Just before the New Year I shared details of Hyatt’s new Diamond Status Challenge offer.

• Hyatt used to have a super generous and game-able offer where anyone with even Hilton Gold (through a credit card signup) could get temporary Diamond status complete with confirmable suite upgrades.
  
• That long-time offer ended October 31.
  
• At the time Hyatt suggested that a simple way to switch loyalty for top elites of other chains wasn’t gone for good.

Plenty of frequent flyers want a jumpstart towards Hyatt’s top status tier, and a way to make it as painless as possible to switch chains. But Hyatt doesn’t want to give away the benefits of Diamond, including confirmed suite upgrades, to people who aren’t going to stay loyal to the chain and become frequent guests.

The new offer that was announced was Platinum status for 60 days, and an expedited path to reach Diamond (12 nights in 60 days), no status with another chain required.

Yet several readers had problems signing up for this. Tons of time spent talking to Gold Passport reps on the phone and by email, being told no such offer exists.

While there are a few reports in the comments of members getting signed up for the offer, the majority were told things like:

• It’s targeted
  
• There’s nothing available, the offer expired October 31.
  
• It’s something that individual hotels have to nominate you for

The information came from Hyatt’s Manager of Corporate Communications by email, and I asked followup questions as well. So something strange was afoot.

Several readers asked me to follow up with Hyatt to see what was going on.

It turns out that:

• The details of how Hyatt’s new Diamond Status Challenge work are correct.
  
• The details of who is eligible for it were not correct.

I spoke to Rene Mizwicki at Hyatt this morning to get the full details on what was going on. Rene has been one of my favorite people in loyalty for years.

She explained that the earlier information about the new ‘Elite Tier Offer’ was a miscommunication. The old tier matching from years ago, and the more recent ‘Trial Tier Offer,’ were meant to be tools for Hyatt’s sales team to use in bringing business over. Of course they became public in social media as well, and they publicly acknowledged and welcomed members into them.

They eliminated the tier matching, and the status challenge that gave immediate temporary diamond status, because only a small percentage of people went on to maintain the status.

It’s costly to offer that temporary status because Hyatt doesn’t currently have a way to offer their top tier without also giving out confirmed suite upgrades, so it doesn’t make sense to give the status upfront given the results they were seeing.

The new offer, at this point, really is meant to be limited and a sales tool. Hyatt really had told me this was open to everyone, and I reported that, so I’m sorry for the confusion that followed.

Rene said they want to make sure people are working with someone at a hotel, or that sales is recommending the offer. Restrictions that they put in place aren’t always uniformly enforced, though this one in practice is. (Some folks have called and successfully had the promotion added to their account, but judging from the comments those are relatively rare.)

So while a few people may wind up signing up for the offer through the front door, that’s not the intent of the offer and not something that most people are going to have success with for now.

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