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Hyatt made some monumental (and mostly painful) changes last week. Honestly, we’re still recovering.
The hotel chain beloved for years for the value of its points program swapped its usual off-peak, standard, and peak pricing for a new five-tier setup. We knew that the new system would push many award rates higher, while introducing far more unpredictability into how much the hotel chain will charge you for an award stay. And now we know how much.
Last week, we gathered and analyzed award rates at 1,200-plus properties worldwide, comparing the cost of 368,000 award nights before and after the big change. And what we found surprised us … in both good and bad ways.
Let’s start with some good news, shall we? I think we all need it.
If you value your Hyatt points for cheap stays – focusing more on just finding a place to rest your head rather than a top-dollar aspirational redemption – you’re in luck.
If there’s one upside to Hyatt’s change, it’s at the entry-level Category 1 and Category 2 properties – think your Hyatt Houses, Hyatt Places, and maybe the occasional Hyatt Regency in a small or far-flung city.
And that’s no small matter. A bed is a bed, and savings are savings. While Hilton and Marriott charge 30,000 points per night or more, Hyatt has always excelled with cheap-and-necessary
The savings, however, aren’t massive: We’re talking 500 points per night at the absolute most, like booking the Hyatt Place Bloomington/Normal in central Illinois for 6,000 points per night – not the previous 6,500-point rate.
That might seem facetious, but I mean it. Between bloggers bragging and influencers showcasing, World of Hyatt’s top-tier properties get outsized attention for the outsized value. Yet Hyatt points have always shone for budget stays – properties you can book for 5,000 points a night, when Hilton or Marriott might charge 40,000 points or more for a similar hotel next door.
Now you can stretch your points a bit further.
The prevalence of Category 1 and Category 2 properties has a downstream effect: Booking Hyatts across much of Asia will be cheaper now.
No region across the world benefited more than Asia Pacific, where only 6% of properties saw award rate increases due to this big changeover. You’ve got a lot to choose from, particularly in China and India.
Sometimes, no news is good news.
Look at that chart above, and you’ll quickly reach two inescapable conclusions:
Compared to how hard Hyatt hit its priciest Category 8 properties, Category 7 feels like a major win with almost 97% of award nights going unchanged. Category 7 properties run the gamut from some amazing Park Hyatt locations in Vienna, Marrakech, and the Maldives; Alilas in Mexico, the Maldives, or Oman; and an Andaz in an unbeatable location in Amsterdam.
While expanding its award chart with pricier “Upper” and “Top” stays during busy times, Hyatt executives said they would slowly phase in those higher-priced tiers.
Hyatt honored their word.
Our analysis found that just over 1% of Hyatt nights worldwide were priced at either Upper or Top rates at launch last week. And that skews much more toward the top-end Category 7 and Category 8 hotels and resorts – at other properties, these higher rates are even less prevalent.
There’s also a crystal-clear correlation in how Hyatt mapped the previous award rates over into the new system:
There are exceptions, but that is the general rule.
Consider yourself warned: This won’t last. Again, Hyatt executives have said as much.
This is why Hyatt created this new pricing structure, after all: to be able to flex up property prices, charging as much as 30,000 additional points per night, without waiting until the annual reshuffling of award categories each spring.
So while we got a reprieve from the worst-of-the-worst award rates, another shoe will drop as Hyatt and its properties ratchet up their usage of Upper and Top award rates.
When? We’ll just have to wait and see … but I’m betting the 2027 Hyatt will look a lot different than it does today.
It’s the high-end properties where Hyatt points really shine for delivering outsized value. And it’s those same properties that are really feeling the hurt.
This statistic tells it all:
Nearly 67% of award nights at Category 8 properties – think of Park Hyatts in big cities, the fanciest Alila resorts, and so on – are now pricier in points than they were a week ago. And because of how Hyatt reworked its award chart and mapped over the previous rates, not a single stay got cheaper.
That is brutal for the top-end luxury properties bookable with Hyatt points – the reason many (though certainly not all) travelers have hoarded World of Hyatt points or earmarked their transferable Chase or Bilt Rewards for the hotel chain.
And unlike the wins on the lower-end, the cost is substantial at the top-end locations: An award stay might cost you another 5,000, 10,000, or even 15,000 points … per night. Indeed, almost every date in July at the Park Hyatt Tokyo was previously 35,000 points per night.
It’s no coincidence that these top-end properties are also the most likely to use higher “Upper” or “Top” award rates … as high as 75,000 points per night. Just the opposite: That’s honestly what’s driving these increases.
Asia Pacific as a whole was a surprising winner of Hyatt’s changeover. Japan in particular? Not so much.
It’s just the opposite: Japan got hit harder by Hyatt’s new pricing than any other country on the planet. There’s that Park Hyatt Tokyo example above and plenty of others.
All told:
Both the Hyatt Centric Ginza and Caption by Hyatt Kabutocho Tokyo have award nights in the priciest “Upper” or “Top” buckets for nearly 20% of the calendar, and our previous favorite Hyatt Regency Tokyo wasn’t far behind. Booking a free night at either the Andaz Tokyo Toranomon Hills or Grand Hyatt Tokyo will cost you more points on 80%-plus of nights now!
Japan might be the poster child for just how much more Hyatt can charge, but staying slopeside in the States isn’t far behind.
You’ll pay the price for booking a handful of popular ski resorts bookable with Hyatt points nowadays, as Hyatt is much more likely to use those higher award rates here than virtually anywhere else – and go figure, they do so exactly when you’d want to visit: over the winter.
Take, for instance, the Hyatt Centric Park City. Previously, you could book for no more than 45,000 points per night … even during peak season. Next February, you’ll now pay no less than 55,000 points a night … or, more likely, 65,000 points nightly, with some weekends clocking in at 75,000 points.
The same trend holds even at the (much cheaper) Hyatt Place Keystone/Dillon over in Colorado: From January through March, you’re far more likely to see rates of 20,000 points, 22,500 points, or even 25,000 points than anything close to the 18,000-point maximum before Hyatt’s changeover.
For years, booking all-inclusive resorts with points was a major bright spot in Hyatt’s portfolio – especially as it kept adding more and more resorts to the fold. Genuinely solid properties where you could sleep, eat, and drink – all on points? Sold.
But bit by bit, Hyatt chipped away at the strength of these redemptions by pushing property after property up on its award chart during those annual category reshuffles. Last Wednesday’s change finished them off altogether.
It’s hard to find much upside to booking these resorts with points nowadays – especially at the upper-end properties like the Hyatt Zilara Cap Cana and the Hyatt Ziva Cancún, where every single date now costs more points than it did just a week ago.
Even during the off-season, most nights at the Hyatt Zilara Cap Cana price out at 55,000 points per night. Come winter, that vaults to 65,000 points a night – and from January through mid-April 2027, there’s not a single night bookable for any less.
For a resort that you could book for just 25,000 points a few years back, that hurts.
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