Frequent Miler on the Air - Bright spots in Hyatt's 2023 devaluation (And 5 things Hyatt can do to get off the loyalty naughty list) | Ep192 | 3-4-23

Episode Date: March 4, 2023

Hyatt's 2023 category changes mark a devaluation in the eyes of many, but this week we talk about the good news to be gleaned from the latest list and how Hyatt can get back in our good graces in a more meaningful way. Join our email list: FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe 00:00 Intro 00:49 Giant Mailbag 1:45 Card Talk: Chase Ink Business Cash card https://frequentmiler.com/cic/ 12:37 Virgin Atlantic joins SkyTeam 18:40 What crazy thing . . . did Choice Privileges do this week? 22:00 Mattress running the numbers: Is Wyndham's new promo worth a mattress run? https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-promo-stay-3-consecutive-nights-earn-15k-points-2-nights-for-7500-points/ 28:38 Main Event: Bright spots in Hyatt's 2023 devaluation https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-category-changes-for-2023-not-a-pretty-sight/ https://frequentmiler.com/best-hyatt-category-1-4-hotels-resorts/ 58:48 Question of the Week: Will that bill in congress end credit card rewards as we know about it? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, bright spots in Hyatt's 2023 devaluation. Bright spots in the darkness, huh?

Bright spots in the darkness. huh? Bright spots in the darkness. And that's not all. We also will have five things Hyatt can do to get off the loyalty naughty list. You don't want to be there. And you got time, Hyatt. That's the good news. It's only March. You got time to get off the naughty list.

That's right. They do. They have time. And we've got some great suggestions for them to get off that naughty list. And so, of course, we'll get into those details when it comes time for the main event. First, we have the giant mailbag, which today is tremendously tiny because what we have is Piyush who commented on YouTube from last week's show. And he wrote my weekly dose of dope. That's it.

I just enjoyed that. My weekly dose of dope. That's it. I just enjoyed that. My weekly dose of dope. Well, I'm glad you enjoy it. I hope you mean dope like cool and not where you're drug. Although if we are your drug, hey, I mean, who am I to stop you? This is arguing for us to go daily because it would alliterate better if it was a daily dose of dope. The daily dose of dope would work.

There's just no way we can do that. So sorry, everyone. All right. Well, thank you very much for that one. So let's talk about cards today. Let's get into the card talk segment that we added last week. So this is a new segment for those of you who missed last week's episode where we're talking about some notable card. Because, hey, that's what we know a lot

about, right? So let's talk about a card. What card do we have up this week, Greg? This week, we're going to talk about the Inc. Business Cash Card from Chase. So Chase has a whole bunch of cards that earn ultimate rewards points, which are points transferable to airline and hotel partners. One notable transfer partner Chase has is Hyatt. So this is critically relevant today. And there's several things we want to talk about with the Inc. business cash card. One is that several of the Inc ink cards, or at least, well, two of the Chase ink cards are advertised as cash back cards. So the ink business cash and the ink business unlimited are advertised as cash back cards. And so even on our site, you're going to see that the offer, our site lists the offer as

right now, 90,000 points. That's a temporary offer. So we don't know how long that'll last um but if if you click through to the offer to chase's website it's going to say 900 is what the offer is for but i want 90 000 points craig i don't want 900 right right so it's very confusing because you have to dig way into chase's fine print to find the the place where it says that the dollars and cents are actually awarded as points as ultimate rewards points and and um so yeah so that's just kind of like a confusing thing that you have to get past that you really

do earn points with this card and as long as you have a card with an annual fee, like the Inc. Business Preferred or the Sapphire Preferred or the Sapphire Reserve card, you can move your Inc. Business Cash points to that card and then transfer to Hyatt or to an airline program. Because it's all ultimate rewards points. And certain cards have the ability to transfer ultimate rewards points to partners. But then some of the cards that they market as cash back cards only have the ability to redeem points at one cent per point. And so that's the deal here. So the ink cash card, if you only had that card, your only option would be to redeem points for one cent each, or you could redeem for gift cards and that sort of thing, but you couldn't transfer to partners. So having a card that enables transfers to partners

unlocks incredible value because you can combine the points and it's super easy. You can do it online. You can combine points between your own cards. You can combine points with one other person in your household or a co-business owner, right? Yeah, I think you can with a co-business owner as well. Now the Ink Business Cash is, I'd say, the card that points enthusiasts need to get. Right? I mean, so if you're a points enthusiast and you don't have this card, it's probably, I would guess it's because you're hesitant to get a business card, not because you haven't wanted to get this card. So why is that? What makes this card so interesting for people who like to collect points?

Because, I mean, I think you're right. This is probably the ultimate, ultimate rewards card in the sense that anybody who has this card, this is the card where you earn most of your ultimate rewards points, right? It should be for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. So this card gives you, the reason we're all excited about it, it has five X categories. I mean, there's categories where it earns five points per dollar, which is great. But the Freedom card has that,000 of spend per card member year. So you can get a lot of 5X goodies from this Inc. business cash card. And there's nothing

stopping you from getting multiples. So you could actually get more than that. But what were you going to say, Nick? Well, I was going to say, so what are the 5X categories? Yeah. So the easy ones, the ones that everyone's going to look going to say, Nick? Well, I was going to say, so what are the 5X categories? Yeah. So the easy ones, the ones that everyone's going to look at and say, oh, yeah, I can earn some points that way, is any internet, cable TV, cell phone, all those kind of bills. If you put those bills on your, have it auto pay from your Inc. business cash card, you get 5X points. So right there, boom, everybody has that kind of spend. Nice and easy.

So there you go if you just want to keep things super easy. But if you're really into point collecting, you want to take it to the next step. And that's where the office supply category comes in. Nick, why are we excited about a card that gives you five points per dollar at office supply stores? Reams of paper and binders. That's not right. No, you're right. It's not it. So office supply stores carry a wide range of products like those reams of paper and binders, but you're probably not going to buy that one of those stores, you could essentially earn 5x on it by buying a gift card there.

