Frequent Miler on the Air - Hyatt's partnership with AA: Deepened or Devalued? | Coffee Break Ep29 | 10-15-24

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Recently news broke that Hyatt and American Airlines plan to change their partnership with each other. Was the partnership "deepened" like we suggested when we wrote this post, or was it "devalued" like our readers thought in the comments? (Or is it somehow both?) (00:41) -  Read our post "Hyatt & American Airlines deepen partnership, add more reciprocal earning opportunities" here. (02:49) - What is the current Hyatt / AA relationship like? (Until 12/31/24) (03:39) - New AA benefits for Hyatt elites... (08:33) - Comparing Old vs New (13:27) - Stephen's thoughts (14:21) - Nick's thoughts (16:57) - Greg't thoughts Visit 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 – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Here we go. This is not your typical Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling Coffee Break. Each Coffee Break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy. Today's coffee break, Hyatt's partnership with American Airlines deepened or devalued. Recently, news broke that Hyatt and American Airlines plan to change up their partnership with each other. And we posted with a title saying, Hyatt and American Airlines

deepen partnership, add more reciprocal earning opportunities. That was the title of our post on the blog. But our readers had a different take on it. Didn't think it was so much deepened as devalued. I'm going to talk through a few of the reader comments. So first, Gene says, deepen? You mean weaken? This arrangement has been nuked. AA status is useless. And all these seed awards and low level Hyatt statuses are a joke. Thank goodness Hyatt Globalist isn't useless yet. But that wasn't all. Such chimed in. This is the only blog describing this change as deepening. The changes to the partnership are strictly worse than what exists now. And the fact that you support it reveals you to be a paid advertiser for corporations. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We

don't do that. There are no posts on Frequent Miler that are like sponsored posts. You don't see any of that. So we do get information occasionally from some programs that choose to share it with us ahead of time. Usually not very far ahead of time, like we're talking hours or a day or something, maybe at best. So we have a chance to ask questions that might be beneficial to readers. But no, there is no sort of a paid sponsored post kind of a thing going on on this or anything else. No, definitely not. But readers were still unhappy of Veritas chimed in. If you are excited about these pathetic changes, you have fallen prey to the garbage talking points from AA and Hyatt. No way to sugarcoat it. The partnership is dead and consumers got punished. So we're going to debate, was Stephen Pepper, who wrote

the post, right when he described the overall thing as deepened? Or are readers right that it's totally devalued, the partnership between AA and Hyatt? Let's first get into what are the details of this whole thing? What was the partnership before? What is the new one? Then we'll get into the debate. All right. That sounds good. So why don't you walk us through what the current partnership is like between Hyatt and American Airlines, current as of through the end of 2024? Yeah. So for now, what we have are Hyatt elites earn one Hyatt point per dollar on AA flights. So that's in addition to any AA miles they earn. So, and dual elites. So if you have, you know, elite status in both programs,

you also earn one American Airlines mile per dollar spent on Hyatt nights. So basically people who have elite status in these programs are getting earning points in both programs, whether they're spending on Hyatt or American Airlines. Yeah. And so that's going to change in 2025. So that arrangement will end on December 31st of 2024, starting in 2025. We've got some new American Airlines benefits for Hyatt elites. So there's going to be new Hyatt milestone rewards.

The milestone rewards are the rewards that you pick once you reach 20 nights, 30 nights, 40 nights, et cetera, with, and I'm talking elite nights with Hyatt. So at 20 and 30 elite nights, you're going to have the option to choose two preferred seat coupons for American Airlines flights. So it'll be another choice, like your current choices, which are a 2k next stay that i think you have to stay at a caption or hyatt place or something like that to get that or you could choose two club access awards or a 25 find experience credit this is just another option at 20 and 30 nights you can pick two preferred seat coupons at 40 and 50 elite nights with hyatt you'll be able to choose two main cabin extra seat coupons for American Airlines flights. And so again, this is another choice option at 40 or 50 nights, whereas you could otherwise

