Hyatt is dead

Good morning… or, should I say… very bad morning. We’ve got some tragic points-and-miles news today – and it’s seriously going to affect my strategy.

Without further ado:

• 🪦 Hyatt completely nukes its award chart

• 🏨 Wyndham becomes a new transfer partner

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

🪦 Hyatt completely nukes its award chart

So… Hyatt finally did it.

They took their award chart, threw it in a blender, and hit purée. And the result? A brand-new set of prices that makes me want to go lie down in traffic.

Let’s break this down – because it’s worse than it looks. And it already looks bad.

The new award chart is a massive devaluation

Hyatt is replacing the nice, simple 3-tier system (off-peak, standard, peak) with five different pricing bands for EVERY hotel category:

Lowest, Low, Moderate, Upper, and Top.

A few highlights from this fever dream:

• A Category 1 (the sweet, innocent baby of the Hyatt universe) can now cost up to 9,000 points per night.

• “Moderate” (the new middle band) is basically the new Standard, and it’s 20–37% higher than today’s prices.

• “Top” pricing is… insane. A Category 8 “Top” room is now 75,000 points per night, a 67% increase over today’s peak rates.

Good luck seeing the cheaper price bands

Sure, technically, Hyatt now has prices like 3,000 or 4,500 points per night.

But here’s the kicker…

There are now more pricing bands, and therefore, more room for hotels to live in the expensive half of the range.

Popular destinations (Hawaii, the Maldives, big cities) will almost certainly be priced at Upper/Top year-round.

So yes, Category 1 could be 3,000 points. But in practice? Don’t hold your breath.

This doesn’t even include the category changes coming in April

Oh yeah… did I mention that in April, a huge number of hotels are changing category?

Here’s what this means:

• All prices just went up

• Many hotels will also move to higher categories

• We just got slapped in the face twice

More bad news for all-Inclusive & Miraval fans

If you redeem at Hyatt’s all-inclusive brands or Miraval, it’s especially bad news, since pricing just went up significantly.

Standard rooms at all-inclusives will now cost up to 85,000 points per night:

If you have a family and need to redeem for multiple rooms or suites, it is going to be just as brutal as redeeming points in any other program.

Thankfully, there are a few things that have survived the purge:

1. Free Night Certificates still work

Your Category 1–4 and 1–7 certs now work all the way up to the new “Top” pricing.

• Cat 1–4 cert can now replace up to 25k points

• Cat 1–7 cert can now replace up to 55k points

But this means literally nothing, because they already worked on pricing for all those categories.

Just because the categories are now unreasonably priced doesn’t really change their value, in my humble opinion.

2. Upgrade awards still work at the new “top” rates

If a standard suite is available, your suite upgrades work – no matter how insane the price band is that night.

This will make Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards much more enticing for anyone who values more space from suites and premium rooms.

3. There are some new things in the works…

Hyatt is trying to soften the blow by launching some new features.

Sometime this year, we will be able to transfer points between Hyatt accounts online.

And that’s good – because with these new award rates, you’ll need to.

What you should do right now

Here’s my advice:

If you have Hyatt points or UR points/Bilt points that you want to transfer to Hyatt…

USE. THEM. NOW.

Until May, you can still lock in the current award rates, even for stays after May.

Booking travel now could save you tens or hundreds of thousands of points.

My personal take: this really hurts

I’m a Hyatt Globalist and basically live half of my life in Hyatt hotels.

I built my travel strategy around their award chart because it was fair, predictable, and high value.

Will there still be good deals with Hyatt? Yeah, of course. But the gap between Hyatt and Marriott/Hilton/IHG just shrank dramatically.

🏨 Wyndham becomes a new transfer partner

In other weird news, Wyndham Rewards is now a transfer partner of UR points.

And listen… I know what the points purists are already screaming:

But here’s the reality:

Wyndham isn’t a “sexy” program… but it is a useful one

For starters, award nights start at just 7,500 points, and Wyndham’s footprint is massive.

But also… some of the hotels are actually… fine. Or even... nice??

For example, I was in Krakow back in October and kept walking past this stunning-looking Wyndham hotel right in the middle of the Old City.

And if you’re going somewhere like rural Iowa, Route 66 land, soccer-tournament-suburbs, national park edges… guess who’s THERE?

Yeah, it’s Wyndham.

Meanwhile, with Hyatt’s new Category 1 pricing going up to 9,000 points, Wyndham’s 7,500-point budget properties look a little better.

I get it – Wyndham isn’t the first choice for most travelers.

But if you’re going somewhere with cheap Wyndham properties and you don’t care about marble bathtubs or Dyson hair dryers, then transferring UR points to Wyndham isn't a crime against humanity.

It’s literally fine. Do whatever you want with your points.

The caveat

In general, UR points can be worth more with programs like Hyatt (well… maybe not), Aeroplan, Virgin, etc.

Wyndham properties tend to be cheaper hotels, so the points-per-night math is usually lower.

But using points in this way is only “bad” if it doesn’t serve your travel plans.

Oh, there’s also a transfer bonus to Wyndham

This news coincides with a new 25% transfer bonus to Wyndham, but from ThankYou points.

Now, those 7,500-point nights I mentioned earlier can be booked by transferring just 6,000 ThankYou points, which isn’t bad.

But don’t forget that you can also transfer ThankYou points to Choice Hotels at a 1:2 ratio – even without a transfer bonus.

Anyway, Wyndham is on the map right now, so make sure you consider it for any upcoming trips.

That’s all for this week, folks. Sorry to end things on such a sour note with that Hyatt news.

But if recent trends have shown us anything, Hyatt could walk all of this back next week… so yeah. We’ll see. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Ciao,

3.3869° S, 36.6830° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt