Frequent Miler on the Air - Breaking news: Hyatt takes us to the heartbreak hotel | Breaking News Podcast | 2-25-26

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Hyatt announced some changes that will come into effect before the end of May. This will include a brand new award chart that splits the 8 categories into 5 pricing bands. You can read more about the new Hyatt overhauls here.(00:51) - New award chart(05:28) - Hyatt intends to maintain value and maintain an award chart(17:24) - Bright spots(27:08) - Does this change how we view our Hyatt points?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Let's talk through the seismic changes that have happened in Hyatt today. Frequent Miller on the air starts now. All right, well, Nick, here we are. I can't tell there's a sound I hear in the background. I can't tell if it's breaking news or if it's a funeral trumpet plane. Might be breaking hearts.

It could be. Yeah, yeah, it could be the sign of breaking hearts. But here we are. We're on a frequent, the breaking news is so breaking that Greg the frequent Miler is actually indisposed. But let's talk through the seismic changes that have happened in Hyatt today with the Hyatt award chart today. Yeah.

So Hyatt announced a whole bunch of new changes that are going to be coming live in May. We don't know the exact date yet just in May before the end of May was the closest we got to a date. so maybe not May 1st, but at some time in May, they're going to launch a brand new award chart. Now I say brand new, it's going to retain some aspects of the old award chart, at least in the sense that there are eight categories, sort of, because there are still going to be eight categories, but within each of those eight categories right now, today as we record this and publish this, there are three pricing bands, off peak standard and peak. But starting in May, there will be five pricing bands in each category. There's going to be lowest, low, moderate, upper and top. Nobody wanted to call that peak, apparently. So it's going to have a range of different prices, five different prices for every category. And I mean, the bad news is they're going up.

Prices are going up. So if you just compare the middle of the chart, the old chart had three levels. So if we take the standard level from the middle and compare that to the middle level out of the five, that'd be moderate in the new chart, then each category increases somewhere between 20% and 37 and a half percent. So that's at moderate pricing. They're increasing between 20 and 37 and a half percent. Peak pricing, the story is much worse. You're looking at like a 67 percent increase in some cases. And really the swing is what gets you because at category eight, for instance, the lowest price now is going to be 35,000 points per night, which is like it's just a little bit lower than category eight would be today, usually. And it's going to go all the way up to 75,000.

points per night. So that's more than double. And in fact, that's the case with every category. Every category from its lowest end to its highest end is at least double, if not more. So it's quite a swing in terms of the number of points per night in each of these categories. And perhaps the even more heartbreaking thing is if that isn't kind of bad enough already is that Hyatt is not going to guarantee any minimum number of nights that are available at those lower tier categories. So some properties may not have any of the lowest or low pricing. They may not even have the moderate. They may end up just having upper and top. Now, Hyatt was pretty clear that in 2026, we're not going to see huge changes. So when May rolls around, I don't expect that there are going to be very many

properties in the upper and top tier pricing bins, but don't expect that to last either because long term, I mean, I was clear. I asked if a property has high demand and they have high priced awards, are they going to be able to have those year round? Is there any requirement as to a certain number of minimum or a maximum number of top tier nights? And they were clear that no, there are no expectations there that they're going to monitor at the program level and try to keep people kind of in line. But I don't know what that really looks like for a property that's got high demand. I mean, you look at a market like Hawaii and people want to go all the time. So I don't know when the lowest time would necessarily be. You might know better than I would when the low demand period is.

for Hawaii, right? It's like one day in September is really funny it is. There's like one day at the end of September where it's low demand and everything else is high demand. So let me just make sure that I understand what you do that, or we kind of understand what you're saying here. So the entire award chart, instead of being eight categories with three prices per category, there's now going to be eight categories with five. So there's 40 different prices that a normal property could theoretically price.

itself at, and there's no requirement that anybody use any specific ban for any number of times. So theoretically, a property could exist the entire year in the top two bands, and there would be nothing to prevent them from doing that. Correct. Yeah. And Hyatt was clear that that can happen, and so I expect that it will happen at some of the most desirable properties. So some of those properties are going to go from having been category seven a couple years ago

at 30,000 points per night or whatever to say. suddenly charging 75,000 points per night for a standard room. And the same treatment applies to the different award charts. So Hyatt has an award chart for club rooms and standard suites and premium suites. And they're all getting that same treatment of the five different pricing bins. It's also affecting Miraval and all inclusives. Everybody's getting those five different pricing bands. And so the price increases, again, are really pretty massive, especially at the peak end.