But of course, the types of gift cards that appeal to most of us who collect points even more are the Visa and MasterCard gift cards. And those are particularly appealing because we frequently see office supply stores put those cards on sale with no activation fee. The activation fee is waived. Like for instance, this week, if I'm remembering correctly, as we record and publish this on Saturday the 4th, I believe Staples still has MasterCard gift cards on sale this week with no activation fee. You can buy up to eight per customer per day. So that means you can go in and you could buy $1,600 worth of MasterCard gift cards with no activation fee, earn 5x on all that spend,

and then turn around and do what you will with your MasterCard gift cards. You could pay regular bills or use them to buy your groceries or whatever other regular purchases. Some people find other ways to liquidate those and turn them back into money. So that's particularly appealing. And if you're listening to this on Sunday or Monday after that deal has ended, well, don't worry, you're still in on it because next week from March 6th to the 11th, 2023, they're going to have the Visa gift cards on sale with no activation fee. Again, that's at Staples, but Staples and OfficeMax frequently run these types of deals. So super easy to earn lots of points. If you were able to spend $25,000 a year that way, that's 125,000 ultimate rewards points per year with one of these cards.

So a lot of people have tricky ways of turning these Visa or MasterCard gift cards into basically money so you can turn around and pay your credit card bill. But a lot of people don't even go that far and just pay bills, uh, that can't, you know, uh, that wouldn't otherwise earn a multiple, right? So like paying your insurance bills or your healthcare bills, whatever it is, if you can pay with a credit card or a debit card, you can pay with these cards and, um, you're indirectly getting five points per dollar by doing that. So that's pretty special. When we had our first son, obviously the hospital bill was huge. It was massive.

And we paid that off using Visa gift cards. So we bought a 5X because why not? We can earn 5X on childbirth. So, I mean, hey, that's a good deal. It's helpful. So, yeah, it's a good opportunity for It's helpful. So yeah, it's a good opportunity for lots of things that you would ordinarily be spending money on anyway. Any kind of big bills you have that can be paid over multiple payments with these $200 cards can

certainly come in handy that way. So it's a great point generator, a card that if you're enthusiastic about earning rewards, you should probably have this one in your wallet. But Greg, it's a business card. Don't you have to have a business? Well, yes, you do have to have a business, but you'd be surprised how little is required to have a business. For example, maybe you're pondering becoming a writer and you're thinking of writing a novel or a blog. Those things can be, are legitimate businesses and you can actually sign up for a business credit card as a sole proprietor. That's a type of business if you don't want to do any work to create a business. And if you just use your own name as the business name, then there's no requirement to have like registered your business somewhere or anything like that. So

it's actually very easy. Pretty much anyone I've talked to, like, you know, there's something that they could look at and say, yeah, I guess that's a business. I've sold some stuff on eBay or I have a yard sale now and then, or Or I mean, a lot of people have rental property or rent out their place for Airbnb or drive for Uber or whatever. All those things are businesses. Right, right. And so there's lots of different opportunities there. And I think the blogging angle is potentially a really easy one for a lot of people to get into too, because I mean, really legitimately, you could spend a few minutes setting up a little bit of a blog and toss a couple of thoughts up there now and then, and you presumably have a business.

And so they're going to ask you how much revenue you earn. And you can just be honest how much you think you might earn, which might not be very much. That's acceptable for a lot of banks. So don't be discouraged and think, oh, well, I don't have a multimillion dollar business. I'm not going to get approved. That's not the case at all. Most businesses are small businesses and very frequently people get approved with really, really small businesses that don't have plans to make much money at all yet.

Right, right. They're going to be looking more at your your personal credit report to see whether you're you're credit worthy and worth approving for this card. So yeah, you know, if you're just dipping your toes in this as a time, and this is the card, I think, to get started with it. So yeah, and it's got, as we record this, it has the highest ever bonus, 90,000 points after, I think, 6K spend. We don't expect that'll last all that much longer that's

been around for I think a few months now and longer than that yeah it's been around a long time longer than I expected so so yeah great card everyone who's anyone in this game

has at least one of those cards I think it's safe to say right at least at least one of those cards, I think it's safe to say. Right. At least one. Okay, so that's card talk. I think that wraps that one up pretty nicely for people that are interested or maybe weren't familiar with why that card is so desirable. Let's talk about a different kind of talk. Let's talk about award talk. So, Greg, have you booked any interesting awards this week,

or is there any interesting award news that's come out this week? Yeah. So this isn't about me booking anything, but Virgin Atlantic joined Sky Team for real. Like so before they were kind of a they were partners with a number of Sky Team airlines. So they were close partners with Delta, Air France, KLM. And so they seem sort of SkyTeam-ish, but now they're actually part of SkyTeam, which means now they're also partnered with Korean Air, China Airlines, a number of others. And so what's happened, they've already put out an award chart for each of those new partners. And that award chart is in common across all those new, new partners. And it's, it's basically a, uh, distance based. So farther you fly, the more you

pay. Um, I had all these grand hopes that it would be heckalicious, but, um, I dug into it and it's not so tasty. So my hope, I had two hopes. One, as SyncStan with most of Virgin Atlantic's partners and their own flights, if you fly more than one segment, you pay separately for each segment flown. So the first thing I had hoped was maybe they got rid of that for the SkyTeam award chart, but no.

No dice there. It still adds up. Like I looked at a flight from LA to I think it was Korea, South Korea, and it had a segment that flew to Taiwan and then onward to South Korea. And no, you had to add up the two segments to get to that price that it showed. Bummer.

The other thing that I was really hopeful for, but it also, these things are tied together, is that it would be sort of like the, how they treat short distance Air France and KLM awards, which is with both of them, they measure the distance between your origin and destination, regardless of how many segments you fly to get there and what the route was to get there. And so like, if you're flying Air France, for example, you're always going to go through Paris to the other place. So let's say you're going from, I don't know, Vienna to Madrid. The is the direct distance between Madrid and Vienna.