choose a suite upgrade award or suite upgrade award each of those levels if you wanted, or I think 5,000 points or $150 fine experience credit. So main cabin extra instead of those other things may or may not be worth it to you. But that's your option. That's the added choice there. Then at 70, 80 and 90 elite nights with Hyatt. So remember, 60 gets you global status. So these are beyond global status. 70, 80, 90 elite nights with Hyatt. So if you keep staying at Hyatt throughout the course of the year, at each of those 10 night increments,

one of your options will be to choose American Airlines gold status, which will be valid for the full status membership year. And so you could pick that in lieu of your current options, which are 10,000 Hyatt points or a suite upgrade award or a $300 find experience credit. So when you hit those 70, 80, 90 elite night thresholds, you could pick AA Gold or one of those other things. Then at 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, and 150 knights, so every 10 nights between 100 and 150, you'd have the option to choose American Airlines Platinum status valid for the full membership year, which again, you would be choosing instead of those same choice benefits, the 10,000 points, the Sweet Upgrade Award, or you can get a Miraf All Extra Knight at those levels of

Elite Knights with Hyatt. So those are the new options for Hyatt Elite members. Now, you also get some new ways to redeem Hyatt points. If you have Explorist status or higher, Explorist or Globalist with Hyatt, you have the option to spend 5,000 Hyatt points to have advantage gold status for the day, 8,000 Hyatt points to have advantage platinum status for the day, or 12,000 Hyatt points for advantage platinum pro status for a day. And I believe those are giftable, right? Yeah, that's what Hyatt tells us. So I think that's a pretty cool feature of those. So you could potentially gift that to somebody else for their trip, at least as we understand it. Milestone rewards are also giftable, by the way. So all those things that you talked about earlier are also giftable.

So that to me makes this all a lot more interesting than if it was only the member earning it themselves that can use these things. Right. Because potentially at those elite night thresholds where you could get American Airlines gold or platinum status. I guess you can gift that to somebody else that may be able to take more advantage of it. Pun intended. All right. So those were the new ones on the Hyatt side. Now, the Hyatt benefits for American Airlines elites. There are some new Hyatt benefits. If you have elite status with American Airlines, I'm going to run through these kind of quickly because they, frankly, aren't very good. So you could redeem 25,000 American Airlines miles for a category one to four free night certificate with Hyatt. That's not a particularly good use of 25,000 miles in anyone's opinion,

I don't think. Or you could redeem 60,000 American Airlines miles for a category one to seven Hyatt free night certificate, which I mean, again, just not a particularly good value. You can fly business class to a lot of different regions of the world with that. So not a great value to trade that for a Category 1 to 7 certificate. But those are options anyway. Starting March 1st of 2025, if you hit 100,000 loyalty points with American Airlines, you could select Hyatt Discoverist status at 100,000 loyalty points, which is not much of anything, really. At 175,000 or

250,000 loyalty points, you could select Hyatt Explorer status, which is better than nothing, but not a lot better than nothing. Or then at 400,000, 550,000 or 750,000 loyalty points, you can select a category one to four Hyatt Freedate Certificate, which, but okay, I guess. You thought we were going to say Hyatt Globalist status, didn't you? But no, you did. There's no way to get that. No. Yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy. Or you can, if you earn a million, 3 million, 5 million loyalty points, you can select a Hyatt category one to seven free night certificate, still not global status with Hyatt, even if you've got millions of loyalty points. So just no way to reach that threshold with Hyatt, which, I mean, by some token might

be a positive. We can talk about that later on. But at any rate, so those are the new options. So how does this all compare so far? Yeah, if we look at the old or existing as we're recording this situation, right now you can get an extra one point per dollar, either American Airlines or Hyatt points. And so depending on how you value those points, it's like up to 2%, let's say, of extra rewards for your paid stays or your paid flights, right? But right now, if you're booking awards,

