level” rather than the market level (they won’t have to increase, say, all hotels in Paris to the very top price at peak times) and they won’t need to do as many category changes in the future – after all, they can increase a hotel’s price by moving more nights to upper and top, without changing the hotel’s category.

That said, standard award category changes will come in April, and “overall number and level of movement should be similar” to what we’ve seen in recent years. In 2027 and beyond we should see fewer category shifts. Seven hotels change category immediately, not waiting for the bigger tranche to be announced in spring.

• Andaz Pattaya Jomtien Beach, Hyatt Centric Malta, Hyatt Regency Kotor Bay Resort, Hyatt Place San AntonioNorthwest/Medical Center and Grand Hyatt Incheon go up one category
• Grand Hyatt Grand Cayman Resort & Spa (opening in 2026) goes up two categories
• JdV The Barnett goes down one category

What Is An Award Chart Good For With 78 Price Levels?

I have to wonder: is there even an award chart when there are 78 different price points across the standard and all-inclusive charts, not even including Miraval properties?

What remains valuable isn’t the price range on the chart I suppose, as much as the predictability where Hyatt sets a price for each night’s stay at a hotel for the year and that price doesn’t change (the way it does in programs like Marriott’s). They no longer have a ‘traditional award chart’ but they also don’t do dynamic pricing.

And you’ll know exactly which hotels your free night certificates (earned via the credit card, nights stayed, and for staying across various Hyatt brands) can be used for. At Marriott we’ll often see prices just over the number of points where those certificates are valid, or just over what a member might be able to top off those certificates for.

Hyatt’s redemption structure is still better than competitors. It just seems less better than it did before. And that was less better than it was five years ago, before they introduced off-peak and peak price levels.

And an award chart makes Hyatt more honest or maybe keeping one means they’re more honest; certainly more transparent. Remember that Hyatt is actually telling us about these changes, and they’re telling us before they make them. That’s something we do not get from any of the other large hotel loyalty programs – those just raise prices without warning and when they do it they don’t even say they’ve done so. That’s the other important piece that an award chart still gives us, even when there are this many price points.

Park Hyatt Chicago

Points Sharing Between Members Goes Online

Later this year Hyatt will make it possible to pool and transfer points between members without having to submit signed paper forms. Hyatt allows points transfers now, without a fee, but it involves a fax machine (or, for Globalists with a concierge, emailing the scanned form to their concierge).

Just not having to get both members to sign a form will be a real step forward.

Park Hyatt Sydney

Early Access To Award Nights For Elites

Hyatt will be introducing ‘early access’ to award night availability for Explorist members and above, as well as co-brand credit card customers. They will get to book redemption nights one month earlier than today (so 13 months out from travel) while everyone else will still be able to book a year out.

Park Hyatt St. Kitts

Hyatt’s Top Redemption Price Has Quintupled Over Two Decades

Hyatt has gone from a top redemption price at places like Park Hyatt Tokyo and Park Hyatt Sydney of 15,000 points per night 20 years ago to 75,000 points per night under this new chart. That’s 400% growth (a 5x increase). That’s annualized inflation of 8.38%. And that doesn’t account for all-inclusives that will price up to 85,000 points or 95,000 for a double occupancy standard room at a Miraval.

• Hyatt introduced Category 5 in December 2006. The maximum price for a standard room went from 15,000 to 18,000 points per night.
• They created category 6 in June 2010 with a new top redemption price of 22,000 points per night.
• Category 7 launched in January 2014 with a new top price of 30,000 points.
• Category 8 was introduced in 2018 with a new top price of 40,000 points but this was explained as only for the most expensive SLH Hotels, not for Hyatt properties.
• In 2019 though Hyatt properties began moving into category 8.
• Hyatt last announced a structural change to redemptions in December 2019, planned for March 2020 but delayed during the pandemic – for stays starting March 1, 2022. That was off-peak and peak pricing, with the most expensive standard room redemption on the main chart at 45,000 points per night.
• Then in 2022 they introduced a separate six category all-inclusive chart with pricing up to 58,000 points per night.

Park Hyatt Maldives

The problem, I think, is that hotel rates haven’t increased at that rate. You just can’t earn free nights at top places with the same engagement in Hyatt that you used to. You can spend more on credit cards and transfer points, but for someone earning points head in bed, Hyatt is becoming tougher.

I asked Laurie Blair whether we might see a corresponding change to the earning side of the program – whether higher redemption prices might enable them to increase earn rates? After all, elite bonuses at Hyatt (30% for Globalists) are much more modest than in other programs. She was non-committal but suggested that this new framework enabled a lot.

Meanwhile, she also knows that the cost of Mr and Mrs Smith redemptions are a pain point. You just redeem against the paid room rate at modest value, leaving many hotels exorbitantly priced in points. Having more prices and higher prices could address this. While Mr and Mrs Smith aren’t joining these charts now, the cost of these redemptions is “something that is very present for us” she said.

Alila Marea

How Much Does This Shift Value From World Of Hyatt?

Laurie Blair pushed back strongly on the notion that this change represented a devaluation of points. She emphasized the strong value that Hyatt points have provided and that she wanted to ensure that continues. She says the “trajectory of the value of our points is not changing.” And overall we won’t be seeing much change right away.

It’ll be difficult to know just how significant a move this is until May when we see how many nights at different properties fall into the very peak of peak pricing. But over time the direction is clear that award nights will cost members more (or else they wouldn’t be doing this).

Park Hyatt New York

And award nights will cost more when hotels are full and prices are high – in other words, when members get the very best value out of their points today. That’s also when those night cost World of Hyatt the most. The effort should broadly be understood, I think, as managing the program so that points achieve strong average value, but ensuring that there aren’t as many value peaks.

Ultimately, the real value in a fixed price award chart is not just predictability, it’s the opportunity to get outsized value on some nights – to “win” as a member – but peak and off-peak pricing within each category undercuts that already. Moving to 5 levels from 3 takes that a step further.

The Seabird

While I still value Hyatt’s elite benefits and points redemptions for premium suites as the best that a major hotel loyalty programs has to offer, this change downgrades somewhat the value I’ll place on a Hyatt point because I know that it’ll take many more points for the best awards in the future (even if not materially so in 2026).