at the peak end, I think all of them are increasing around 67% or close to that range. So big increases in peak pricing across the board for all the various types of rooms. Now, all that said, Hyatt says that their intention is to maintain value. They mentioned several times that they value the fact that their points are considered more valuable than other hotel chains. And they wanted the idea of an award chart because they know that's important. to members, and so they really wanted that to be a differentiating factor that they still have an award chart. So they were pretty careful to kind of hammer in the point that they expect points to still be

highly valuable, though how high is anybody's guess? And that's really, I think, where the big hit is, because, I mean, if you can get 1.8 cents per point, okay, so then they can kind of claim that, well, that's what you guys have always said, the value was. And of course, our reason values are meant to be, which you can reasonably expect to get without much effort at maximization, but the outsized value opportunities are really what make people love Hyatt, and it seems like those are going to be reduced. Right. Well, and I mean, so when we, when Nick references the 1.8 cents, we have a, we assign what we call reasonable redemption value to most major hotel currencies and airline points, et cetera. And that number is we look at, in the case,

of Hyatt, I think it's around a million different redemptions, and we take what is the smack dab middle of the road where 50% or above and 50% are below, and that number is 1.8 cents. That's where the 1.8 cent number comes from. However, if indeed a lot of these, certainly the average is going to come way down because those top, those resort, those redemptions where we're getting four or five cents per point, it seems like those are going to go away, right? And so the average would certainly come down, if not the meme, because theoretically, we're going to see something, it's going to be going, it feels like to me like it's going to be going towards some sort of consistent number, whether that be one and a half cents a point, whether it be one cent

point, whether it be whatever, that they're going to try and kind of coalesce around. But gosh, it doesn't seem like it could be anything but bad news for the overall value of Hyatt points, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that's the case. Now, I don't think that there's a conspiracy to reduce the value of points. And so some people have speculated, oh, maybe Hyatt wants to be around 1.2 or 1.5 cents per point. And I truly didn't get that impression from them. In fact, I got the impression, sort of the opposite, that they were really clinging to the idea of the points not becoming less valuable, though I think that that's on the whole. Like Tim said, our value right now is smack dab in the middle. And I think that they intend for that to be close to what the program

continues to offer at the midpoint, but there's no denying that this is going to cut off a lot of the high point, or at least significantly reduce a lot of the opportunities up at the top end. I mean, there are some places that charge well over $1,000 a night for standard rooms that even if you book them at 75,000 points per night, you're going to be getting pretty good value, not necessarily great value if it's just 1,000. But I looked, for instance, earlier today at the Park High at St. Kitts and standard rooms during the dates I was looking at were $1,700 a night. So even if they charge 75,000 points per night for those rooms, you're going to be getting over two cents per point in value. So by that metric, if they could easily say, well, look, you're still

getting more than two cents per point in value. However, I can book those right now as we record this for 35,000 points per night. So having to spend 75 later on is a totally different story to me, even if it sounds good from them. Yeah. So are there any, I know you mentioned that there's not going to be a, they're not going to allow, that they're not going to require that any properties spend any given amount of time throughout the year and any specific price span. They can, they're sort of up to set it where they want to. Will they be able to set it as they go? So like, for instance, if a Taylor Swift show happens in Seattle is announced in Seattle for three months from now, would they be able to then jack up all the prices, the award prices for this for Seattle hotels to compensate? So that's a really interesting example because they were very clear that they intend for this to still be very predictable for you to be able to take a look and see what the award price is and have that be the award price. And they were very, very, I think, adamant that this is not dynamic pricing in the sense that you're not going to look today and look again next week and look again the week after that for the same future date and see three different prices. but rather if you look today at, you know, a date a year from now and you look at that same property next month, the award price should be the same for that year from now date.

