Hyatt’s changes aren’t actually that bad

Good morning folks, and welcome back to Daily Drop!

Yesterday was a big day — Hyatt completely revamped its award chart. And much to my surprise, the damage was not quite as bad as expected.

So today, let’s cover that and a couple of other important things:

• 🏨 Hyatt D-Day wasn’t so bad

• ✈️ Earn 8,500 bonus Rove Miles (Daily Drop exclusive)

• 🌎 Our Daily Drop Pro sale is live!

🏨 Hyatt D-Day wasn’t so bad

Okay, let’s recap.

A couple of months ago, Hyatt announced some major changes to its award chart.

Rather than three price buckets, they expanded it to five – most of which increased the points pricing of each hotel category.

Well, the new award chart is officially live, and here’s what it looks like:

My assumption was that most hotels would simply choose the higher pricing buckets, because… why wouldn’t they?

Some properties could theoretically cost 67% more now than they did last night before the award chart changes.

So what actually happened?

The popular stuff got wrecked

Unsurprisingly, the worst damage was done to popular properties and really touristy cities.

Hawaii, New York, Tokyo, London, etc., will cost you a LOT more points.

For example, the Park Hyatt New York will now frequently cost 55,000 points per night:

Until yesterday, no normal Hyatt hotel in the world could cost that many points. Now, it’s normal.

That’s the bad news…

But I think that, for the most part, things are not that bad. As far as I can see, most of the world either stayed the same or fluctuated only a tiny bit.

Most hotels are the same or cheaper

For example, Category 2 hotels previously cost as few as 6,500 points per night.

Now, we’re seeing many of those cost 7,500 points per night, and even a few that have lowered in price to 6,000 points.

And here’s the big kicker…

Some expensive properties in expensive cities got cheaper, too. 😏

For example, this Category 5 property in Dublin costs 15,000 points per night for many nights during the peak summer season.

At close to $300 per night, that’s a fantastic value… and fewer points than the standard awards cost before today. Yay!

I’m going to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks, so I booked three nights at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, which cost me 25,000 points per night.

But now, two of my three nights have been reduced to just 20,000 points per night.

I can cancel my stay, rebook it, and save 10,000 Hyatt points. Who knew I’d be saving points after this devaluation?

The bottom line

Look… This is still bad news, and I’ll tell you why:

The potential pricing of every hotel in the world is now higher. Sure, right now most of them have chosen to keep pricing the same, or maybe a teeny bit lower.

But at any time, they can decide to “max out” the award chart pricing. And you bet they will.

But for now, I still plan to transfer my UR points to Hyatt and continue keeping it as my go-to hotel program.

And remember, if you need some Hyatt points, these are all the cards that earn them.

✈️ Earn 8,500 bonus Rove Miles (Daily Drop exclusive)

Rove is out with a pretty tasty promotion right now – with a few different angles for earning more Rove Miles.

They’re calling it “It Pays to Chase More Rove Miles,” which is… fun.

For starters, they’re offering elevated earning rates when using the Rove shopping portal.

But more importantly (and most excitingly), they’re offering fat stacks of bonus miles when making a hotel booking for the first time.

I also told Rove how much you guys are enjoying their program – so they generously offered us unique promo codes specifically for Daily Drop readers, which are twice as good as the public ones!

Here are the various deals for hotel bookings:

• Spend $250, get 2,500 bonus Rove Miles with code DD250

• Spend $500, get 5,000 bonus Rove Miles with code DD500

• Spend $750, get 7,500 bonus Rove Miles with code DD750

To be clear, these are only valid for first-time hotel bookings… also, that last code for 7,500 bonus miles will only work for the first 75 people who use it.

Here’s what this could look like in practice

Let’s say you need to book a hotel in Chicago for a few nights this summer. It can get expensive – but at least you can get a massive return on your spend.

For example, a 4-night stay at the Sofitel costs $884 when booked through Rove.

But…

As you see, you’ll earn 8,413 miles from the booking, along with the 7,500 bonus miles using code DD750, and even another 1,000 miles just for signing up for Rove if you haven’t already.

In total, you’d walk away from your stay with around 17,000 Rove Miles.

That’s enough to transfer to Virgin Atlantic and book a round-trip flight from the U.S. to Europe:

Or you could transfer those points to Air India and book almost five domestic flights on United, which cost as few as 3,500 points each:

This doesn’t even account for the credit card points you’d earn as well. If you use a card like this one (which earns 4x on direct hotel bookings), you’d also earn around 3,500 UR points on top of the Rove Miles.

That’s enough to transfer to Hyatt and book cheap Category 1 nights like this one in Houston, which costs just 3,000 points per night:

The bottom line

Rove Miles is out with a nice promotion that’s even nicer for Daily Drop readers.

If you have any cash hotel bookings coming up, I’d recommend poking around in Rove to see if you can rack up some easy transferable points.

🌎 Our Daily Drop Pro sale is live!

Speaking of deals for Daily Drop readers, y’all are getting SPOILED today.

Starting today, you can save $50 on your first year of Daily Drop Pro, our in-house award search tool (and so much more).

As a Daily Drop Pro member, you’ll get personalized points (and cash) flight deals, access to our pro community, and more.

But most importantly, you can search for flights and hotels for your specific trip and see which programs are offering the best deals, with instructions on exactly how to transfer points and make the booking.

So if you’ve ever wondered… “How do I know which airline or hotel program to use? How do I know I’m getting the best deal? Is there any way I can search across programs?!”

The answer to all those questions… Daily Drop Pro. 💅 

The sale ends on May 26, so you’ll want to jump on this sooner rather than later.

That’s all, my friends. Have a lovely weekend and see you Monday for another fun newsletter.

Ciao,

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.