Deep Dive on World of Hyatt: Points, Perks and Status

All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life

Chris Hutchins provides a comprehensive deep dive into the World of Hyatt loyalty program, sharing his insights after transitioning from Mar

Key takeaways

• Hyatt offers real, tangible perks with status—unlike many other hotel programs where benefits are minimal or inconsistent.
• The ability to guarantee upgrades and waive resort fees makes Hyatt's top tier (Globalist) exceptionally valuable.

Main topics

• World of Hyatt program structure and brand breakdown
• Earning points through credit cards and transfers

Notable quotes

"I think Hyatt is the most rewarding hotel program out there right now, even after this year's devaluation."

Conclusion

Despite its smaller footprint compared to Marriott or Hilton, Chris concludes that World of

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I think Hyatt is the most rewarding hotel program out there right now, even after this year's devaluation. And I say that as someone who is a Marriott person for almost 20 years. So today I'm going to break down how to get the most out of Hyatt, why their top tier status is so much better than everyone else's, how to get the most out of the perks of status without even needing to have it, when to transfer points to Hyatt, how to maximize Hyatt points, and a lot more. If you're new here, I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, leave a comment or share it with a friend. And if you want to keep upgrading your money points in life, click follow or subscribe. All right. So before we get into this, I am just really excited because I've been a Marriott Bonvoy person for a very long time. I got my first Starwood Amex card back in 2003, and that was really the chain for years. That Starwood card was an amazing card. And then somewhere between Marriott... bonvoying everything, changing the name, getting rid of a lot of these standard awards, just overall going downhill, making it impossible to figure out if you'd get a free breakfast. And then coming out of the pandemic, having children and looking for something different, I decided to just dip my toes in the Speaker 2 (1:10) Hyatt waters, if you will. And wow, I am all in. And for the Speaker 1 (1:14) last three years, it's been the primary chain we've used, the primary way we've used points. And I've really gone deep. So I am excited about this episode. I love Hyatt, not just for some of the reasons I've talked about, but because, you know, you get real benefits with status, unlike a lot of the other chains. We'll dig into that. And there's just the ability to unlock a few things that you can't get anywhere else, like guaranteeing upgrades, still having award charts and that kind of stuff. Yes, the footprint is small. There are less hotels, but I've been able to make it work for a lot of the travel I've done and a lot of the family trips we've taken. So here's what we're going to cover. We're going to do a lay of the land, all the hotels, the brands, where they are, where they're not, how the Hyatt program works when it comes to earning points, the cards, the status, the milestones. You'd be surprised at how many opportunities there are to earn perks and benefits, even if you can't hit top tier Hyatt status. And there's actually ways to get top tier status for a stay without even having status. Because we'll talk about whether status makes sense and how far to go. We'll talk about the point system, what points are actually worth. when it makes sense to transfer from places like Bilt or Chase and how to get the most out of the points, even in light of the recent devaluation, which in my personal opinion is not so bad that you should write off Hyatt at all. In fact, at least so far, it's better than most people thought. And then we'll talk about if you're booking cash, how to make the most out of Hyatt bookings because there are multiple things you can do to get a better rate and to get way better perks and treatment while you're there, none of which actually need you to go for status. There's a lot more. So let's jump in and talk about the lay of the land. All right, so let's start with the lay of the land because when I say Hyatt, people think about a lot of different things. And right now that's 38 different brands. They group the brands into luxury, lifestyle, inclusive, classics, and essentials. And what's important to know is that one of these buckets. is a very large bucket. And so that is the Mr. and Mrs. Smith group. And the thing about Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which I don't even think I necessarily see on the Hyatt chart, but it is a partnership property. And that's that it really increases the size of the Hyatt footprint. So when you think of Hyatt, there's about 