And that wasn't a good example because that's not a great way of hacking it. But in some cases, the two cities will be fairly close together but far from Paris. So there's a lot of flying involved and you pay a very small amount because it's a distance-based award chart. Anyway, long way of saying there is some hackability in in that partner in air france and klm but um it's not looking very hackable with the new stuff so yeah the the award chart's better than the reward chart for delta but it's not um not so much not good better that it's like exciting no that's too bad that's too bad. That's too bad. Disappointing. Not shocking to me, but disappointing nonetheless.

Yeah. Especially with the frequency with which we see transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic. I'm not really surprised to see it. They don't have incredible sweet spots on the new award chart. They seem to pretty frequently give people opportunities to top up their account with a lot of miles. And obviously, they were willing to decimate the award chart for Delta flights a few years ago. And I think it had to have been in response to the pushback that they walked it back on flights to and from Europe. But I think they otherwise had there not been as much pushback, I think they

would have devalued those quite strongly as well. So I don't think they really have a lot of intention to maintain great sweet spots forever. But as far as we know, the ANA sweet spot still exists, right? Yeah, it's still still there on the website. So hopefully it'll last long term. But, you know, I'd say, you know, get in while you can, if, if, and of course, Nick's talking about the ability to fly ANA first-class from the United States to Japan for, um, only either 55,000 from the U S West coast or 60,000 from the East coast, um, to Japan and first-class, which is just an unbelievable deal. It is, It is. And everybody's talked about that for years and years about what an incredible deal it is. It used to be that you had to book

it round trip, but they got rid of that and started allowing one way redemptions during the pandemic at some point. And so I think everybody has figured every single year that that one's probably going to go away this year. And it hasn't, which has been great. Yeah, but I think we're getting closer. So I would be more nervous now than before with them fully joining Sky Team and creating those award charts that aren't nearly as good. There's only so long they're going to keep that incredible sweet spot going, I think. But so, you know, get it while you can. All right. So Virgin Atlantic, join Sky Team.

You have at least some other opportunities, opportunities maybe or options for booking awards now. And the nice thing that you didn't mention, I don't think, is that these are bookable for the most part online, right? You can book all the different Sky Team partners online. That's really surprising. Yeah. Most of them are bookable online that they rolled this out, you know, day one of joining Sky Team officially. So really good of Virgin Atlantic to do that. Yeah. And that'll make it a little bit easier for those who are looking to find awards, even that might be bookable through other programs. This will help you figure out which flights should be available if you're not using a tool like PointMe or AwardLogic or that sort of thing. So hopefully that'll be helpful for you. Okay. So speaking of helpful, let's talk about what crazy thing did choice privileges do this week. So choice privileges, we talk about them now and then. And there's sort of like a dark horse darling, I would say in Greg's world. They're like the choice choice is the program that most people

kind of ignore, I think, when it comes to hotel programs or many people do. But you found lots of great sweet spots over the last couple of years. And and so choices got an interesting place on this show. But this week, this week, it's crazy because they sent an email and I'm looking at the email right now. And so the email says, welcome to mobile check in. I was like, oh, this is awesome. Mobile check in for Choice Prologis properties. That's great.

They're moving into 2023. Exciting stuff. Introducing mobile check-in. It tells us now that you've booked, download the Choice Hotels app to check in up to two days before your stay and save time when you arrive. Let us know when you're planning to arrive and we'll send a confirmation when your room is ready. But here's how it works. You download the app and you turn on the push notifications. You check in up to two days before arrival. You get notified when your room is ready. And then step number four is you stop by the front desk to pick up your key, which I'm not really sure what the other three steps are really there.

I mean, I am sure. I'm sure that it helps them figure out which rooms to clean and prepare sooner. So it's helpful for the property, which, hey, that's great. I'm all about organization, and that's awesome. But I felt very silly to be welcomed to mobile check-in when I got to the last step and I was like, oh, wait, the last step is I still have to go get my key. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, sadly, this is not unusual. I mean, I'd say most hotels do that as well, not just Choice. And, you know, some of them, yeah, will let let you just have a mobile key. So you don't have to stop by the front desk and you could just go right to your room. But even, even the mobile

key ones, like I, one time at a Hilton, I, I like did the mobile key and then it said, it said, great, your mobile key will be ready as soon as you go to the front desk and show your ID. Right, right, right. It's like, well, what was the point of having a mobile key? I mean, I guess, cause you're always going to have your phone with you. And how often do you lose the key to your room? I mean, it happens to me quite a bit anyway. Uh, so I, you know, I guess that it's got some benefit that way, but it's just the whole idea of like, it's saving time. It's not really doing that, but yeah, it's, it's great when you lose your key or forget it in the room, which I did at the Park Hyatt in Auckland.

So I was like, oh, wait, I think there's a mobile key. So I pulled it up and boom, got right in the room. Yeah, that's nice. But choice, no mobile key from choice. They're not doing that. You still have to stop by the desk and get an actual physical key. But like you said, that's not terribly uncommon. I think what disappointed me here was I got excited when I saw it because choice properties

are sometimes very cheap. And of course, people frequently ask, well, what happens if you book a hotel and you check in with the mobile check-in? Will you still get elite credit or trigger different promotions and things? We always tell people, you have no idea because sometimes you'll still have to stop by the front desk. And if you don't, then you may get marked a no-show and not get credit for the stay. And so I did get excited, though, because I was like, oh, mobile check in with choice. I bet that,

you know, that'll just sell right through and I won't even have to worry about stopping at the desk and nobody's going to care, except you still have to stop at the front desk. So no, no dice there. Yeah. Well, all right. Well, that brings us, I think, next to so after a crazy thing, we got to talk about what is it? Mattress running the numbers. this week's mattress running the numbers is another hotel thing of course since this mattress running the numbers but not choice the other dark horse darling of frequent miler on the air windham rewards what's up with windham rewards you know we love our windham vacasa vacation rentals which are 15 000 points per bedroom per night. So getting 15,000 points can be really valuable. And so Wyndham is out with a promo to help us do just that.

