Report: Hyatt To Raise Award Prices, Add Ultra-Premium $795 Credit Card—Major Changes Could Hit Next Week

Hyatt is reportedly preparing a major overhaul of its loyalty program that could arrive as soon as next week, including higher award prices at top properties and the launch of a new $795 premium credit card designed to fast-track elite status. If accurate, the changes would expand the award chart to new higher tiers while making free night certificates more flexible—reshaping how members earn and redeem points going forward.

It’s been some years since Hyatt made major changes to award redemption. They’ve been surveying and promising a premium credit card. Rumor is that news on both fronts is about to drop. Hyatt usually announces changes to redemption pricing at the end of February.

The rumor says that Hyatt’s award chart, which currently has 8 tiers (plus separate pricing for all-inclusives) will go to 10 tiers. Category 9 standard redemptions will cost 50,000 points per night and category 10 will be 60,000 – with peak pricing higher than that! We’d also see a decent amount of category moves in the upper tiers between 6 and 8. You’d expect to see a bunch of Park Hyatts like Paris and Tokyo move to category 9 and a handful of properties like the Park Hyatt Kyoto go to 10. There’s also super-peak pricing for limited-service hotels in this report.

Category 1-4 free night certificates would let you book up to category 5, and category 1-7 certificates would expand to category 8, while it would become possible to top off certificates depending on your status (Explorists topping off 1-5s up to 7, while Globalists could top off any certificate for any property).

New Award Categories 9 And 10

Here’s Hyatt’s current free night award chart:

Under the reported rumor, Hyatt would be adding categories 9 (standard = 50,000 points) and 10 (standard = 60,000 points). And, with off-peak and peak pricing variations for each, that would be 30 award price levels (plus separate pricing for all-inclusives / Miraval). I’m not even sure we really call it an award chart after that? If there were 100 price points would we?

Park Hyatt New York

Park Hyatt Sydney

Making Free Night Awards More Flexible

Hyatt would take a page from Marriott, making their free night certificates more flexible. They would expand category 1-4 certificates (that come with the credit card, earned with stays and brand explorer) to 1-5, category 1-7 certificates earned at 60 nights become category 1-8, and then they’d introduce the ability to top off certificates with additional points to redeem for higher-tier properties.

• Explorists would be able to top off a 1-5 certificate up to category 7
  
• Globalists would be able to top off both types of certificates to any property.

What’s really needed, though, and unmentioned is the ability to combine more than one award on a stay, so that free night certificates could be used in conjunction with confirmed suites. I only want to use my free night awards on personal stays, which I take with my family, which is precisely when I want to confirm suites.

Surge Pricing For Redemption At Limited-Service Brands

Limited service brands (e.g. Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Caption) would have up to 10 nights a year designated where they become more expensive than peak for their category. Hyatt pays expensive overrides to hotels on nights they’re full and this becomes a way for the program to recoup its costs when rates are highest.

[P]ricing during those windows will be tied to a fixed 1.5 cents per point floor until it reaches the peak pricing of two categories higher than the hotel’s assigned category.

Example: If a Category 3 Hyatt Place is retailing at 450 dollars during a major event, redemption pricing would float to 23,000 points, which reflects Category 5 peak pricing and remains below what a strict 1.5 cents per point calculation would otherwise produce.

New Restriction Confirming Suites On Points Redemptions

Starting February 2028, confirmed suites could only be combined with points stays for Explorists and higher. Explorists, however, wouldn’t be able to do this on category 8, 9 or 10 hotels redeemed with points while Globalists would still be able to do so.

This seems like an odd notion, because World of Hyatt compensation to hotels for confirmed suite upgrades is pretty de minimis. However it does, potentially, limit demand for standard suites – which is good for globalists who want to confirm them.

New Premium Credit Card

The renewal of Hyatt’s cobrand card agreement with Chase brings with it a new premium credit card. When Hyatt and Chase renewed in 2017, it took a year before the revamped World of Hyatt credit card came out. So if this is happening now, it’s a bit faster than I would have expected. (Chase Sapphire Reserve is also getting new Hyatt benefits as part of the deal – Explorist status as part of $75,000 spend perks, and more Hyatt properties in The Edit.)

Here’s what the rumor is suggesting about this card:

• Initial Bonus: 100,000 points, unclear what spend requirement or how long the offer is available.

• Annual fee: $795

• Status benefits: comes with Explorist status; 20 elite nights deposited each year (the current consumer card offers 5); 10 qualifying nights for each $15,000 spent on the card (the current card offers 2 per $5,000 so this is a 2/3rds increase for every $15,000 spent); earn Globalist status “with an additional 20 qualifying nights” (though it isn’t clear whether this can be accomplished by spending $15,000 on the card and staying 5 nights or it’s by actually staying 20 nights).

• Lounge access: Priority Pass and access to Chase Sapphire lounges (making this card a reasonable replacement for those who don’t want Sapphire Reserve).

• Additional benefits: annual Category 1-5 free night certificate, $200 Hyatt statement credit twice per year.

• Earning: 10x on Hyatt stays (!), 3x dining and direct airline bookings, presumably but unmentioned 1x on everything else.

For a Hyatt loyalist, $400 in Hyatt statement credits is real money making the card much more manageable. For those without Sapphire Reserve, the lounge access is a real perk. And it’s a path to earn status and more points quickly with Hyatt.

The expedited path to Globalist described wouldn’t get confirmed suite upgrades or access to a Hyatt concierge. Those are 60-night benefits, not Globalist benefits.

Hyatt moved to offering incremental benefits every 10 night elite nights earned back in 2018. That means the card’s benefits are actualy a bit better than outlined here. They made those offerings even more robust in 2024. Earning more elite nights through this card means earning more benefits like more confirmed suites and more bonus points.

How Likely Is This And What Does It Mean?

Hyatt remains committed to an award chart but to continually devaluing the chart. 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. So it’s been four years since the last major price hike in the program outside of annual category shuffles.

Meanwhile, Hyatt first brought out category 8 in 2018 but promised that it would not apply to any current hotels. It was initially for the very most expensive SLH properties, a partnership that ended with Hyatt’s acquisiiton of Mr and Mrs Smith (a terrible trade, in my view, and Hilton’s best redemptions came from picking up the SLH partnership).

Just a year later category 8 turned out to be for existing Hyatt properties. It was always obvious this was coming, despite Hyatt’s protestations otherwise.

The framing suggested in this rumor – this new top category 10 won’t be broad – is exactly what Hyatt used when they introduced category 8 (and, for that matter, category 6 and category 7). It isn’t broad until it is, it inevitably gets there, and then the pricing structure changes again.

Meanwhile, a premium Hyatt card has been floating out there since 2021. Hyatt’s portfolio is smaller than Marriott’s, for instance, but it hits above its weight for Chase and its demographic skews premium. So this makes sense. And we know this is coming, this year.

So what do I think of this rumor? There’s going to be a new premium card. There’s going to be some form of award inflation, and we’d expect to learn about at the end of February so perhaps we get details next week. I do not know if these specifics are it or if next week is credit card timing as well.

Taken at face value, the credit card makes it far easier to earn Globalist status and to earn points paying for Hyatt stays. For Hyatt loyalists who spend $20,000 a year with the chain (which earns 100,000 base points, the minimum amount for Globalist status based on spend so not unusual) it would earn an incremental 120,000 points versus paying with the current World of Hyatt card given a 10x earn rate (instead of 4x). And that 120,000 points pays for quite a bit of points inflation.