So essentially they're saying that pricing is going to be kind of frozen in time. As it comes out, it'll come out at the appropriate level and it should stay there. I'm skeptical about that for specifically things like a Taylor Swift concert where cash prices are going to go through the roof. And the whole idea of this new chart is that when you do, do have that peak demand, it enables some properties to charge far more points. And the example that they gave in the briefing, which makes a lot of sense by some measure, is college football towns, where you've got probably a Hyatt place in a college football town that's not really a tourist destination. So most of the year it would make sense to be in a pretty low category. But on weekends where there are home games,

cash prices go through the roof. And so some of those properties have moved up in category over the years in order to be able to get the rates that, you know, their bread and butter rates during those home game weekends to be able to get enough compensation from Hyatt, they've increased in category over time. And so the idea here is that those properties could be in a more suitable category year round. And then when the college football games are happening, they can be charging more points than they are today without having to move up in category. So it kind of maintains the idea of the award chart for most people most of the time, while also enabling that hotel to, collect whatever it needs to collect at those peak times. So I think that their idea of this is a more static situation where they can anticipate, okay, they know in advance where the Super Bowl is going to be and, you know, which city is going to host the Olympics and, you know, where the World Cup is going to

be and things like that. And so that they can plan those so that when the awards become available, they can have them priced correctly. But when something like that comes up, when Taylor Swift launches a new tour, I have a hard time imagining that prices are not going to increase. Now, you know, in their defense-ish sort of, what Hyatt tried to also present this as is the ability to manage that kind of thing at the property level instead of regionally, because as things stand now, I think the idea is that when properties are in a particular region are peak price, they're all peak priced, or when they're off-peak, it's off-peak for all of the properties in, for instance, that city. So the idea is if you're going to go to New York, if it's a peak time,

all the hotels in New York will be peak, and if it's off-peak, they'll all be off-peak. with the new chart, the idea is that they're going to manage that separately. Each property will manage when their sort of top times and off-peaked sort of times are. So presumably, the places right next to the venue may be higher priced, but other properties that are farther away may not have to go with that higher pricing. We'll see. Time will tell. I don't know what to expect there.

I imagine you'll still be able to get a good value for your high at points a lot of the time. but when the Taylor Swift concert comes through town, I imagine that you're not going to get the type of value that we've been accustomed to seeing from Hyatt. Right. Well, and, you know, I appreciate Hyatt's optimism around that, but it does seem like a weird dissonance where on the one hand, they're not going to enforce people or particular individual properties

to stay at a gift to have a certain amount of time per year in a given price band. But yet they think they can keep individual, properties from changing their award prices throughout the year. And I even think about stuff like college football or NFL football. You don't even know the weekends those are on. Like what weekends those are going to be home games and you may know what the home schedule is, but you don't know, in a lot of cases, you don't even know what weekends

those are actually going to happen until later in the year. So I don't know. And don't get me wrong. I believe that they are sincere in that. I don't, the execution of that I have some skepticism about. Yeah, I mean, and rightfully so. I'm as skeptical and we won't know for a while. And I want to say again, I said before, they were pretty clear that they didn't expect to see huge upswings in 2026.

I get the sense that probably they've been clear with properties that they don't want to hit members with a huge change all at once. So I don't expect we're going to really know what that looks like. in 2026. I think that, you know, that's going to be a 2027, 2028 thing when we start to get more of an idea as to how that works. I think at least initially it's certainly going to seem like there's not much change. But, you know, when it gets managed at the property level, it's much harder to monitor that, you know, unless you're going to monitor every single property for price changes. It's very similar to dynamic pricing in the sense that it's hard to know when a evaluation has happened unless you're tracking the award price at every single place. And that's,

you know, almost impossible to do. So, so yeah, I don't, unfortunately, it doesn't look great. And, you know, again, they've, they've presented this as not dynamic in the sense that it's not going to frequently be in flux. It's not like a property is going to charge a couple thousand more points a night. Then you look another day and it's a couple thousand points fewer. It's going to be a little bit more predictable than that. At the same time, we imagine that the award prices are going to be high at times when cash prices would be high, which is basically what dynamic pricing is all about. So it feels pretty dynamic, especially with the huge swings here, too. I mean, we're not talking just a couple thousand points. We're talking about as much as 40,000 points between low pricing and high

pricing. And high at points at that, you know, that's another thing you have to keep in mind that we're talking about high points, which are more valuable than other hotel points. Within the post that we published about this, I gave a comparison with Marriott, based on our reasonable redemption values, every high at points worth about 2.37 Marriott points. And so it works out with the math that a high at just 15,000 points per night. It's pretty comparable to a Marriott charging 35,000 points per night in terms of the value of the points. So 15,000 Hyatt points is approximately worth 35,000 Marriott points. And the category that starts at 15K, I think that's category five, goes all the way up in price to the point where the equivalent number of Marriott points would be like 83,000. So the range, if you were thinking about it in terms of Marriott points, it's like a Marriott property ranging from 35,000 points a night to 803.

