In some more exciting Hyatt news (they’ve really been on a tear with new, high quality redemption options within their still fixed award chart!), Hyatt announced today that they will acquire Mr & Mrs Smith, a boutique brand (collection of independent hotels) of more than 1,500 properties.
You may know the name. You can currently book Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties using IHG Rewards points. However, they are often unavailable for points and cost an arm and a leg when they are available. They also have a 30 day cancellation policy which is brutal.
As their press release notes, this will add “over 20 countries where there are currently no Hyatt hotels such as Fiji, Croatia, Iceland and Anguilla”
The big question will be, given how many high end properties are in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith portfolio, can Hyatt fold these into World of Hyatt in the existing tier system or will this be a reason to introduce a Category 9 (I hope not!).
We also don’t yet know if this will be like SLH, with benefits like free breakfast available to all members, or if it will take some other shape.
My guess is it won’t be a standard Hyatt brand, as Hyatt isn’t buying the hotels themselves, but rather the platform for booking them.
In addition to 1,789 hotels, Mr. and Mrs. Smith has 256 Villa properties. It sure would be interesting for families if the villas became bookable (for any amount of points).
If you really want to get excited, go and sort from high to low price on Mr. and Mr’s Smith’s website (here’s a pre-made link) where you’ll see Moskito Island on offer from $20,000 a night and the Aman Le Mélézin from $10,000 a night.
Something tells me those highest end hotels will either not be available for redemption or will have custom tier levels.
More reasonably, you’ll find a few Mr. and Mrs. Smith hotels in the Hamptons (notably, Hyatt has an SLH hotel called Topping Rose House that’s been bookable for several years in Bridgehampton, however it’s extraordinarily hard to book in recent years) and a second property as of last year called the Roundtree.
There are also a ton of Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties in Europe. I notably found some nice ones in Italy while researching a trip for this year.
So, long story short, while we don’t know quite how this will play out yet, but there are some exciting possibilities!
Thoughts?
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