Frequent Miler on the Air - World of Hyatt’s decline by a thousand cuts | Coffee Break Ep12 | 5-28-24

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, World of Hyatt's decline by a thousand cuts. We love our Hyatt. We love the program, but over time it's been, it's been hurting us little by little. Yeah, they've just sliced a little bit back and sliced a little bit more and a little bit more. And so, yeah, it's been really when you look at it overall, it's been kind of painful. Each little thing has not necessarily

Starting point is 00:00:49 been awful on its own. But when you look at a number of the things that have happened, there have been a number of downsides over the last few years. Of course, there are still a number of things to love, too. We'll talk a little bit about both. Don't forget, wherever you're watching or listening to this, please like the video or the podcast, leave a comment or piece of feedback. We appreciate those things. And remember, you can go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list and follow us on all the various social media. All right, let's get into this. So thousand little cuts. Well, we don't really have a thousand of them to discuss today, but we have a number of these little devaluation, some of them more stealthy than others or more front

Starting point is 00:01:26 and center anyway than others. The first one up is that Hyatt introduced Category 8 several years ago, and that was somewhat disappointing. Well, of course, somewhat disappointing because previously the top category was Category 7, so they created a new category that would cost even more points, a devaluation of sorts. But the good news is that in the beginning, they said this is only for select small luxury hotels of the world. They're only select properties because of the partnership with SLH. There were some places that were just so high end that they didn't quite fit on the old World of Hyatt award chart. So they needed a new category for SLH. And of course, when that happened, I think all of us had a collective holding of our breaths to be like, how long until the other Hyatt properties start moving into category eight? And of course, it wasn't all that long.

Starting point is 00:02:15 It was like another year before we started seeing some other Hyatt properties creep into category eight. Yeah. And one of the things that I continue to hate about what they did there is that the free night certificates that you get at certain levels of milestones are category one to seven with one exception. After 150 nights, you get one that could work at category eight. But why they didn't change the already the category one to seven awards are hard to get. So why not expand it to category eight? That really bugs me. I agree. It's silly. And Hilton has an uncapped free night certificate. Why can't Hyatt do that? I don't understand it. It does. It does boggle the mind that they didn't switch that to a category

Starting point is 00:03:03 one date. Right. Right. Another thing they did, which it didn't switch that to a category one date. Right, right. Another thing they did, which it didn't seem like such a bad thing, was introducing peak pricing, you know, because they have both peak pricing standard and off peak. And the reason I say it didn't seem like such a bad thing is because I think we were so relieved that they kept their award charts, you know. So it's like, oh, good, at least they have their award charts. And sometimes awards are more expensive, but that's one of the many, many cuts. Yeah. I mean, if you had a property that went from category seven that was historically 30,000 points a night and then moved up to category eight and now it's peaked priced, that's a

Starting point is 00:03:40 significant increase in award costs over just a couple of years ago. I mean, of course, everything is going up in price these days. So on the one hand, it's not unfair to see the cost of awards go up when you look at the cost of hotel rooms, which have skyrocketed over the last few years. So it's not necessarily unfair, but it still hurts because it makes a relatively big percentage increase in the cost of awards. And of course, for the most part, your bonus categories haven't necessarily increased. There are lots of other ways to earn more points. But in general, you're earning a similar number of points per dollar spent. So it's painful to see that those slight bumps even that didn't seem horrible at the time, though. Like you said, it's nice that Hyatt still has an award chart. So we know what to expect. So I give them some credit for that

Starting point is 00:04:22 partial credit, partial credit. But of course, like I said before, they introduced Category 8. It was only for SLH to begin with. But then about a year later, some other Hyatt properties moved into Category 8. We see different ones move into Category 8 each year. So it's continued to expand. No big shock there, but it hurts. Yeah. Yeah. And so then they introduced a new and way more expensive award chart for their all-inclusive properties. So you had properties that, you know, jumping in price by like a hundred percent in some cases. Yeah. I mean, over just a couple of years, they've jumped quite a bit because they are considerably more expensive. Now the all-inclusives, I think even in the past,

Starting point is 00:05:05 maybe I can't remember if there was an additional charge for more people in the room in terms of the number of points. But yeah, it's just, it's gone up significantly. And again, lots of different costs have gone up over the last few years. But if you're interested in all-inclusives, Hyatt was an amazing value for a long time.