So Wyndham's latest promo is if you stay three nights, you get 15,000 points. Now to throw in a little sweetener. Let me back up though and say it's three consecutive nights. So it's a three night stay. Or you could do a two night stay and get half that seven and a half thousand points, but a sweetener for cardholders. So if you're a Wyndham cardholder, you get 5,000 bonus points on that first stay that qualifies for the promo. And so let's say you're a cardholder, 20,000 points for a three-night stay.

It's not bad. What do you think, Nick? Is that mattress run worthy? So let's be clear. If you need a three-night stay, then it seems like a great return, probably, depending on, obviously, of course, the cost. But when you ask, is it mattress run worthy? Of course, what we mean when we say that is, is it worth booking a hotel where you don't even intend to stay? You're just going to show up to check in and get your key since you can't do it mobile check-in style. You have to show up and get your key and mess up the sheets or something so that you can collect the points, even if you don't want to stay there. And so is it mattress run worthy? Well, it's not a clear yes, but nor is it a clear no, because some Wyndham properties are really

cheap. And I think it's just going to depend on how cheap of a property you can find. Now, the Wyndham Rewards Program does have a minimum, a nightly minimum of $25 a night for it to be a qualifying stay. That's not specific to this promotion. That is a general base requirement of the Wyndham Rewards Program. In order to earn any rewards from a stay, the nightly rate has to be $25 before tax. Now, these days with the way hotel prices are, I don't think you're going to find anything any less than that anyway. So it's probably not a huge barrier. But if you found some super cheap Wyndham property overseas somewhere, keep that much in mind. But anyway, if you found a really cheap one,

like say $40 a night, then maybe this is worth it because three nights of that, if you were to pay about $120 for 20,000 points, that seems like a potentially really good deal, especially because earning the 20,000 points is predicated on you being a business or a cardholder, right? So if you're a cardholder, does the 10% discount apply to all cardholders or is it just business cardholders? All cardholders. That's partner cardholders. There were old Wyndham cards that didn't apply to, but all current cardholders should have

it. So then a one-bedroom Vacasa rental ordinarily costs 15,000 points. The Vacasa vacation rentals, which is like an Airbnb competitor, Vacasa is just vacation rentals like that. They cost 15,000 points per bedroom per night. So you can get a one bedroom house cabin in some cases for 15,000 points. But if you're a Wyndham earner cardholder, you get a 10% discount. So you only pay 13,500 points per night. So if you're able to earn 20,000 points from a three night stay, that can cover basically like one and a half almost nights of a one-bedroom vacation rental. That probably is worth way more than $120, let's say. You're going to have to figure out where that break-even point is where this makes sense.

And keep in mind that Wyndham puts their points on sale a couple times a year for a little bit less than one cent per point. So I wouldn't want to be paying like more than a cent per point here. So if it's going to cost you any more than $200 to book this three nights day that I wouldn't bother with it, it'd probably have to be pretty significantly less, or I'd have to have a really near term use of the points to consider spending anywhere near that much. But if you can get it for, I don't know, 100, 150 bucks for three nights, like under $150, I think I might mattress run that. Yeah, I agree. I think that's mattress run worthy. And let me throw in a little bonus for anyone traveling overseas. There's another promo that's already been running even before this one, and that goes all the way until September. So past when this one ends, you have to book by May 14th and stay by May 9th, the one we started off

talking about. May 19th. May 19th, sorry. The other one is stay three nights in Europe, Africa, Eurasia, or the Middle East and earn 15,000 points. So, um, you should be able to trigger both of these promos with one three nights stay, just not in the Americas, uh, unfortunately, but, um, I mean, that's, that's pretty sweet. So someone, a card holder could, uh, you know, come out with what 35,000 points with a single three-night stay. That's pretty awesome. I mean, if you're going to be going to any of those areas between now and then,

then it's definitely, I think, worth looking for a mattress run opportunity. I'd probably go out of my way for 35,000 Wyndham points. I'd probably go out of my way looking for that. Now, I know there's a couple of people listening that are like, what, why? If you've got the Wyndham earner business card, you earn eight points per dollar at gas stations. And that's a good point. If you're any kind of a manufacturer spender, then this probably doesn't

really excite you much at all since you can earn eight points per dollar at gas stations with that Wyndham business card. However, for anybody who's just looking for easy points without a lot of effort or work, this seems like potentially a good deal. So again, it's really going to depend on how cheap you can find a hotel. And these days, I don't know how easy that is, because I mean, if you look to hotel prices lately, hello, they're just going through the roof. I don't know if that's the case in every like cheap Wyndham property that I've ever looked at before, because I haven't checked those lately, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's hard to find one that's worth mattress running. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

My impression is that, is that, uh, prices have gone through the roof in, um, vacation destination places. And, and I haven't seen that in, in like regular cities, like, you know, places other than like New York or LA that people do want a vacation to, um, you know, I, I think you might be able to find some good prices. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Very good.

All right. There you go. So maybe mattress run worthy. We're going to give it a kind of probably maybe depending on what you look for there. All right. That, my friends, I think brings us to this week's main event. Main event. It's about time.

Wow. That took us a long time to get there, didn't it? Yeah, it did. All right. Boy. All right. We're going to be talking about the bright spots in Hyatt's 2023 devaluation. So first we'll have to talk about what was this devaluation?

What are we talking about? And what we're talking about is every single year around this time, Hyatt recategorizes a lot of their hotels and what does that mean they have an award chart where uh the each hotel every single hotel that you could book with hyatt points is categorized um it's either one through eight or if it's an all-inclusive it's a through e and whatever it's categorized as that determines what its point price is for for your stays um so a category one hotel um would be the cheapest and during standard pricing would only cost 5 000 points a night and a category eight would cost 40 000 points per night so the others are in between, right?

