Frequent Miler on the Air - Can I save points on a Hyatt award with a date change trick? | Question of the Week Ep2 | 5-4-26

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyscape.com. This week's question of the week comes in from Matt. Let's move into this week's frequent myler question of the week. Matt writes, I recently succeeded in changing a Hyatt Award's Day to avoid canceling and forfeiting the Hyatt points. Side note from us here. So what we've mentioned before on the show is sometimes if you're within the cancellation

Starting point is 00:00:39 penalty window, like let's say a hotel has a 48-hour cancellation window and you're less than 48 hours in advance. If you cancel, you might lose your points or get charged a cash rate. However, sometimes it works to just change that reservation to some future time more than 48 hours from now and then cancel and you'll get the free cancellation. It doesn't always work universally everywhere, but it just worked for us. plenty of times before. So Matt was referring to that trick of changing first and then canceling in order to get the benefit of free cancellation. So Matt continues and says, I'm wondering if that

Starting point is 00:01:16 could be a strategy to leap past the upcoming changes to the World of Hyatt program. For example, I'd create a reservation using points at a Hyatt property now and change the date later for a stay that's not currently bookable because it's more than 13 months away. So for instance, Matt is saying maybe books a reservation for 10 months from now and then waits and later on changes it to like a date that's 18 months from now once that those booking dates open up. So Matt says, does anyone successfully use this strategy in previous years when category changes were announced, avoiding the need to make up a point difference due to the associated program changes at that time? I understand that this is highly prospective and perhaps wishful thinking, but it could mean a sizable savings in Hyatt points. So what do you think, Greg? Would it work to book a hotel now under the current pricing and just change the dates later?

Starting point is 00:02:08 Right. And that's writing this because on May 20th, Hyatt is going to do two things. One, their annual category changes are going to take effect where a lot of hotels will be going up a category and therefore be priced higher or be priced out of range of your free night certificates. But much worse is that they are changing their point pricing, their award charts. They're going from sort of three tiers for each category to five tiers for each category. And the point prices, when you try to match up the old and new categories, the point prices are significantly higher in almost all cases than they were before. So what Matt's thinking, it's a smart idea.

Starting point is 00:02:53 Like, could we just book now? So, you know, I thought about this with the Hyatt Ventana in Big Sur. I really enjoy staying there. Could I book it now for whatever dates available at the current pricing? And then once I know when I really want to stay there, just change the date without paying more. And unfortunately, the answer is no. It's really that simple. Hyatt does not let you do that.

Starting point is 00:03:23 Now, any changes to a reservation later on will cause the reservation to reprice. So if you went to change the dates later on, you would have to be. pay whatever the price is at that point in time. I ran into this a couple of years ago when I didn't even realize that a hotel I had booked had changed in categories. I had booked it before the annual category changes, which historically have happened in March. And then later on, I went to apply a suite upgrade award because the suite was available and I had a sweet upgrade award in my account. And I called Hyatt to apply that suite upgrade award. And the agent couldn't get the suite upgrade award to work. The system wouldn't take it. And eventually, after being on hold for a while and escalating to

Starting point is 00:04:02 a supervisor, we figured out what had happened. Because the hotel had moved up in category and was now charging more points per night, it was trying to reprice and charge additional points for the standard room in order to apply the suite upgrade. So even just that change, I wasn't changing dates. Just applying the suite upgrade award wouldn't work without repricing. Now, in that case, I made my case with Hyatt. And what they ended up doing was just adding the points to my account in order to essentially kind of cancel and rebook or make the change and pay the higher price, which whether or not they'd do that every time, I don't know. And I doubt that they would help you with that for a date change. For a date change, they're almost surely going to tell you, no, the price is the price now.

Starting point is 00:04:47 So, so moral of the story here is, no, changing an award's going to change the price. So you're only going to be able to book out as far as the schedule allows. I also want to mention that there may be some people out there who are aware of this. Matt also had written about this separately. So it's possible if you have global status with Hyatt to book an award stay, even if you don't have the points in your account. So let's say I want to book an award stay for December of this year that would cost 50,000 points, but I don't have 50,000 points in my account right now. I can call Hyatt and I can book that award stay in the future. And I don't, even though I don't have the points now and the rule is that I need to have the points to cover it in my account seven days before this day. However, that does not lock in the price. If the property changes in price, I will be on the hook for whatever the new price is after the category changes happen. So if I want to pay the 50,000 points for that reservation, I need to make sure I transfer in the points to Hyatt and I call them and pay for that reservation before the category changes happen.

Starting point is 00:05:53 So if you have one of those sort of points advance type reservations where you booked even though you didn't have the points yet, remember you do want to kind of like sort of do the hotel equivalent of ticketing those awards before the category changes happen to avoid an increase in price. If you've enjoyed today's episode and you want more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, you can go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions about this stuff anytime. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget again to give us a like or a thumbs up, leave us a review, leave us your comments. Speaking of your comments, if you have a comment that you'd like to be considered for a future giant mailbag or a question that you'd like to be considered for a question of the week, you can send those to. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com.

Starting point is 00:06:46 If you love travel but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel Inten, and in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world. We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, and what actually matters when you're planning out a truck. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway. So if you want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for Travelin10 wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at voyescape.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel hosted the Travel Tales podcast, and I'm a stand-up comedian

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Frequent Miler on the Air - Can I save points on a Hyatt award with a date change trick? | Question of the Week Ep2 | 5-4-26

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