1,600 hotels. If you include Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that's 3,000. It's not really a huge benefit other than if you are wanting to stay at one of those properties. and you book it on Hyatt, you can earn points and whatnot from that stay. Otherwise, redeeming Hyatt points for Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not the best value, and there's not a lot of reciprocal benefits. Speaker 2 (3:44) A lot of those bookings already include the kinds of things you get free with status. So when I talk about Hyatt's footprint, I'm going to exclude those other 1,500-ish properties and focus Speaker 1 (3:54) on the 1,600 Hyatt properties, of which... Yes, there are a handful of luxury brands that I've really enjoyed. That makes up only about 230, 240 of the properties. When Speaker 2 (4:07) I broke this down, I used a little bit more of a liberal stretch than just the ones in the luxury camp. I've stayed at Ondaz's and Thompson's, and many of them are really, really nice. And so I stretched a few of the brands to be what I would consider kind of higher end. So it's not truly just the luxury bucket, which for them is the Park Hyatt. the Alila, the Miraval, Impression, the Unbound Collection, but there are still other ones. There are some really amazing properties here in many, many major cities. Kyoto, Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Sydney, the Maldives, St. Kitts, New York, Chicago, lots of really amazing park Hyatts. That's kind of the category. There's Alila, which recently joined, which has some Speaker 1 (4:47) really great properties in a lot of the... Southeast Asia, we've stayed at one in the Maldives. There's the Alila Ventana in Big Sur, California. There's an Alila in Napa. Some really beautiful properties there. And then Miraval is a chain that is very small. Currently, they just opened their fourth property. It's Speaker 2 (5:07) all-inclusive wellness resort and really, really good value for your Hyatt points. We'll get to that in a little bit. And the other luxury one that's pretty big is the Unbound Collection. And that's a wide range of hotels from the Hotel Deluve in Paris and the Carmel Valley Ranch down in Speaker 1 (5:22) Carmel, California and a lot of other properties. Those are kind of where you can get the most out of Hyatt for a luxury stay. Speaker 2 (5:30) And then you layer in a few of the lifestyle brands and you can do a similar thing. Andaz, Thompson. They kind of put the standard in here, which I'd say it's kind of a little bit more of a... 15 years ago, I loved staying at the Standard. Now it's a little bit less of a family vibe than it's Speaker 1 (5:44) a Speaker 2 (5:44) little bit more of a party vibe. So it's not really what I'm going for on a lot of our trips. I'm not going to run through every single one of these different chains, but there are a bunch. And then on the Inclusive Camp, there's a ton. I think they have one, two, three, six, nine different all-inclusive brands. Many, many of the all-inclusive brands that Hyatt has, which is about 140 resorts. are in Spain, Mexico, and the Caribbean. And I have not stayed at these. About half of the brands are adults only, but there is the Hyatt Ziva, Dreams, and Sunscape, which is family friendly. And the Hyatt Ziva has been one on our list to check out with the kids. And it just hasn't happened yet. But there are a ton in Spain and the Caribbean as well. And then the classic brands, which are Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency. Those are really the big ones. Huge, huge number of Hyatt Regencies and Grand Hyatt's big meeting convention hotels. Really great opportunities for upgrades because they have a lot of different tiers of rooms. Grand Hyatt being, I would say, a lot nicer than Hyatt Regency. But Hyatt Regency, very... Fine. But I just stayed at the higher Regency in Denver recently, and I thought it was incredible. They have a running track on the roof and in there, I think in the like. shareholder report. They actually classify Grand Hyatt as luxury right near the Park Hyatt, but in their own ladder, they put it down in the classic group. It's definitely a level below the Park Hyatt, but above the Regency. And there are some great Grand Hyatts and Hyatt Regencies in almost every major metro area. You'll find one or both of those hotels. And then a few interesting Grand Hyatts that are not major metros areas. There's the Grand Hyatt in Kauai, which is a really popular hotel with a lot of people I know. There's a Hyatt Centric, which is kind of really across the board in what you're going to find there, whether it's classic and really renovated or not. And then on the Essentials Camp, there's another 700 hotels. This is driven a lot by the Hyatt Place. There's over 400 Hyatt Places and over 100 Hyatt