Starting point is 00:05:22 And now they're just probably okay for all inclusives. I'm sure there are some exceptions that are amazing and some that are horrible in terms of the value, but it's not quite what it used to be anyway. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Now, what'd they do with Homes and Hideaways? Well, they created Homes and Hideaways, which is sort of their vacation rental arm. And the value per point is not very good, which is not very surprising. Most programs, most hotel programs that offer some way to use your points for vacation rentals don't present fantastic value for the points that way. And I mean, that makes sense, right? They would rather you use the hotel points with the

Starting point is 00:06:02 hotel chain than use them with some other entity that they have to pay. So fair enough to create a homes and hideaways option that isn't going to be a value that appeals to us. later moved a bunch of destination residences properties that were bookable with your Hyatt points based on the regular World of Hyatt award chart to homes and hideaways. So there were some places, particularly in Hawaii, where they already didn't offer a standard room. You had to pay the additional points that you have to pay for a suite in order to book one of them, I think. But then they moved that to homes and hideaways. So now it's not even based on the award chart and the suite chart. It's just based on really poor points per dollar. Yeah, that was really disappointing because Hyatt had such a good presence in Hawaii for a while with those destination residences. And now, I mean, I guess they still have that

Starting point is 00:06:59 presence. It's just that you're not going to be getting good value for your points if you use your Hyatt points to book those. So I find that really annoying. It's kind of like the first step they took to start moving select properties away from award charts at all. I didn't see it that way then, but I see it that way now. Yeah, yeah. Well, yes.

Starting point is 00:07:21 And we'll talk more about why you see it that way. But yeah, I think that's the big egregious thing here. It's, you know, creating homes and hideaways and having a way for people to use their points at poor value for vacation rentals. Like I said, that in and of itself, that's reasonable. It was the moving of properties that were bookable as regular awards to that. And that's the part that was a bad omen that we didn't recognize how bad it was at the time. So because, of course, we love Hyatt for its award chart. I mean, for the many faults, we love their award chart. So I don't love things that aren't on the chart. Other things that they, of course, sort of hurt us with over the years, they ended the MGM partnership last year. Well, maybe they didn't end it. Maybe MGM ended it. I don't really know what caused the end of the MGM partnership. Hyatt had a longstanding partnership with MGM where you could match Hyatt Explorist or Globalist status your MGM stays, which was amazing for the really

Starting point is 00:08:25 cheap MGM stays that you could use to earn Hyatt Elite Qualifying Knights if you could do that. But unfortunately, that's gone. That's no more. Yeah, yeah. And then something that hit us both really hard, I think, is the ending of their relationship with SLH. So, I mean, not only was SLH sort of the excuse for going into Category 8 land, but we really enjoyed some of these SLH properties that were available to book under Hyatt Standard Award charts and had some amazing stays. And so sad to see that go. And as we've talked about before, it's why we're more excited about Hilton these days, because Hilton's promising to bring those forward with their relationship with SLH. As regular standard awards, and that's notable for the next thing we'll talk about in a second. But Hilton intends to make those bookable with free night certificates and points as a standard room award, which is nice.

Starting point is 00:09:22 Losing those properties, definitely a big hit for Hyatt, particularly for their footprint in places like Europe, where, yeah, I mean, you can find a Hyatt now if you go to Paris or London, you know, or Milan, I guess. But you start to get out from the major cities in Europe, and it's really hard to find a place to use your Hyatt points now, whereas SLH gave them a huge presence across Europe. They've lost that. So internationally, I feel like that was a bigger hit to Hyatt than maybe even Hyatt bargained for. I don't know if they were thinking about it. They couldn't have been thinking about it. Right, right. But it looked like they were going to be replacing it with something even better.

Starting point is 00:09:58 So they bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which is sort of a travel. I don't even know what to call it, but it's sort of like SLH in that it's a loose collection of hotels. They don't manage any of the hotels. It's just hotels asked to be included in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith portfolio, and they evaluate them, and there's some incredible hotels in that collection. So when Hyatt bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith and said in early 2024, they're going to integrate them. I mean, I was so excited. I was a little scared about losing SLH, but I was more excited about gaining Mr. and Mrs. Smith than losing SLH because there's so many just incredible properties there. Yeah. Yeah. But unfortunately, unfortunately, that omen from the destination residences played

Starting point is 00:10:52 out in a very unfortunate way with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, because of course, when they launched these as part of World of Hyatt, they have dynamically priced them. So now you don't know how many points you're going to need for a particular property. You just have to look it up and see what they happen to be charging at the time that you want to go. And the value is not particularly exciting, somewhere between one and like 1.4 cents per point for most of these properties, which is low for Hyatt points, particularly, you know, when we think about high end properties, that's where you often get really outsized value with Hyatt points. We can stay in a really super nice place.

Starting point is 00:11:28 It's expensive for a reasonable number of points. And that's just not the case now. It's going to be a lot of points. Yeah, exactly. It's so easy to get two cents or better point per value when booking a Hyatt hotel that's in Hyatt's award charts. But with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it's just I wouldn't waste my points that way. If I want to stay at one of these properties, I would book it some other way,

Starting point is 00:11:49 but not with my Hyatt points. And so this one wasn't to me, wasn't a small cut. This was this was big. It was big. It was especially losing SLH for this, for something that also doesn't have any kind of guaranteed elite benefits, whereas SLH had guaranteed benefits for anybody who booked through Hyatt was going to get free breakfast and late checkout and things like that. And there's none of that guarantee with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. You're going to get what other people get that book through Mr. and Mrs. Smith. So I mean, this really, honestly, to me, it gives very little incentive to be interested in this. Like, yes, like Greg said, I wouldn't waste my Hyatt points on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. If I wanted to book one of those properties, I would just pay for it.

Starting point is 00:12:28 But the problem with that, of course, from, you know, I think it should be a problem for Hyatt out of that is that there's no reason for me to choose Mr. and Mrs. Smith over any other nice hotel destination that I'm going to. Not really. I mean, yeah, OK, I can earn Hyatt Elite credit, big whoop. I mean, I can earn two Hyatt Elite credits with 5K spent on the card. So that isn't enough incentive to me to pick a Mr. and Mrs. Smith over some other nice luxury hotel. Whereas I chose SLH and I planned trips around going to SLH properties because they were bookable with my Hyatt points at a good value. So yeah, it's a bummer. It's a bummer. It is. It is. But I mean, I'm still a fan of World of Hyatt. And it's hard to say, even though they pierced my heart with this Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing, some of the things that we've loved all along about them are still great.

Starting point is 00:13:17 And there's some relatively new things that make them really great too. So I mean, first, and we've talked about this a million times, they have the best top tier elite status of any major hotel chain, bar none. You're guaranteed to get breakfast, lounge access. I mean, at the top tier, this is free parking on awards days, waived resort fees on paid stays. You get good upgrades and all that just when you have top tier elite status. Yeah. And that's meaningful and valuable. And like Greg said, I'm a fan of Hyatt. I mean, I'm staying in Hyatt tonight. And for some of these benefits, because I have globalist status. And so I'm going to not have to pay for parking in New York City and I'm going to get free breakfast. And I already got a small upgrade anyway, when I went to check in in the app. So I mean,

Starting point is 00:14:04 all of those things do add up to something and are a reason why I choose Hyatt. Of course, I chose a property that was on the award chart, Hyatt, not one that wasn't. Of course you didn't. But anyway, so they do have best and tier elite benefits. Also, the best milestone rewards. So as you earn more elite knights over time, once you hit 40 elite nights, you have the ability to get confirmable suite upgrades. Those confirmable suite upgrade awards can be incredibly valuable because you can use one of those to confirm a suite for up to seven nights at the time of

Starting point is 00:14:34 booking. So you can be booking something five, six, eight, nine, 11 months in advance and use a suite upgrade award if there's a standard suite available and get yourself confirmed into a suite at the time of booking. Also at 40 nights, you have the ability to get a guest of honor award. And then again, at 50 nights, I think, and of course at 60. And so the guest of honor awards can be very, very valuable because you get the opportunity to give somebody else all of the perks of elite status that we just talked about, the free breakfast and free parking on the awards day and so on and so forth. Well, plus you could use it for yourself. So if you get to 40 nights and you're not globalist yet, because globalist requires 60 nights, you could get that guest of honor award and apply it to

Starting point is 00:15:14 your next day and have all of those benefits of top tier status at your next day. So that's really fantastic. And what I love is that at 40 nights, you can get both a suite upgrade and a guest of honor award. So you could have two amazing stays even without having top tier status. You could have two incredible stays just from the awards that you get at that level. Yeah. And that's why I'm targeting 40 nights this year. I want to get at least 40 nights with Hyatt because I want those two things. I know that those will really enhance Tuesdays next year, even if I don't make it to 60 nights over the course of the year. And that's something that's got me shooting for the 40 nights, whereas other chains are not. I'm not shooting for the 40 nights or at least not as it's not as important to me because those great milestone rewards with Hyatt. Right. Of course, there's lots of opportunities for sharing stock. They make it really, really easy to share. You can share your points with anybody else.

Starting point is 00:16:09 So you can gift points to a friend or a family member. If you have a free night certificate in your account, very easy to share that with somebody else, give it to a friend or a family member. Your global status, if you've got the guest of honor awards you can use. All of those things are really easy to be able to give to somebody else. And that's awesome. They make it super, you can do it yourself online nowadays.

Starting point is 00:16:29 That was a change this year that's been great. It makes it so much easier to share these things. Yeah, it's really amazing. Heights really led the way here across the chains. Like, you know, they still haven't made sharing points that easy, but everything else, you know, contrast that with like Marriott, you know, contrast that with

Starting point is 00:16:46 like Marriott, where you get a free night certificate and you have to use it for yourself. You can't even, so you definitely can't give it to someone else, but you also can't explicitly book it in someone else's name, even if you're doing the booking yourself. So that is great. I love that they made everything shareable. It's so cool. Another thing that's really cool, I mean, Nick mentioned this briefly, but the ability to earn elite knights through spend on their credit cards is really great because of how valuable their milestone rewards are, right? So you can earn really valuable stuff through spend on their credit cards. Yeah, so if you stay some nights in Hyatt

Starting point is 00:17:28 and you can then supplement that with spend on the consumer or business cards. And so that's nice because that can help you bridge the gap to get to those milestone rewards. I think that's particularly special that the spend, the nights you earn from spend will get you to those milestone rewards.

Starting point is 00:17:43 I think that really is super valuable. I wish IHG would do this. So IHG lets you earn from spend will get you to those milestone rewards. I think that really is super valuable. I wish IHG would do this. So IHG lets you earn diamond status with spend on their credit card, but you can't earn nights. And so that prevents you from being able to get their suite upgrade awards or their club membership, which are two valuable benefits that IHG offers for milestone rewards. Yeah, it'd be nice if you could spend towards elite night credits with IHG also. And of course, finally, they offer generally very good value for points for properties that adhere to their award chart anyway. So anything that's on the award chart, generally speaking, offers pretty good value. I shouldn't say anything. Of course, you're going to find a

Starting point is 00:18:21 situation here and there where it won't, but you'll find far more situations, I think, where you're going to get very good value for your Hyatt points, you're going to find a situation here and there where it won't, but you'll find far more situations, I think, where you're going to get very good value for your Hyatt points when you're booking anything that's on the award chart. Yeah. And if you have Chase Ultima Rewards points, you can transfer to Hyatt. So it's a great way of getting great value from your Chase Ultima Rewards points. Same for built rewards too, because you can transfer built rewards to Hyatt too. So another good option there. All right. We're out of time for today. If you enjoyed this, don't forget frequentmiler.com

Starting point is 00:18:46 slash subscribe to join our email list and check out Frequent Miler on the air every Friday. Bye everybody.

Frequent Miler on the Air - World of Hyatt’s decline by a thousand cuts | Coffee Break Ep12 | 5-28-24

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