And there's of course, off peak pricing and standard pricing and peak pricing in each of those. But yeah, the award chart tells you how many points to expect. And so you'll know based on which category a hotel belongs to, how many points per night you're going to have to spend to stay there. Yeah. So this year, so, so again, every year they sort of rebalance their portfolio and basically what they're doing is hotels that are very, very popular for, well, in general, not just for rewards, but are very popular. want to move up category because they have to pay when, when a hotel is something like 90% occupied world of Hyatt, the program has to pay the individual hotel. When someone stays on points, they have to pay the, the like average room rate that the rack rate, um, to that hotel. Whereas if it's less than 90% occupied, they pay like a tiny, tiny amount. So it costs World of Hyatt a lot more to provide free rooms at very popular hotels, even if they're not very overly expensive hotels.

It's still. So those are the ones that they're going to target to move up and up. And as we just talked about a little bit ago, hotels in resort, not just resort, in vacation destinations have been going through the roof price-wise. And so Hyatt has looked at all those hotels and bumped up all our favorites. Not all our favorites, a lot of our favorites. A lot of properties, which I mean, to be fair, makes some sense. Because like Greg said, prices have gone through the roof. So it's not as much as I don't like it. And we'll talk about the ouchies here and what we don't like. As much as I don't like it, I'm not shocked because, my goodness, if you've shopped hotel prices lately, they're going up. So I'm not shocked to see many of these popular properties go up, but ouch, the devaluation was pretty strong in

a lot of these cases, right? I mean, some of these properties are really increasing in price. Yeah. Yeah. So Hyatt has massively grown their all-inclusive portfolio in the last couple of years. And in one fell swoop, they massively increased the prices of those all-inclusives. 46 all-inclusives have gone up in price, or when I say have, will on March 28th of 2023 is when the category changes take effect. So book before then for anything that is going up, make sure to book before that time. 46 all-inclusives will be going up in price and some of them are going up a lot. I mean like double. So you have some popular properties going from standard being 25,000 points per night to standard being 50,000 points per night. That's insane. That's insane. Yeah. And is there a peak price on that category

of all-inclusive? So like, what is that? Yeah, I don't know what it is off the top of my head. Yeah. So I mean, yeah. So like the swing here could be really big between the old off-peak and the new peak could be even more than that, obviously. Oh, yeah. It would be, yeah. Yeah. So what an incredible, incredible price increase. Now, again, that's probably not out of line with the cost of some of these places these days. Exactly. Yeah. But it hurts nonetheless because these were great deals. And in fact, just a couple of days before

this, a day before this, I think, I was talking with my wife about some of the all-inclusives and I was saying, well, these are actually looking like really good deals now because with the cost of hotels, you're getting not only the hotel, but also the food for an amount of points that is really reasonable because you can't get a hotel for that cost and a desirable vacation destination, even if you were to cash the points out at one cent each in many cases anyway. So I was just talking about what a great value they are, and they're going to be not as good of a value anymore. Now, there was something you said in there that I wanted to point out that we should have probably led with at the beginning. So Hyatt is particularly customer-friendly when it comes to these types of category adjustments. So Greg

mentioned a few minutes ago that if you want to go to one of these properties, you want to book it before March 28th. And so here's how this works. When Hyatt announces this, they give us some heads up. So we found out this week and we know now that on March 28th, certain properties are going to go up in price and certain properties are going to go down in price. Now, if you already have an existing booking before March 28th at a property that's going to go up in price, they're not going to charge you more for it. They'll honor your reservation. So for instance, if you were to book one of those all-inclusives for 25,000 points per night now, and the price for that property goes up to 50,000 points per night at the end of this month, you're still going to be fine with your 25,000 points per night. You're going to lock that in if you book it and use your points for it

now. So that's great. Not only that, but if you book a property that's going down in price, and we'll talk some about that obviously here too, then Hyatt actually will automatically refund the point difference. So for instance, if you had a hotel booked for 30,000 points per night and it drops to a lower category, it's 25,000 points per night now, they're going to refund you the 5,000 points per night automatically when the categories change. So very customer-friendly as far as that goes. You're not going to lose out either way if you've got a property that's changing in category as long as you have it all set before everything changes. So, okay. 46 all-inclusive, some of them, wow, going up double. And that's, by the way, the double increase

is more than one category, right? Some of these are going up two categories or three categories or something. Two or three. Yeah. I don't remember the details, but they're going up a lot. I mean, they introduced this new A through E thing recently for the all-inclusives. And so I haven't internalized it yet. Right, right. Me either.

I think it's the first time we've seen some at the E or whatever. They should get Fs. Right, right. Me either. But I think it's the first time we've seen some at the E or whatever. They should get Fs. Right, right. Being so high. Well, I also think it's the first time I recall, and maybe I'm wrong, but certainly there aren't lots of other times sticking out where properties have gone up by three categories. I mean, two categories. I'm not even sure I can remember a Hyatt that went up by two categories. It's probably happened at some point, but it's so rare that it's not something we frequently see. One category changes usually all. It's much more common. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's still true. If you look at overall the properties that changed, most of them have just changed by one. Yeah. So that's still good. Right. We still have a list of ouchies to go before we get to the bright spots. So 28 properties have gone up from category six or seven to category eight. Ouchie.

So, wow, 28. So that might not sound like a lot if you don't have context around this, but Hyatt didn't used to have a Category 8 at all. And so when they introduced it, they just put a few in there, and now they're pumping more and more of our favorite hotels in there. And one of them, I just stayed just like a week or two ago at Carmel Highlands. And it was category seven. I used a category one through seven cert to stay. And the hotel is kind of great and not great at the same time. It has one of the best views in the world. So you get a room with a balcony overlooking the ocean. It's stunning. Incredible breakfast also looking out over the ocean. It could be a terrible tasting breakfast. You don't even know be paying category seven prices, let alone category eight prices, which is what it's going up to for a room like that. So anyway, that's just an example. So that's a bunch of going up to category eight. 26 properties are going up to category seven. So those are both a lot of properties going up to those high categories

16 properties went from either category 3 or category 4 to category 5 and the reason i'm pointing that out is because there's a number of ways of getting category 1 through 4 free night certificates and once those properties go to category five, you won't be able to use those certificates at those properties. So, um, that's a shame whenever we see any of our favorite ones go to category five, that it's a bummer. Right. Um, and last year we had a lot of this, a lot of our favorites went up to category five last year. This is just continuing that trend. Right.

