Tag Archives for hyatt.
Hyatt has already extended reservations flexibility through June 30, including refunds for prepaid hotel reservations for those who need or want to cancel.
They’ve also now worked through how to handle elite status, upgrade certificates, and free night awards. And they’re also announcing a further pause to expiration of points.
Hyatt has extended their coronavirus travel waivers so that prepaid bookings remain refundable through June 30. This matches a move already made by Hilton and Marriott.
There are, however, no new World Of Hyatt updates. So points are still set to expire again starting in June, elite status has only been extended for Asia Pacific members (who are not at this point in the epicenter of virus spread), and free night certificates have not been extended at all and continue to expire (although you should be able to convert expired certificates into points).
I’ve had several readers ask about expiring Hyatt free nights. They’re offering reservation cancellation flexibility, postponing peak season award pricing and hotel category changes and have paused expiration of points through May 31.
Like many other programs they haven’t said anything about elite status for the year yet. And they haven’t spoken to free nights – I have one myself expiring April 2. Here’s what I learned.
Hyatt is offering 90 days of Explorist status and a fast track to either keep Explorist or top tier Globalist through February 22. The best thing is that you have until November 16 to register and start the 90 day clock. As a result you can use this once your travel is starting up again.
Hyatt was first out of the gate with an offer of points for customers having to cancel non-refundable bookings. I thought that was generous because they were first and it was something. Of course this is all fast-moving, and other hotel chains have since done more.
So Hyatt has responded, well I think, and is out with a new policy allowing for cancellation of non-refundable bookings, encouraging new bookings, and offering greater flexibility for Hyatt points.
Hyatt can’t just unilaterally make non-refundable bookings refundable, and they have owners to answer to. But they can give you points, show they’re doing something, and incentivize you to return to the chain once fear and risk subside.
Last year American Airlines and Hyatt announced a new partnership offering bonus points and elite status challenges.
Both Hyatt and American are back with elite status challenges for 2020.
Against my own interests, and without concern for angering the people I know at the programs, I’m willing to call out the good, bad and ugly to come up with a conclusion of what’s actually best.
Annual category changes are pushing up prices at 117 Hyatt hotels, and 100 go down. Out of these 217 properties changing category 65 are SLH hotels.
Meanwhile Hyatt is adding 48 new SLH hotels to their portfolio, introducing variable pricing for cash and price awards, and implementing new peak and off peak award pricing. All of this goes into effect March 22.
Hyatt has launched its new promotion, double points after your second stay, with an extra bonus for co-brand credit card customers on weekend stays. Registration required.
While I don’t favor promos that start bonusing after the second stay, double base points from Hyatt is more generous than double base points from Hilton or IHG.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
