Shortly after Hyatt annoucned the devaluation of some of their top end awards, they also announced new features of the program.
Today cash and points awards went into effect.
Here’s the cash and points award chart — you pay half the usual number of points and a cash co-pay.
I’ve included with the chart the price at which you are ‘buying’ the difference in points. For categories 2 through 6 this is an exceptional value, and one I would take advantage of every time compared to spending points for the room (although there will be times when paid rates are low enough that spending any points at all, even cash and points, won’t make sense).
Even at two cents a point this is a discount relative to what Hyatt suually sells points for, but higher than what i like to acquire them at. At below 1.5 cents this is a no-brainer to me.
There are some real advantages to these awards, in addition to stretching your points:
- These awards earn Gold Passport points on the cash component of the cash and points award. So spend $50, earn 250 points plus elite bonus. In effect, the points price of the award is reduced even further.
- Diamond members can upgrade these awards using confirmed suite upgrades (they get 4 per year each valid for up to 7 nights).
- They count towards elite status.
- And they count towards earning bonus points from promotions.
Regular free room night awards are available whenever a standard room is open at a hotel, with no capacity controls.
Cash and points award nights are capacity controlled. They are available only for standard rooms. Hotels determine when they want to offer them. So the worry has been that they wouldn’t see the revenue as lucrative enough to offer except on the slowest of nights. So far, and anecdotally, it seems that availability is actually quite good (at least not on nights that are close to sell outs, and when there are standard rooms available for sale).
Cash and points awards like standard award nights, are cancellable. They can only be booked by phone (so if you’re interested, you’ll have to call to find out if there’s availability).
Hyatt Gold Passport will deduct the points component at time of booking, and you’ll pay the cash co-pay directly to the hotel. If I had to guess, the cash co-pay is effectively the hotel’s reimbursement for the award night.
Category 2 through 6 cash and points awards are a great value and so far this looks like a great addition to the Gold Pasport program.
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What about the additional fees that go along with paying cash for a room that are waived when you pay with points? That is not included in the calculation. Even with those, it still seems like a good deal.
New to Hyatt…. Sampling the grass on the other side of the fence from HHonors. But I give up: Where on a particular hotel’s webpage do you find the hotel’s category? (On HHonors properties, it’s obvious in the sidebar information on the left of the page).
Hyatt hotel categories are shown in drop down menu:
http://www.hyatt.com/gp/en/awards/hyatt_category_display.jsp?_DARGS=/gp/en/awards/hyatt_category_display.jsp
Mogon – if you go to the hyatt website, click hyatt gold passport, you will see a chart like page. under redeeming points on the lower right, click free nights.
second paragraph is a link to view the hotels by category.
not sure if this link will work, but its for cat 1 hotels, and you can use the pull down to sort by category.
http://goldpassport.hyatt.com/gp/en/awards/hyatt_category_display.jsp?category=1
hope this helps!
I don’t see the value here. For $100, you can land a 4 star hotel on Priceline in many cities, and save yourself the 7,500 points.
The one place I want it, it wasn’t available. And, My Elite rates have been higher than other options. So, I’m not that thrilled so far with the changes.
Just booked two nights in two rooms at Hotel Du Louvre in Paris on cash and points (and could have switched my third one too, from points only). $575/night hotel room for $125/night and 10000 points, nets me 4.5 cents a point. I like it. I am hoping to do a diamond trial and upgrade these to suites closer to arrival date
Hey. Love your website I’ve never booked an award with hyatt before and have 100K plus UR points available to transfer. My 2 questions are: did I read correctly about that it says if any standard room can be booked for cash you can use the full #oif points? Ie if hotel isn’t sold out u can use points?
2nd. For a cat 5 hotel. Why is 10k points plus $125 such a good deal and how easily is that available to book?
Thank you for the help!
mogon, can’t remember the exact steps but I eventually navigated to this page on hyatt’s website: http://www.hyatt.com/gp/en/awards/pointspluscash.jsp
You’ll see a column for each Category Type, 1 – 8.
Just click on the Type (2, 5, 3, whatever) and it produces a list of eligible hotels.
Gary: Based largely on your write-ups, I just booked 5 nights at your favorite Hyatt, the PH Maldives, for $150 + 12,500 points per night for late November. Helpful GP agent commented on how the cheapest paid rate was in the neighborhood of $1,000 a night during those dates. Can’t imagine there are many better uses of cash+points than on the PH Maldives. Next step will be to contact the hotel to see if I can buy up to an overwater villa. I would think so but we’ll see. Thanks again, Gary 🙂
Am in the middle of a points stay at PH Maldives – Gary, we have you to thank for this!! All I can say is if you can find the Cash + Points option here don’t even think twice – BOOK IT! And pay for the upgrade to OW Villa. (we’re in Gary’s favorite – Villa 51)
@stacey – Like!
@Shawn yes 99% of the time, unless something is amiss. and it’s a good deal because you’re buying back points at a cheap rate, the stay will count towards status and points-earning too. but it isn’t for everyone.
Gary – would you be able to take all these trips and stay in all the great hotels if you didn’t use your personal credit card to pay for [personal information redacted -gl] invoices, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of points?
Do you have to report this perk to the IRS as additional income?
What is there to do at the PH Maldives? Just relax looking at the sea and spa treatments? Seems like it would get old after 2 days. Educate me please!
I too am worried about the taxes and fees issue on some of these redemptions. For example, is it a good redemption for 3 adults staying in one room at the Andaz Maui to use C&P instead of a straight redemption. And doesn’t the PH Maldives have insane fees (I could be wrong)?
On another tangent, what do folks think about booking a C&P stay for the first night, applying a suite upgrade, and then having the hotel apply the upgrade the remaining points only nights? Am I dreaming?
Gary and Shawn, can you elaborate on what you’re discussing? Thanks.
Despite having a considerable number of points awards rooms available for my dates in June, The Churchill in London is not offering any as cash and points nights.