And, you know, we've seen other competitors add the ability to top off a free night certificate with points to stay at a higher category property or a higher costing property. But Hyatt has not done that. And I think part of that is because they still have categories and the other chains don't. But there's no way to do that. So when these properties go up to category five, that's it. know, as a way of topping off. Okay. So let's see last ouchy just on average. So I took all the properties that were changing their standard point values and, and just averaged the changes and on average, the hotels in the Americas, so not just United States, but North and South America and Central, prices went up on average about 20%. So a lot of increase there. Now, do remember though that that does not mean that on average all hotels in the Americas went up by 20%. It's just the ones that changed in some way, where their category changed, those on Americas went up by 20%. It's just the ones that changed in some way,

where their category changed, those on average went up by 20%. So the average across the should be far less than that. And that hurts. And I said, ouch, as my initial reaction. But all right, let me play devil's advocate and put this in perspective a little bit. You have to also remember, though, that Hyatt has a really reasonable award chart compared to other programs that charge any amount of points. So when you look at Hyatt's award chart, the old top end anyway, the category seven was 30,000 points per night standard. So a 20% increase on that is 6,000 points per night. Now, obviously, any increase hurts. But when you look at that in terms of what we talked about, the cash earlier and earning five points per dollar at office supply stores.

And so that's what, twelve hundred dollars worth of Visa gift cards. You could knock that out in one stop next week and make up the difference for one night in that type of scenario. And if it's, of course, a property that was ten thousand points per night, then 20% means it went up to 12. And so while I don't like those increases, I think it's probably worth also recognizing that it's not impossible to make that up and it doesn't hurt as much as it would if the properties were charging 50 or 80,000 points per night like they are with other programs. Right, right. So let's turn it around now and talk about the bright spot. So that's a bright spot right there is that even though these numbers sound big, they're not like horrible in the big picture. But I want to go a step further and say, you know, most Hyatt hotels did not change categories. So there's good news in what didn't happen. You know, the vast majority of hotels did not change. So it's so easy to focus only on the bad news.

And, you know, so just keep that in mind. And because they have an award chart, you know, almost all the hotel bookings award prices are in some context reasonable. On average, so another another bright spot on average of the ones that changed outside of the Americas, prices went down around 5 percent, a little bit more than 5 percent, actually. But which, again, isn't going to be a huge number of points in most cases. It's a pretty negligible decrease. But hey, a decrease.

You know, you're traveling internationally. This means chances are you're going to be paying less after March 28th. So that's pretty good. Bright spots. 11 Category 8s went from Category 8 to 7. So there's 11 properties that previously were much, much more expensive and now have dropped. That are now within reach of a Category 1 to 7 free night certificate, which is a benefit that you get at what? How many nights do you need for the Category 1 to 7? 60 nights, I think.

60 nights. Is it 60? So at 60 nights, when you hit globalist status, you get the Category 1 to 7 free night certificate. So boom, that puts 11 properties into range for that certificate that weren't before. And typically all of those category seven and eight properties are pretty darn nice. So getting some new options is, is I think probably going to be a welcome thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's also, it's also notable just because the, the percentage difference between category 7 in the award pricing, 7 and 8, is pretty high. So it's a big drop when it goes from 8 to 7.

Good point. 33 properties went from Category 5 to 4. So we have 33 new properties where we could use our Category 1 through 4 certificates. And that's great. I've spent a lot of time going through the ones that are now category four that weren't before, or now, that will soon be category four. And there's some amazing looking properties. I was like kind of blown away by some of the things I saw. Like there was this one called the Spa Village Resort in Bali that it's all inclusive. The pictures look beautiful. All inclusive includes not just food, but massages too. So that you know, beyond that kind of sort of headline, wow, a whole bunch of new ones in the United Kingdom that just looked fantastic. I mean, you know, not free massage fantastic, but places that we're, uh, you know, very expensive as well. And we'll be able to use those category one through four certificates at these places. So I'm pretty psyched about that.

And, um, yeah, finally, I already mentioned that most, most Hyatt properties haven't changed. So that's, that's a bright spot right there. And it's, it's a really bright spot. That's worth a second highlight here because now with Marriott poised to completely take off the gloves and have no holds barred anymore in terms of what properties can charge for an award and Hilton having long done that and IHG might cost when you want to stay there. If you want to be there later this year and you're saving points now in order to get there, you have no idea how many points you need. You won't know until the day you're ready to book it and you discover that you have enough. Whereas with Hyatt, the nice thing here in the fact that, yeah, sure, lots of them haven't gone up in price, but that also means that for another year, you're going to know exactly how

many points you need because they're not going to stealthily take something out of one category and put it in another. That's not generally the way Hyatt does things. So you're going to have that sort of, I don't want to say guarantee, but more or less a guarantee, right, that something is going to be available from now until next March at the current prices. So I think that's really important. And I think it's notable for me because of course, this week, I wrote about how I've been staying at the higher Regency Grand Cypress and what a great stay I've had. And I've stayed here twice now and I love it and I'd like to come back and and it was not included in the category changes. So I was like, Oh, great. So now I know if I want to come back later this year or

early next year, I know exactly how many points per night it could potentially cost, I guess, anyway, at peak the most that I'm going to have to spend. So I know exactly how many points I need to save up if I want to save points up for it. So I think that's really valuable and notable and worth commending high at four and keeping in mind when we say there's some good news in here. A lot of places that I thought would go up. Didn't exactly, exactly. Uh, and that, that is great news. Um, and so, you know, we still, or I shouldn't talk for you, Nick, but I still love Hyatt. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. The, some of the specific properties that went up, it did hurt. Like, cause it's like, Oh no, now it's not gonna be worth spending my points or I'm not going to be able to use my free night certificates at that property anymore. So that did hurt.