Houses. This is kind of your lower tier, but just really standard rooms. On the Hyatt House side, you get kitchens, kind of more extended stay, and then a few other brands. And so that is a lot of brands. And I find that... I don't necessarily understand why hotels go as far as always trying to create all these different brands, though you'll learn in a little bit why Hyatt having more brands works to your advantage, because there's an opportunity to earn free nights just by staying at new brands. Now, half of this system is in the US. And so that's, you know, almost half of all the hotels are in the US. Hyatt's one of the few websites where you can really easily dial in all of... where everything is with a map. I find that most of the maps on a lot of hotel sites are really hard to use. Hyatt's is really great. You can filter by so many things. You can say features of the hotel, award categories, brands, and kind of zoom around the map and try to figure out where to go. A lot of presence in Europe. I'm looking at this right now. Let me remove Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And so now I've got the full lay of the land where Hyatt isn't. If you look in South America, I'm looking at maybe, I don't know, a dozen hotels or less. If I'm looking at Africa, there's maybe not even a dozen hotels. I guess if you include Morocco and the Canary Islands, yes. But broadly speaking, there's like one hotel in Kenya. a couple in Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, but very, very scattered there. But when you start to move to Asia, there's a ton. Hyatt in China, it's the number two area. There's over 200 hotels in China. There's some really beautiful hotels in South Korea and Japan and Southeast Asia, but not as many as you'll find in other chains. I think Marriott has over 10,000 hotels, so it's almost 10 times the size. You won't find Hyatt's in Norway, Denmark, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Israel. I think there's one in New Zealand and Finland and Kenya. You know, it's just very sparse. But they're planning another 112 openings this year. And so they're definitely growing. And so, you know, who knows where this will go in the future. But almost every major city, I've been able to stay at a Hyatt. Obviously, not everyone, because I just said there's not one in Norway. But there are a lot. And so I think... It is not going to serve you if you are traveling to rare kind of off the beaten path destinations, but it will if you're going to major cities in most of the world. This Speaker 1 (9:59) episode is brought to you by Eleven Labs. I called customer support recently and spent 30 minutes on hold just to get transferred to another department that didn't have a direct line. That was a waste of my time, the agent's time, and the company's time. And that's exactly what Eleven Agents is built to fix. Their AI agents actually listen, route calls, and hand off to a person when it needs one. But even better, they can look up accounts and resolve many issues themselves. And voices are natural instead of robotic, which is why I've used Eleven Labs for multiple projects I've had over the past year. 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Copilot Money connects all your accounts and gives you a clear picture of where your money's going, spending by category, cashflow, subscriptions, all in one place with beautiful design and the best AI powered categorization I've seen. Honestly, having that picture has led to some real conversations with my wife about how we actually want to spend our money. And those decisions wouldn't have been possible without a clear understanding of where our money is going. And I get that from Copilot Money. Copilot Money works on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and to anyone on the web. And right now, new users can get two months free with code HACKS2 at allthehacks.com slash copilot. That's allthehacks.com slash copilot, code HACKS2 for two months free. Let's talk about how this program works because, you know, in some ways it's Speaker 2 (12:22) very similar to a lot of programs and in some ways it's very different. So at its high level, the way it works is everyone that stays at a Hyatt can join the World of Hyatt program. It is free. You book on hyatt.com, you book in their app, you book on their phone, you can DM Hyatt on X, which honestly sometimes works pretty quickly. And you get five points per dollar. Everyone gets that. I think it's two and a half at Hyatt Studios. Every brand seems to have this one rare thing where you earn less. So that is how you earn. And everyone gets member rates. So if you're logged in, there's a discounted rate for all members. Everyone gets the resort fees waived when you're booking award stays. And there are a handful of other benefits we'll get as we talk about status and what comes from there. But one of the great things about Hyatt is that in addition to earning all these points, when you go to redeem them, Hyatt still has an award chart. And so when I pull up the award chart, albeit it's more complicated now than it used to be, you can know how many points it's going to take to redeem. for a hotel in a certain category when those rooms are available. And so I love that. It gives you a lot of predictability, even if those rates have recently gone up. But the way they went up, and we'll get more into the redemption later, is that they added a top tier and an upper tier when it used to just be one top tier. And a lot of the hotels aren't pricing in there as much as I was expecting. So, you know, on the low end, 3,000 points gets you a category one. hotel for one night. And at the high end, a category eight in prime season is 75,000 points. But one of the really cool things about Hyatt is that you can use your points to book standard rooms, to book club rooms, which is access to the clubs in certain hotels, to book standard suites or even premium suites. Or you can book cash rooms and use your points to upgrade and lock those upgrades in advance. And that's pretty amazing as well. Most of the awards days inherit the hotel's standard cancellation policy, not the advanced purchase cancellation policy. So most of those award nights are refundable. There are a handful of times where you'll see non-refundable award nights and it'll flag that out. But that is something to know that book an awards day and you can almost always cancel it easily. Typically, that cancellation policy is whatever the lowest cancellation policy is for the hotel. I often see 24 to 72 hours for a lot of stays. So when you earn stays, like I said, you're earning five points per dollar you spent at a Hyatt. If you have status, that goes up by 10, 20, and 30 % of the three tiers. So at most, you're earning six and a half points per dollar. Not a huge multiplier. If you look at a few other programs, I know Hilton, it goes way up for how much status you have and which credit card you do hold. But keep in mind, as we talk about the value of these points, they're just so much more valuable than Hilton, Marriott, IHG, Choice Points. You got to keep that in mind. Like I said, you can earn points on Mr. and Mrs. Smith hotels, all 1,500 of them, but you do have to book through Hyatt. Now, I'm going to talk all about the value of Hyatt points, but I think it's important to just set... a little bit of context before we get there. And so at the high level, if you look at the median value of Hyatt points, I think almost everyone on the internet kind of agrees in the somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6, 1.7 range. That's median. If you go up to the 75th or 90th percentile, that's 2.7 cents up in that level. And so they could be really valuable. So keep that in the back of your mind as we're talking, and I will dive in deeper on the value of points in a little bit. And then this is a small thing, but Hyatt has this whole directory of experiences where they've basically partnered with probably some provider to be able to let you book experiences. I would say they're probably not the best prices, but I think you do earn something like 10 points per dollar on them. And so if you're trying to book something, I'm looking right now in California, you could do a shared boat cruise. You can rent e-bikes. You know, you could do a Agua Chile cooking demo. So you can take a look at a lot of these find experiences and earn some points. I don't know if they're going to be a better deal than booking somewhere else. Another really great way to earn Hyatt points is to transfer them from your credit card programs. And so the easiest is built, which is just... a one-to-one transfer. And then up until a few months ago, the other easiest was Chase, where you could transfer one-to-one from all the Ultimate Rewards cards that had transferable Speaker 1 (16:40) points. But now for new cardholders or existing cardholders starting on October 1st, unless you hold a Chase Speaker 2 (16:47) Sapphire Reserve or Chase Sapphire Reserve for business, the transfer ratio is going to four to three. So you're going to need roughly 1.33 Chase points for every one Hyatt point. And that's if you hold the Sapphire Preferred, Ink Preferred, or any of the other kind of legacy cards that allowed you to transfer points. Now, that said, you could wait. and decide to transfer those points after upgrading a card. You can't upgrade on the business side because the Sapphire Reserve for business, I haven't seen anyone successfully upgrade to or from it. But if you had a Chase Sapphire Preferred and you wanted to make a really big Hyatt purchase, you could upgrade your card