Frequent Miler on the Air - Searching for good news in Hyatt's devaluation | Coffee Break Ep103 | 4-28-26

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Hyatt is changing their award charts on May 20th, 2026, and it's pretty devastating with a new 5-tier pricing system and huge increases in prices. Today, we'll see if there's some good news in all of this. (00:12) - New 5-level award charts: lowest, low, moderate, upper, top (prev: off-peak, standard, peak)(02:08) - Is there any good news?(06:59) - Some good news about premium suites(11:49) - Thoughts and analysisVisit 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 HeadsMentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkFrequent Miler's Best Offers Pagehttps://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-offers/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less, or your money back. Today's coffee break, searching for good news in Hyatt's devaluation. As you probably have heard, Hyatt is changing their award charts for the worst on May 20th, 2026. And it's pretty devastating. So they're going from, they're going to keep the idea of having eight different categories of hotels. But in the old chart, they had three prices for each category. They had off-peak, a standard and peak. They're moving to a new five-tier system that goes from lowest to low to low to moderate to upper to top.

So all of those are different prices. We're seeing huge increases in prices in most cases. For example, the middle price. If you look at just the new moderate price versus the old standard price, so this is the middle price in both cases, we're seeing an average 25% increase in point price. it gets worse if you look at the top price. So if you look all the way to the right of each chart, the average increase is 48%.

That's huge. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Especially for points that were always considered highly valuable for hotels, right? I mean, you used to be able to get Thantower have, I shouldn't even say used to because still can, as we record this anyway,

you still can get some terrific deals. And so a 48% increase, that just really eats into the quality of the points. And they'll probably still be worth more than other currencies, but you won't be able to get the kind of slamming deals for luxury properties at the high end that we have, I think, become accustomed to for years and years now. Yeah, yeah.

Of course, I like to look at the bright side of things. And so I've been struggling here. Is there any good news in all of this mess? And so we dove into the new award chart. to analyze them. And basically, I arbitrarily decided that good news means any given price has only increased by 10% or less. Like, that's good news in this new world. So are there any places where there's good news here?

And I think first we could talk about a couple things that we already knew that were good news in the new charts. Yeah. So Hyatt has told us that far fewer hotels will increase in categories. in the future, whereas this year and most years we see somewhere around 100 to 200 hotels change in category. They tell us that the new chart will mean that far fewer hotels will need to change category in the future because they have a much wider range of prices within whatever they're assigned category is. Yeah. And the other piece of good news, and again, we knew this already, is that free night certs will still work as they did before, meaning if you

have a free night certificate that's good up through category four. It doesn't matter the price of that category four hotel. As long as the standard room is available, you should be able to use your free night certificate to book it. And so that's why actually the first thing we mentioned is so important. If Hyatt is right that fewer hotels will change categories than going forward, it should be that like when you find a good hotel that you want to come back to, that's Category 4, for example, so you could use your free night certificates. Theoretically, going forward, it's unlikely to move up from category 4 or less likely than it was in the past to do so. Yeah, and Greg says theoretically because we're just, that's what Hyatt's saying so far.

We've got no data to base that on yet. We'll see whether or not that turns out to be true. And even though Greg already addressed this, I think it's important to clarify, by again that Greg's kind of a look on the bright side kind of a person. So this isn't meant to be a podcast like shilling for Hyatt saying, oh, it's good news that there's a devaluation. That's not it at all. It's more so like, okay, there's a bunch of bad news. Where are the diamonds in the rough? And so that's what we're focusing on here. These are the things that are like the glimmers of hope in the new chart. And one of those also is that across the board, the lowest price,

you know, what is kind of comparable to today's off peak, is almost never higher than today's peak. And in many cases, that lowest price is even lower than it was before. So, so if you do happen to find a place that's, you know, out of season that you want to stay at, you'll probably pay fewer points in the future than you do today. Yeah. Yeah. The only exception I found to, to that idea of that the lowest price is going to be equal to or lower than it was before is with with Murrville properties. There's a few Mirval categories where you would be paying at the lowest level, 2,500 points more than you would have been before. So that's not a huge deal. But, you know, we'll see how often things are priced at the lowest category. But still, at least