But that doesn't change the fact that, you know, compared to all the other hotel chains, Hyatt is still the one to beat. So I haven't that hasn't changed in my mind at all i think one more ouchy that we didn't mention specifically but probably should have now it comes to mind is that there were a lot of category one properties going up to category two in the united states and uh and i didn't run the numbers so I can't tell you exactly how many it was off the top of my head, but it seemed like a large number of category ones becoming category twos. And that's a potential hit for people that want to mattress run nights in order to reach elite status. Because if you were hoping for those off-peak 3,500 point nights in order to hit elite status, well, unfortunately, if your property just went up to category two, you're not going to find those thirty five hundred point nights anymore. Now it's going to be eight

thousand point standard, I think sixty five hundred points off peak when it goes up. So that's a bummer. And in my personal circumstances, I'm a little excited because one in upstate New York has gone down to category one. So I finally have one. It's not close by, but at least it's close by friends. So we'll have a reason to go if it's thirty five hundred points a night. So, yeah, so I'm a little excited about that. But I I heard I saw another friend post that a whole bunch of them in Connecticut that were ones are going up to twos now. And so if you're in that kind of situation where all your local ones are going up to twos, that's a big bummer for the ability to mattress run nights for elite status. But again,

like we said before, the increase in price, the difference in prices less than it would be with other chains. So they're still manageable in terms of the number of points necessary, but okay. So, so we've both said, we still,

we still love you, Hyatt. We're not thrilled. There are particular places that I was disappointed to see that I'm like, man, I'm probably not ever going to stay there now, because, you know, certainly not while they're charging 40,000 points a night or 45,000 peak or whatever. But but overall, we're still mostly enamored with Hyatt. But all right, they're on the naughty list for a lot of people. I'm sure there are a lot of people that are yelling at me for saying that I'm not as angry at Hyatt as they are. And so I think it's fair to say that Hyatt's on the naughty list not to put the ability, if they add the

ability to top off certs like IHG has done, like Marriott has done, so that you could use a category one through four, for example, at a category five property by throwing in some points, that would be a really, really nice addition. Are you listening, Hyatt? Let's hope they do. Are you listening, Hyatt? Are you listening? Because that would be, I mean, like that would probably, frankly, that would probably wipe them off the naughty list for all of the people that are upset, right? Because I think a lot of people, obviously, you're going to be upset that some of your favorite properties have gone up.

But I think that would be significant enough that a lot of people would be like, okay, Hyatt, you're back in our good graces. It would go a really long way, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It would go a really long way, especially all the people who say, oh, it's no longer worth having the Hyatt credit card, which comes with the annual free night and another one when you spend $15,000. If you had a way to actually use those for the hotel that you have in mind, even if it means throwing in points, yeah, then it'll become valuable again to have that card. So, yeah, absolutely. All right. Next one I have on my list is not about point prices at all.

This is about the fact that most many Hyatts have closed their lounges and don't plan to reopen them. And so Hyatt has all these ways of getting free access to their club lounges. So they have these milestone rewards where you get these certificates. And those things are useless at most Hyat's these days. So I've got an easy fix for you, Hyatt. Allow a person to take one of those certificates and get free breakfast during their stay instead of lounge access if there's no lounge. That would be awesome. And it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, come on. They have, like you said, they've closed these lounges in so many places. It's a ridiculous benefit at this point, unless you do that. And so it seems like such an

easy fix. And it's not that expensive of a fix because each person is going to get two of them, right? So you're talking about breakfast on Tuesdays when they hit 20 nights and two more when they hit 30 nights. So we're not talking about breakfast every time they stay, if they stay a million times. So until they hit their 60 nights anyway for globalist status, which willing to give them anyway. So, yeah, I can't imagine that the compensation for breakfast is that much more than the compensation for club lounge access, is it? I mean, I don't know what properties get, so I have no idea how they do that. Just make it happen. Make it happen. Make it happen. Make it happen. That's something they should have done a while ago. And now it's just so much more important. Agreed. All right. Next, next thing you should

do, Hyatt, allow us to apply our suite upgrades when we use a free night certificate. So currently if you use that one of those category one through 4s or 1 through 7s, you can't also use your suite upgrade certificate. And it guest of honor with free night certificates. So right now, a globalist, a top-tier elite, can book with points a guest of honor stay for a friend or relative. And that means that that friend or relative will, for their stay, will get all the benefits of being globalist. But you can't apply a suite upgrade for them with a suite upgrade certificate. So that would be a... I'm sorry, you can't use your free night certificates as a way of booking their stay. Right. You also can't use a suite upgrade award on a guest of honor stay, I believe. So if you're not going to let us use suite upgrade awards on the free night certificates, why not let them be guest of honorable?

I mean, so if you're not going to change that, which I wish you would. At least do one or the other. Yeah, at least do one or the other. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Okay. Now the most obvious of all, but probably impacts the fewest people because I don't know how many people get to 60 nights, but is change the category one through seven free night certificate to a one through eight.

I mean, it was originally created when there were only seven categories. So it was originally a, you know, stay anywhere free night certificate. Make it that again, please. I get it. If you want to exempt those all inclusives, although I'd prefer if you allow those two, but at least make it a category one through eight. I totally agree. I think this is silly. I think it's silly because the whole idea of this benefit is to like thank or incentivize people for spending the 60 nights. And so these are your best customers in general, your most valuable customers. So the whole idea was to give them a valuable stay,

a stay that they could use at just about anywhere. How confusing is it? And silly is it to say, hey, you're one of our best customers. Now you can stay at most of our properties, but not all of them. Don't get crazy on us. No, you can't have the park Hyatt Beaver Creek, but we'll give you a different Park Hyatt somewhere else maybe. It just seems silly. So come on, Hyatt. Make it a one-day. Yeah, yeah. All right.

Then finally, all these free night certificates, well, a lot of them expire too soon. They don't give you a full year to use your free night certificates from when you get them. They give you what, six months, I think. Yeah. For a lot of them. I've lost track of which ones have how long they take. But most other hotel chains, I can't think of any others that give you like a six month eligible free night certificate. Just make them valid for a year.

I'm not even asking you to allow us to extend them beyond a year just make them actually last a year so we actually have time to use these things yeah that's all right so you don't have to keep track of the different like dates and things it's just it's so i don't know it's bizarre to me uh when you have them with a different point because it also disincentivizes you to some extent to hit the milestones in some cases because you're like oh, I really want to be able to use that during Christmas time. So I can't hit it before June or whatever. So I can't stay at a high because I don't want to earn that yet. And it just, again, it doesn't, it's nonsensical to me. 12 months gives you the chance to use it, whichever season of the year you want to use it for. So, uh, so make them 12 months. I totally agree. Those are definitely things that I would love

to see Hyatt do. Now, do you actually think that they will do any of them? I'm going to give you a chance to make a new prediction. I know you already did your 2023 predictions back in January. I'm going to give you another swing out of here. Cause I know at least one or two of your predictions went haywire, like within the first couple of weeks. Right. So I'm gonna give you another chance here, Greg, do you have have a prediction do you think any of those will come true this year i my my bet is they won't but i i so want them to that that i want to wait let me turn that around if you could only pick one for them to do which one would you pick i think the one that would be most useful for the largest number of people.

You know what? I'm going to take that back. I was going to say the points top off, but I'm going to pull that back. I'm going to say make the club lounge certificate. It's good for free breakfast because you only need 20 nights in order to earn one of those. It would be a more powerful incentive because you'd be able to use them then potentially at any property rather than only ones with club lounges. And these days you can't find one with a club lounge that's open. So yeah, I think actually that's the one I would pick if I had to pick one of them. Tight race though, because top off of free night certificates would be wildly popular, I think. I totally agree. And my guess is that the lounge shirts for free breakfast is the most likely to actually happen of all these. Not because it's necessarily easy. I mean, Hyatt has to recognize that and hopefully they'll do something about it because how that can incentivize people, I do not know.

Agreed, agreed. It's such a silly non-incentive right now. So clean that up, Hyatt. Figure out a way to handle that or give us some other milestone benefit. I mean, even if they pulled it back to one and said, okay, you get free breakfast on one stay. I mean, we would grumble about that

and about how that's a devaluation. So don't get me wrong, Hayek. You're not going to get a pass if that's what you do, but that would be better than two things you can't use at all. That's right. Right. All right.

Well, I think that wraps that up. And that brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week is one that we've gotten a bunch of times lately, but I don't think we've addressed on the show. And so I feel like it's time that we address this on the show. It came in today as we record this via Instagram. But we've gotten this question over and over again via email. And so I'm going to kind of generalize it. There is a bill in Congress, and the gist of it, from what I understand, is that it would limit the interchange fees such that rewards wouldn't be financially feasible. Rewards credit cards wouldn't be financially feasible because banks wouldn't be able to collect the exchange fees that they do right now that enables this whole game to work. So, Greg, how is this going to affect our rewards credit cards? Is this all going to grind to a halt? Are we going to all be out of business and have no more rewards cards this time next

year? What do you think? I haven't actually asked you your opinion about this. I have an opinion, but I don't know if I've actually asked you what you think. I mean, do you know something's going to come of this? And are you scared? So my my my opinion about it is that it's not going to happen. And that the reason it's not going to happen is that too many people and too many businesses,

too much money is vested in the current state of affairs. That first of all, congressmen love their points like we do. They don't want that to change. But big business. There's big business in selling airline miles and points and all this stuff that's going on. In the credit cards, obviously, it's big business. And there's very few people that want that to change. So I just don't think that whatever that bill is,

I haven't looked into it in detail, but I don't think that'll pass. So that's my optimistic opinion. Yeah. I mean, I think it just seems so unlikely, right? Because we know that many major airlines earn more money selling their miles to banks than they do selling airline tickets. So like American Airlines has been reported widely numerous times that they make more money selling their miles than they do selling plane tickets. So if all of a sudden the ability to sell their miles got taken away, then all of a sudden American would no longer be a profitable company, at least as they're run now. right? At least that's my understanding of things. And I can't imagine that Americans are not going to throw around their influence

and make sure that they don't suddenly become a company that's impossible to earn a profit, especially when they earn so much money from their loyalty program. And obviously they're not the only player. Like you said, there's the banks, there's all the different people involved in their reward schemes. And then, of course, the businesses that want people to be able to use their cards and, and be excited about using their cards because they spend more money when they're using their cards. Right. So there's just so much financial gain out there from this that I just can't see, uh, those players not throwing around their weight and making sure that that doesn't

happen. Uh, so I, I see, I see it being very, very unlikely. Right. And let me also say, what if it did happen? Yeah, the game as we know it today would change a lot, but a game or multiple games will go on because there are always marketing people who come up with great ideas that may or may not have anything to do with credit card spend and credit card rewards. Like, for example, hey, let's get more big gamblers going on our cruises. So let's give away free cruises to gamblers. That's a type

of thing that marketing people figure out and are often very successful. But if you as a consumer play that game right, you get big rewards. And that's all we're doing. We're playing the game within the rules that are there today with credit card rewards. If those rules change, you know, there will be new games. There will be other games that we can play and we'll go on to the next thing. I mean, and we already do, right? With shopping portals and, you know, Simply Miles and card linked offers and everything. We talk about lots of other pieces of the game that aren't related to cards at all.

I mean, I'm sure that there have been shows before we haven't mentioned a credit card, probably the entire show, because there are lots of other things involved in this game. So that's a great point that the game itself won't wouldn't die anyway. It would just change. But I think moral of the story is neither one of us is nervous that this is going to happen. I don't think either one of us thinks it's likely to happen. And then if it did, we're not nervous about it anyway because something else will take its place because America still has to sell those miles.

So they're going to have to come up with a way, whether that's simply miles for the shopping portal or whatever it ends up being. Exactly, exactly. All right. Well, that, my friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode and you'd like to get more of this in your inbox each day or each week, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com

slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social medias. We're on Instagram and Facebook. You can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group so you can ask and answer questions with lots of other readers and people who are involved in the blog. And then, of course, if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for our giant mailbag, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequent miler dot com. Bye, everybody.