you're not getting any extra value. So, you know, there's, for those of us who mostly book stays and flights with points, the current situation isn't much use. But for those who are booking a lot of paid flights and stays, like business travelers, you know, the current situation could be really valuable. For the new situation, I'd say basically there's nothing there

for American Airlines elites. Like all these Hyatt options are like so poor value. Like, I mean, come on, booking or getting a category one to seven hyatt cert for 60 000 american airlines miles the the cert can only be used for up to a 35 000 point stay i think so yeah so you know you're paying almost twice as many aa miles as it would cost in hyatt points uh to to do that and that's just crazy uh crazy stuff so i don't know i don't understand that like why why but anyway but the flip side um hyatt elites who don't have american airline status do get some useful new benefits in my opinion like so the preferred seat coupons i mean especially when you compare to the other milestone choices, which aren't worth a lot. So you could get that 2K next day award, which as

you said, Nick, you only get that if you stay at certain hotels within the next 90 days or whatever it is. And so it's not even necessarily worth 2K points, that one. So getting preferred seat coupons, like if you wouldn't already get to be able to pick preferred seats because if you don't have American Airlines status, then that can be valuable. American Airlines and gold and platinum status options where you could get that for a whole elite year, a whole elite membership year. Now that requires a lot of Hyatt stays. But if you're there, if you're in a position where you're earning those 70 night and higher awards anyway with Hyatt, you're probably at the point where you don't need another suite upgrade certificate or whatever. And so you're looking at other options. Getting elite status for a whole membership year, I think, is really valuable. So, you know, and especially if you want to be able to gift it to someone else, you can do that. Ability to pay for 5,000, between 5,000 and 12,000 points for status for a day. I think that can also be really valuable. Again, let's say you're booking an American Airlines flight, you don't fly American

very often, but you want to have free check bags, you want to be able to pick a better seat, you want to have a chance of an upgrade, all that stuff can be had for a pretty low number of Hyatt points. Right. You want to be able to make a same day change because maybe you know that there's a flight you'd rather have, but it's way more expensive to book than the award or paid ticket that is cheapest. And so having status might give you the opportunity to get a free same day change. And so I could definitely see some scenarios where that might be worth it, even though those prices do seem kind of high for status for a day.

By some regards, I think that there are situations where that could be valuable. One thing I don't know, but I assume would be true with status for a day. Like I just actually today, if we record this, I flew from Dallas back to Albany and I had eight people on my reservation, and everybody got the free check bag benefit of my platinum status. So everybody could have two free check bags, everybody got preferred seats. And so keep in mind that having that status for a day could be more valuable in a situation like that, where we could have had, with platinum status, 16 check bags, and we all got main cabin extra seats at the time of booking.

So anyway, at any rate, my point there is that those could be valuable in the right scenario. But is this overall still bad changes? I mean, there are definitely, obviously, you read the comments from readers at the beginning that said, this is terrible. This is bad. This is awful. The partnership's been nuked.

How do you not recognize this? So I don't know. What do we think about that? What did Stephen have to say? only ongoing earning opportunity was reciprocal miles or points on stays or flights. But now people have the opportunity to earn status, get status for a day, get seat coupons, free night certificates, etc. Granted, most of those redemption options are poor value, as noted in the post. But that doesn't mean the relationship isn't deepening versus what it was before. If you regard the changes as worse for you, that's a completely valid point. And it does sound like that's the case for quite a few people based on the other comments. However, I am genuinely excited about these changes as it means I can get American Airlines status with little to no effort, whereas previously I only ever earned a few hundred miles or

points here and there. Yeah. So personally, I'm mostly in Camp Stephen here, and here's why. All right. So like Greg kind of insinuated, for people, I'll say like me, that mostly redeem points for award stays and award flights, I don't have very many paid Hy the double dip there as things were. I mean, very, very certainly not enough to move the needle. And really, to be truthful, even if I was spending like 10 grand a year on flights, we're talking about an extra 10,000 miles or 10,000 Hyatt points. That's again, like it's nice to have, but it's not necessarily so much that the changes I think would look bad to me, even if I were spending at that level. Now, obviously, it's going to be different for different people. If you've got status in both