Property that charges 35,000 Marriott points in general, you're never going to see that at 83, right? I mean, it might be 40 or maybe even 50. Maybe it'll go 52 or 53 at some point, but it's not going to go all the way up to 83. That's a huge range. So even if there is one Marriott property out there or three or four examples that may have that kind of variance, it's not. not every single Marriott property in the world that now has the ability to price itself between $35,000, $85,000, or whatever that equivalent would be at any specific. I mean, most of them are in fairly tight ranges, even though they may vary, fairly tight ranges.

Here we're looking at 3x from the top to the bottom in some of these categories. So I feel like if you and I were in a parade right now, not only is it raining on us, I feel like my float just got hit with a lightning bolt. So is there any good news here? Like, is there anything positive? Is there anything that, like, you know, I can pick up my broken tuba and... Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, sort of. Sort of. You know, there are a few bright-ish spots or sort of with dim lighting. I don't know exactly how bright I want to paint these to be. But there are a couple of good-ish news things. First up is that free night certificates are unaffected by this. So if you have a category 1 to 4 free night certificate, For instance, it will work at Category 4 properties even when they are top priced.

So the top price of Category 4 today is 18,000 points per night. But under the new chart, it's going to be, I think, 25,000 points per night, if I remember correctly. So even when it costs 25,000 points per night, you'll still be able to use your Category 1 to 4 free night certificate. So it may save you a little bit more in terms of the number of points you'd have to use otherwise. And they will be, again, usable at those peak time. when you really want to go somewhere. So that's good news. Same thing for the category one to sevens.

Again, they'll work all the way up to the top end of category seven. So I guess the potential value is much higher there. And I also, I mean, I don't know that this will be true, but I wouldn't be shocked if we see more award availability at those peak times. You know, if a property is charging a billion points per night because they can uncharge the top end, there's only so many people that have those points to use with Hyatt. And so maybe. you'll have more availability to use those free night certificates. I say maybe, because who knows,

we'll see what happens. But at peak times when properties are peak priced and other folks don't want to use their points, maybe you'll have a better shot of using your free night certificate to good value. Suite upgrade awards, same thing. Totally unaffected. So if there's a standard suite available, it doesn't matter if it's top price. You'll be able to apply that to your reservation. A brightish spot is that some category four and category seven properties will potentially stick around in those categories for a longer period of time. Now, I pick out those categories because of the fact that there are free night certificates that are one to four or one to seven. And so a lot of people are looking for the best category four or the best category seven in order to maximize the use of those

certificates. And we often see some of the most desirable properties in those categories move up. And, you know, they move up into a higher category so they become inaccessible with free night certificates. And with this new chart, the idea is that more of those places will be able to stick around in those categories and live in those categories for a longer period of time. So the best uses of free night certificates may become a more steady, stable, predictable thing in the future. I say may because I have that fair amount of skepticism that anybody else listening to this would. We don't know yet. We won't know for a long time. But Hyatt does say that after this April, we should expect many fewer category changes in the annual

category changes. So every year Hyatt announces new category changes. usually in March, this time around, it's going to be in April. And so there will be properties changing in category in April. And they tell us to expect roughly the same as in previous years, which is code for expect more properties to go up in category than down. And that will probably be the case. And there will be probably a significant number. I say significant. You know, there's usually, I don't know, a couple hundred at least properties that change in category. So we'll probably see that again this year. But then in future years, the idea is we should see. many fewer hotels changing in categories. So hopefully that'll make your free night

certificates a more predictable value. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. Hopefully. During off-peak times, I'm sure there's still going to be deals. I mean, your low end of the chart now drops a little bit.

So the cheapest off-peak properties today as we record this cost 3,500 points per night under the new award chart debuting in May of 2026. They'll drop to 3,000 points per night. And at those levels, you're still probably going to get some very good deals for Hyatt points at the cheaper end of the spectrum in terms of award pricing. And so when you need to travel somewhere and it is an off-peak season, but you need a hotel, I think Hyatt's going to still be a go-to in a lot of those types of cases because the low end of the chart is still usually going to present a good value versus cash prices, I bet. Now, we don't know, of course, today, it's hard to find those off-peak properties. I don't know that it's going to be easier all of a sudden. But when you do, you'll probably get a good deal. They're going to finally bring on point sharing.

That's going to, I say finally bring it on. They're finally going to bring it online. So point sharing has been just this antiquated process for years where you have to fill out a paper form. And for a long time, you had to fax it in. I think there's an email address. You can send it to these days. Yeah.