the off-peakinist peak prices won't be too bad compared to the old way. Yeah, if you have an opportunity for a category one mattress run that's like truly off, off-peak, I guess it'll cost fewer points in the future than it does today. In the future also, we've noticed that standard suites are not changing in the price differential. So the price difference between a standard. room and a standard suite in the old chart is the same as the price difference between a standard room and a standard suite in the new chart, which is to say that ranges. So category one, a standard suite costs 3,000 points per night more than a standard room. And that difference,

that 3,000 point difference is the same across off-peak, standard, and peak in the old chart and in the new chart, it's the same thing. It's an additional 3,000 points per night on each pricing band for category one. Now, the difference obviously changes with categories up in category eight. It's a 21,000 point difference between a standard room and a standard suite, but those differentials have remained the same. So the additional cost to get into a standard suite is the same additional number of points that it is today, even though, of course, obviously that price will be higher overall in the future. The difference from a standard suite or standard room to a standard suite will remain the same. Yeah, yeah. That's about as much good news as we could find around standard suites,

but there's some good news about premium suites. So premium suites used to be exactly double the price of a standard room. Like that's how Hyatt would price the premium suites, and they are no longer doing that. Instead, they've adopted the same methodology as how they price the standard suites. It's It's a fixed differential from the standard room price. So, of course, it's a little bit higher fixed differential than a standard suite because you'd expect to pay more for a premium suite and you will. But so now the difference from the standard room price to the premium suite price will be 5,000 points if you're looking at a category 1 hotel, 35,000 points if you're looking at category 8 hotel. And, you know, of course, prices in between that. between that for other categories.

But the reason that's good news is that by having that fixed differential, you get some cases where prices haven't increased much compared to the old chart. For example, if you look at the middle pricing, so the new moderate compared to the old standard pricing, they average only 5% higher than before. So it's not a big increase. And in fact, only category 8. So at the top of the award chart,

do you have a more than 10% increase from before? And categories 5, 6, and 7, the middle price is unchanged from before. So whatever you're paying before for premium suites in those categories, it'll be the same in the middle of the chart. And the premium top price suites, again, similar, not much of a difference with the new peak sort of pricing,

less than, I think, up to 9%, 10%, maybe at most I think is the difference between the old peak premium suite pricing and the new top premium suite pricing. So again, you're looking at small increases, categories three, four, and six, only 3% increase or less in the price. So those premium suites have not gone up by as much. And again, same kind of thing in the all-inclusive side as well.

They're relatively small. What stands out to me here is that there are many situations where a premium suite costs just a little bit more than a standard suite. So if you were someone who is considering using the points for a standard suite, don't count out those premium suites because it might only be 3,000 points a night more for a premium suite or, you know, 7,000 points a more for a premium. In fact, I think we looked at the chart and it was 7,000 points a night or less all the way up to category 7 more for a premium suite than it is for a standard suite. So just a small increase for a premium suite.

Yeah, yeah. And if you think about some hotels, what they defined. Standard suite tends to be, you know, a room and maybe a living room area. Sometimes you have a door between them. Often you don't. usually just one bedroom. With premium suites, you often have a lot more luxurious options to pick from when hotels make their premium suites available for points bookings.

And you could be looking at a multi-room suite with multiple bathrooms, maybe multiple balconies. There's a lot of stuff that you might be able to get in some places you can book their, what they call their presidential suite and things like that. So it's, it's, you know, it's not like prices have gone down for that, but, you know, if you, if you were interested in booking premium suites before, I think this is very good news that prices in general haven't increased much, except in a couple categories here and there. You know, we're not going to go into details exactly where, but in most cases, they haven't gone out much. And in terms of the difference, because those premium suite prices haven't gone. up by much, but standard room prices have gone up by a bunch. The difference is, is slimmer, or feels slimmer in many cases than it did before. So, that could increase the attraction.

So, right. So if you're looking before at booking standard suites and you're bummed out about, like, oh, look how much the price has gone up. Now you could be going, oh, wait a minute, I can just pay a little bit more than that higher price and get into a premium suite. So at least you're getting more value out of a similar number of points. There you go. All right. We'll be right back after this. Hey, Nick, I just got a text from my cousin.

He's asking me about a credit card offer he just got in his email and asking if it's any good. Yeah. Well, your cousin ought to go to frequent myler.com and click the link at the top of the page for our best offers page. That's the best way for your cousin to know whether or not they're getting a good offer because we're committed to publishing the best publicly available offers. So if you see an offer for a credit card anywhere on the internet, you should always compare and make sure you're getting the best possible offer. And we're back.

All right, Nick, what do you think? So we discussed all this great news about, great as in quotes there, by the way, about Hyatt's new award charts. Does this change your perspective at all about how, how much of bummer this new situation is. I think both of us have been talking about, we're going to wait and see whether we even want to try for top-tier Hyatt status in the future

because maybe the new prices will mean we're not staying at Hyatt's as much and therefore having top-tier elite status wouldn't be as meaningful if that's true. Oh, does it change? I don't know if I'd characterize it as changing. I'm still overall, very bummed out by Hyatt's moved towards these five pricing bans

in each category. It feels so much more dynamic than before. So I'm bummed out overall on Hyatt. However, I do still have some hope that, you know, there will be opportunities for good value in this new chart as well. I mean, hotel prices have gone up significantly. A lot of times I'm looking at hotels that I would have considered paying the cash rate for before that now are at cash point prices where I feel like I wouldn't want to have to pay that. So we've seen such an increase on the cash side that I think there probably still will be opportunities on the point side as well. It's not going to be as good or feel like as much of a win as it does today. But I mean, I think there are still some opportunities. Now, looking at the suites in particular,

suites are important to me as a family traveler. We appreciate having a suite. We like the space of a suite. And I don't enjoy paying for a suite. But I enjoy the fact that Hyatt allows booking suites with points. And while you have some opportunities for that with other chains, not for nearly the same kind of award chart sort of a situation. You know, with Hilton, you could pay a bajillion points and I wouldn't, you know, for a suite. And with Marriott, some properties make their suites available with points, usually not for a particularly good deal. Whereas with Hyatt here, there are some, I don't know, some glimmers of hope in the sense that at least those standard suite prices haven't gone up by the same proportion as standard rooms have. And in a lot of cases,

like I look at category, I don't know, five and six in that area. And the difference, I think category five, if I remember correctly, without looking at the chart, it's like 3,000 points a night difference between a standard suite and a premium suite. I would certainly consider more premium suites. Of course, it's going to cost a lot more points than what I would have wanted to have paid before. So my excitement is is tempered by that. And I think, though, in the future, I might be more likely to do that than Chase Hyatt status because in a lot of cases, those premium suites will come with something like lounge access if you're booking a Hyatt Regency or Grand Hyatt.

And so then I might not need elite status as much. We'll see where my travels take me in the future. I'm not much more excited by this. It's at least a glimmer of hope. What about you? Yeah, no, pretty similar. You know, I do find it really interesting. at least that, you know, I do tend to look towards high-end hotels and this idea that

the premium suites are often not going to be much more expensive than standard suites. Add something to look forward to, I guess, in this bleak landscape. You know, also, we forgot to mention another good news in the new world is that upgrading from a cash booking at a of a standard room to a suite, the price, the point price to do that hasn't changed. So it'll still be 6,000 points a night, I think, to upgrade from a standard room to a standard suite. And it'll still be 9,000 points a night to upgrade to a premium suite. So that remains a smoking good deal for upgrades from booking a standard cash rate room. Yeah, in a lot of cases anyway, most cases, probably it does. Obviously, I have to look at the cash prices and see. But you're right. That is a

really good point. And the category one to four free night certificates, I think while it's painful to see a number of old favorite category four is move up to category five, I think the value of those is going to feel a little bit more significant as we see in inflation in the price of category four. So I'm going to be, I think, ironically, more excited about collecting those category one to four free nights. Because they'll save me more points for the same. hotel. And it's, that doesn't make them more valuable. It just means that I get to keep more of my points for a different stay. And so I, uh, I guess that's the other small glimmering point. Although overall, still a lot of bad news from Hyatt. And I think that a lot remains to be seen.

We'll have to like two years from now, ask me again and we'll see how I feel about it. Okay. Sounds good. We'll do that. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. If you love travel but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10 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 travel in 10 wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at voyescape.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel, host to the Travel Tales podcast, and I'm a stand-up comedian who's

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