What Hyatt 40 Night Benefit Should You Choose?

by Gary Leff

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What Hyatt 40 night benefit is best? Hyatt offers additional benefits for every 10 elite nights you earn. And now that award stays count (so Chase Sapphire Preferred Card points transfers can be used for stays, which help earn additional benefits), and that you get 5 elite nights each year just for having the The World Of Hyatt Credit Card and spending on the card continues to earn more elite nights, it’s easier than ever to reach additional benefit milestones.

# Nights Or Benefit
10 25k base points or 3 meetings Discoverist
20 35k base points 2 club lounge access awards
30 50k base points or 10 meetings Explorist, 2 club access awards, cat 1-4 free night
40 65k base points 5k points or $100 Hyatt gift card or 10k points off FIND experience
50 80k base points 2 confirmed suite upgrade awards
60 100k base points or 20 meetings Globalist, 2 suite upgrade awards, cat 1-7 free night, concierge
70 N/A 10,000 points or suite upgrade award
80 N/A 10,000 points or suite upgrade award
90 N/A 10,000 points or suite upgrade award
100 N/A 10,000 points or suite upgrade award

At the 40 night milestone though you make a choice of benefits. I just hit my 40 nights for the year and received an email letting me know to choose a Hyatt 40 night benefit:

Hyatt 40 night benefit choices

There are three Hyatt 40 night benefit options to choose from:

  1. 5000 bonus points. I value Hyatt points at 1.4 cents apiece so I see this as worth $70.

  2. $100 Hyatt gift card. This is valid in the Americas only.

  3. 10,000 point discount on a FIND experience. I view this was worth ~ $140.

hyatt regency jersey city

I haven’t ever booked an experiential redemption through Hyatt. For those that would do so anyway, 10,000 points off is the best bet but I haven’t found the right interest, time or value.

I think a $100 gift card is the sweet spot. Since I’ll spend more than $100 with Hyatt that’s actually worth $100 to me. For those that don’t use it in the near-term, many will know people that will.

Points are the fallback for someone who won’t spend their own money at a Hyatt in the Americas. 5000 points aren’t worth as much, but they’re easily banked and there’s no effort to track them, little risk in losing the discount code. All that’s needed is Hyatt account activity to ensure the points don’t expire, likely not hard for someone already racking up 40 stays (and easily accomplished too with a Chase Sapphire Preferred Card transfer.

I selected the $100 Hyatt gift card as my Hyatt 40 night benefit, and received it in my inbox immediately so the execution on Hyatt’s part was good.

About Gary Leff

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 »

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Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.

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Comments

  1. $100 Hyatt GC is NOT worth $100, even in your case…if for no other reason than your spend at Hyatt would otherwise earn at least 3x points, so you are giving up 300 points.

  2. He never said it was worth $100. Even if you value it at $90 it’s still better than points which a lot of bloggers have foolishly chosen. Right now you could buy 5k points directly from Hyatt for $85, and you can instantly flip a gc for more than that. Even with the losses due to conversion, $100 gc > 5k Hyatt points.

  3. Yep. I’m with you Gary. I picked the $100 gift card. I’m at 91 nights this year and definitely will use it in North America with no problems. Sure there are fringe case scenarios where you can value the 5,000 points as more than $70 but I’m with you.

  5. OK, I’m back for a second comment: this genuinely fascinates me. Comments I get (to each their own), but Gary is who I’m curious about.

    5,000 points is 5/6 of the way to a suite upgrade night. It’s 5/9 of the way to a premium suite upgrade night.

    Are you saying that the differential pricing (and value) between a standard room and those classes is worth < $100?

  6. @Andrew – I’ll take $100 gift card, which for me will displace $100 in cash I’d spend, over 5000 points. I consider Hyatt points worth 1.4 cents, even though I can often get more value than that (just like when I spend money it’s because I value what I am buying more than I value holding onto the money).

    Of course I can transfer Chase points to Hyatt, and that helps 😉

Comments are closed.