Is it ever good news when you hear a hotel loyalty program is making changes? Rarely.
TPG is reporting that Hyatt is making changes to their Cash and Points program on November 1. Right now, Cash and Points is on a fixed chart, just like the all points award chart. Here’s the current chart:
Apparently, the change coming Nov 1 is that instead of a fixed cash co-pay, it will become half of the actual cash rate of the room for that night. So if you were booking a Category 4, right now it would be 7,5000 points and $100 a night regardless of room rate. But in the new system, if that room has a high rate for your dates, it will go up. If the cash rate was $500, you would pay 7,500 points and $250 instead of $100.
“Cash and points” has always been a way to stretch your points by essentially buying points at a very good rate. By tethering to the rate, it becomes useless (in my opinion). We don’t even want to burn points, for the most part, when the rates are low anyway. If this happens Nov 1, my strategy would shift to only use points when I get 2c a point and book it all with points. If not, I’d probably look for an award redemption option with another chain or, worst case, use cash.
This change *will* make it harder to maximize your returns. Hopefully, they don’t go the way of Hilton and tie regular redemption rates to awards. That would be the end of my ever looking at Hyatt for anything.
In other news, they apparently plan to soften the blow by enhancing your options to book premium suites.
On paid nights, the above options will remain but 9,000 points will get you a “premium” level suite.
There will also be a new option for premium suites on all-points bookings.
Those will come at twice the price of standard bookings. For example, a Category 6 now would cost 25k for a room, 40k for a suite, and, now, 50k for a premium suite.
That is definitely a nice option to have – especially for special occasions.
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