programs or whatever, and these benefits are meaningless to you, well, you know, of course, it's kind of like those club lounge access awards that, you know, 20 nights or 30 nights that don't really matter to somebody who's a globalist very much. Now that they can be gifted, they're a little bit better. But I can understand that maybe these benefits won't work for you. But as somebody who primarily travels as an award traveler, I see these as mostly being beneficial to me. There are situations where that 2K next day thing, if I don't have a caption or a high at place day coming up, I don't need the Club Access Awards because I'm going to have global status. I'm not going to use the $25 find experience credit. So the two preferred sequel

bonds actually might be useful for me. I said I flew eight people today on American Airlines. I actually flew nine and one was on a separate reservation. And because she wasn't on mine, I couldn't select her seat for free. And she didn't have a free bag. So if I had one of these preferred seat coupons, I could have used it and saved $17 over the cost of paying for a seat. So, again, is that huge? No, of course not. It's like $34 maybe for two of those, but that's probably roughly on par with 2,000 points if that was even an option, which like we said, maybe you don't have a qualifying stay in the next however many days. And I think if I were at, certainly if I were at 70, 80 or more high at nights, like Greg

kind of insinuated, I wouldn't need more suite upgrades at that point. So then it's like 10,000 points versus status for a year. If you already have American Airlines elite status, then obviously that's not helpful. But if you don't, then I could see where that could be useful. So I don't know, this feels like a deepening to me. It feels like a devaluation for anybody who is spending a lot, particularly business travelers whose company was spending a lot for them to fly American Airlines or stay at Hyatt's. Hey, I get it. You're losing a bunch of free points.

So it's definitely a devaluation for some crowd. Overall, though, I'd say this is a deepening. I think I agree with Stephen. Yeah. You know, it doesn't have to be just one or the other, right? I mean, it could be both devalued and deeper, but yeah, I'm in the exact same situation. So yes, I don't want to discount the fact that there are a lot of people, maybe even most people, I don't know, where this is significantly worse situation. But for me, I'm looking at this and saying, wow,

I've been booking trips for like different family members at times, like my niece and her whole family, and they need checked bags, for example. And so in the past, I've been like, well, if I book this American Airlines flight for you, you should probably sign up for that credit card or whatever. And I don't really want to get in that business of trying to talk them through signing up for credit cards so they get free bags and all that stuff. Instead, I could just either pay a few more points to get some Hyatt points to get them status for a day. Or I could this year, and I don't know if it'll be true next year, but I'm gonna be well over 60 nights with Hyatt. So I could actually do,

I could actually gift my, if that happens again, I could gift my niece status for the whole elite year, which I believe if it's timed right, could be like almost two full years. And then she would have unlimited free check bags, not just for herself, but anyone who's on the same itinerary with her on American Airlines, as well as all those other benefits that Nick mentioned before. So I'm actually excited about it. And I'm sorry that people think that we're sellouts or something. We're feeling that way because we're certainly not.

There's no benefit for us in it one way or another. Like, no financial benefit in this, you know, like the details of this partnership. I mean, my goodness. It's just that, like, it doesn't look bad from our standpoint. Now, you know, again, we recognize that there are some people from whose standpoint it will not be great. If you're somebody who spent a lot of money on American Airlines and you have American Airlines lead size, you're not getting much of anything here. You know, so it's not exciting. Don't confuse our, like, ambivalence for excitement.

We're not super excited, but it's not bad. You know, well, that's the thing. You mentioned it's not good for those who spend a lot of American Airlines. That's it. But if you're on the other side where you're deep in a Hyatt and not so much an American, but could benefit from a few of these American perks, that's where things get interesting here. And I think several of us happen to be in that camp. And so it works well for us. And so hopefully some listeners are in that camp too.

And if you're not, sorry, I guess for you, it is a real devaluation and that's too bad. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our Frequent Miler on the Air episodes

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