Tag Archives for hyatt.
Two months ago American AAdvantage and World of Hyatt announced a new partnership. Registration is now live so that elites in each program can double dip with the other, and fast track elite status is offered too.
Hyatt launched their earning and redemption partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World at the end of 2018. Initially they only brought about 10% of SLH’s 500+ properties into their portfolio.
They followed two months later with another 56 properties or 10% and then 57 more a month after that. Now they’ve added another tranche of hotels where you can earn and redeem Hyatt points, bringing them to over 200 (or roughly 40% of) SLH properties in the portfolio.
Andaz West Hollywood appears to be placing a 3-night minimum stay requirement on their entry level room types throughout the year.
What seems odd at first glance, until you dig deeper, is that they are imposing these 3 night minimum restrictions on both revenue bookings (paid reservations) and award bookings (free night awards) for the 1 King Bed and 2 Queen room types. And they are not doing this for the rest of their rooms.
Hyatt used to offer lucrative property-specific bonuses of 500 to 2000 points per night. These were colloquially referred to as ‘G bonuses’ because of the bonus codes attached to them. Combined with whatever promotion Hyatt was running (Faster Free Nights) and the fact that Hyatt used to give 2500 bonus points per night at properties whose club lounges were closed on the weekend meant that the old Gold Passport program was super lucrative, indeed.
We haven’t seen much in the way of property-specific bonuses in the past 8 years, but those are back for hotels that are brand new to Hyatt. And there’s a new 50% rebate on Hyatt’s most expensive redemptions.
Hyatt is offering 20% – 100% bonuses at MGM properties in Las Vegas, through May 15 stackable with their 1000 bonus points per night offer.
Mostly I’m a fan of Hyatt’s annual status match with MGM, which makes things a bit nicer in Vegas for someone that doesn’t go regularly and certainly doesn’t gamble a lot.
Four years ago Hyatt started testing letting guests use their phone as a room key at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco and the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. Hyatt has been pretty quiet about the technology, though in the fall they did say that all of their properties would have it by 2020.
In addition to expanding their footprint via partnerships (such as earning and redemption at so far about a third of Small Luxury Hotels of the World) they’ve also acquired Two Roads Hospitality which manages 5 brands.
Hyatt has now announced that Thompson Hotels joins March 28 and Joie de Vivre Hotels joins May 15. They have two bonus offers to celebrate, they stack, and also help towards an existing bonus as well.
This is an interesting opportunity. Hyatt introduced new category 8 redemptions for the most expensive SLH properties that you can earn and redeem points at.
The Sailrock Resort in Turks & Caicos is currently category 7 (30,000 points per night) but they’re bumping it to category 8 (40,000 points per night) effective April 8. The price is going up because reservations now include roundtrip domestic airfare. And you’ll get that air travel for the lower points price still for bookings made prior to the increase.
Last June Hyatt previewed a plan to offer confirmed early check-in and late check-out at Hyatt Place hotels. This was supposed to launch in ‘early 2019’.
Oddly Hyatt hasn’t announced it as far as I’m aware, but it does seem to be live.
When a property wants to split the savings for skipping housekeeping with you rebating points that’s fair. Starwood was known for their Make a Green Choice program offering 500 Starpoints per night you skipped housekeeping. Marriott still offers a similar, albeit less rewarding, program.
Hyatt is now testing 250 points for skipping housekeeping.
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 »