Yeah. But like who has a fax machine and you got to print it and sign it and blah? That's a really slow process. It often takes days. week, two weeks even it can. So it'll be online. That's good news. Now in the briefing, they were specifically asked about whether that'll be instant, whether, you know, for instance, a spouse could transfer points to their partner and book an award immediately. Maybe the, maybe my wife has global status. And so I want to transfer my points to her so we can book the award in her name right

away. And, you know, of course, you would want to be able to do that all instantly. Hyatt really waffled on the answer to that question and said, there's still work. working on all the technology. So I'm not confident that that's going to be instant. It's not instant with Hilton. It is relatively instant in my experience with Marriott. I'm going to guess it's not going to be instant. So we'll see. I hope they proved me wrong on that. They obviously weren't clear about it, but I didn't get the vibe that it was going to be an instant thing, which is disappointing because if it's digital, you would hope that it would happen quickly. There's going to be an expanded award booking window for elite members.

Now, this is a bright spot that would have probably gotten more of a highlight if they hadn't also launched the news about the award chart at the same time. So what they're doing here is they're adding an extra month for elite members at Explorist level or higher or credit card holders. So Explorists, globalists and credit card holders will be able, we'll get a booking window for properties a month sooner than everybody else should be able to book those. properties. And I think that can be a really useful benefit for someone who has the ability to plan far in advance, because those high demand peak property type places, the places that everybody wants to go to, you'll have first crack at getting those. And I think that's a nice incentive for members to reach for elite status or get the credit card. And it's a benefit that's meaningful to members, but it doesn't really cost high at anything. So I think it's a really smart move. I think

that it's going to be just lost in the shuffle here in terms of the value and importance of it, unfortunately. Totally. Yeah, you know, and I am, I will say I'm a little, I'm a little disappointed that they included all card holders in that as well. Yeah. And I, and I do wonder how many people are looking, let's say that the window is either, it's probably either 13 or 14 months out, one of the two, depending on how they change their window for everybody else. How many people are looking 13 or 14 months out at a Hyatt property that aren't globalist, explorist, or don't have one of the Hyatt credit cards. And now, I'm sure they exist. Don't get me wrong. But, like, I will be, I'll just be, I'll be really interested to see what that actually looks like in practice in terms of does it actually

mean that those high demand properties are going to have that sort of availability? We'll see. But it does seem like it's a broad net. Like, so the only people, you have to have no credit card, no elite status or somehow have earned discoverers without a credit card or and you're not going to go bet beyond discoverers, you know, like, well, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. You're only going to, the only people you're going to weed out are the hotel free agents, I guess, that, uh, they just have points maybe with built or with Chase Ultimate rewards that are transferring those into book and awards day now and then, but not very often because to your point, they would either have elite status or the card if they were. So you're right. It's not going to probably narrow the field that

much. So maybe it won't work out to be all that meaningful benefit. If they had limited that just to elite members or maybe tiered it and done globalists get first crack at it and then explorers and then card holders or then explorers and then card, whatever, they could have probably come up with a way to do that. But I think it's good to see this, though. I hope other programs follow suit in some sort of way and probably take that into consideration. I guess Hyatt's decided that people getting their credit card is as valuable to them as people, they come back and stay enough times for globalists and whether or not that's true or just a bad assumption. I don't know. Yeah, totally. Okay, well, so here we are. I'm feeling a little low at this point. I'm feeling like I've been roughed up a

little bit. I appreciate Hyatt's commitment to an award chart when that award chart can vary three times within a certain category, three times the amount of points from the lowest to the highest, and when there's 80 different possible prices for a standard room, it feels like the value of the award chart is pretty minimal at that point. And it feels also like most properties are probably going that we would look at as being desirable, that good value are going to take advantage of being able to live on the higher ends of these bands than the lower ends. So what do you think? Are you going to go take all of your high-up points and clear out a snow patch or clear out

the snow in the backyard and burn them? Are you still going to go for globalists? Are you going to, is this? I mean, because honestly, looking at the price increases, this feels like the potential to be one of the worst point evaluations that we've seen since maybe Hilton way back, know, 10 or 15 years ago and they did that massive huge evaluation. I mean, this feels significant. But what do you think?

Are you going to go for globalists? Are you going to keep your high at points? Are you going to, what are you doing with this? Well, I mean, right away, I started looking at places that I knew I might be interested in going to and where I might be able to work out a trip to where I expect that prices will increase because demand or cash prices in many cases dictate that the times when I would want to go, they're probably going to increase. And I did start making some bookings. I was hanging on to a stash of built points that I had gotten from the last racketon transfer. And I ended up transferring

them all to Hyatt today and using them to book some of those places. So I definitely was in like a burn sort of a mode to start out with, at least to grab a couple of the places that I've wanted to go to, but haven't yet and or that just fit into trips that I anticipate might go up. And that's not necessarily because I think I won't stay at height again. It's more so that I think I won't pay 75,000 points per night. So it's like, okay, go now or don't go because I'm not going to pay those increased award prices probably. So I did burn a bunch of them. Now, am I going to still go for globalist? I mean, I probably probably will this year. I say probably because I was already a little questionable on it, but I've had some more stays pop up where I probably will end up with enough,

I think. It's hard to say this early in the year, but I'll probably be globalist or close to it this year. In future years, I think that's going to be much harder ask, particularly if redemption rates at the places I really want to go to continue to rise so much. So it'll be less desirable to me as a program standpoint. I mean, great, I get free breakfast and free parking. But if I have to pay 60 or 70,000 high at points per night to stay at the place I want to stay at, breakfast and parking aren't worth that much to me. I'll go find a different chain or a different hotel altogether. I mean, especially if I were transferring from Hyatt, then we're talking about taking $6 or $700 worth of points,

points that they could cash out for at a penny apiece for like six or 700 bucks a night. I'm not willing to. Like you for transfer from Chase. Yeah, from ultimate rewards. And I'm just not willing to do that. It was already a stretch for me to consider 35 or 40,000 points per night at 60 or 70. this doesn't seem reasonable to me. Now, that said, I mean, I'm earning built points at a good

clip right now in our household with the Palladium card. And so those will continue to come in. And I still have ultimate rewards cards. So I'll still transfer to Hyatt when it makes sense. But I do expect that it'll make sense a little bit less than before. Now, Gary left of you from the wing, asked a good question about, you know, is Hyatt going to make more opportunities or create more opportunities for people to earn more meaningful numbers of points on paid stays or through promotions because essentially his point, I think, was the person who's long been loyal to Hyatt and has been earning X number of points every year so that they can stay at Y property that they really love. All of a sudden, if Y property costs two or three times as many points, what are you going to do to make sure

that that member is able to still stay at the place that they want to stay? Are you going to offer more points in some capacity, promotions, et cetera? And Hyatt, was very non-committal in their answer. It sounded like they're, they expect this award chart to create more opportunities because obviously it's going to create the opportunity for them to charge more points and get more points off the books. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see some more generous promotions from Hyatt. I don't expect that they're going to be commensurate with the price increases overall. I think it's still going to be really hard to earn the right number of points or the number of points that you want or you're going to be saving for a couple of years or something. And that's

less appealing to me. So I'm unenthusiastic overall. I, you know, the bright spots are bright. I think we'll probably still go after. In fact, maybe even more so than in the past go after the free night certificates. So I'd probably still keep the card and still spend for the annual additional free night certificate because two category one to four certificates, rather, will probably have good value. And I'm more confident now that some of our favorite category four properties are probably going to stick in category four now that they can charge far more points. And that's going to make me less excited about using points, but more excited about using the free night certificates. Upgrade awards on paid stays also aren't changing. So there'll be opportunities,

I think, to use 6,000 points tonight to upgrade to a standard suite when cash rates are reasonable. And I'll hop in when that type of thing happens. I doubt at this point I'll go after globalists actively in 2027. What about you? Are you, I mean, you're finally going to hang up, hang up your high at globalist status and move on to preferred hotels or what? Yeah. You know, that'll be good. To me, I want to wait and see what happens in 2007. And that's, this year I will probably still get globalist.

And I have so many higher points to burn that I would want them to be, I would want to have globalist next year. But I imagine, you know, just like, just like most programs that make these sorts of changes, they're going to make change and then you'll look at it right after the change and say, oh, well, these prices aren't so bad. What happens next year when there's a full year of people getting used to this and when properties can actually plan for the year to come? If indeed, we're seeing what appears to be the opportunity for many properties, many desirable properties to be increasing in price by 20 to 30 percent, that will certainly dampen my appetite for globalist going forward. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring and wild adventures.

Listen now at voyescape.com. If you love travel, you'll love winging it travel podcast. Every Monday I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures, and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voicecape.com.