Yes, you read that right. Its official, World of Hyatt has just announced a major devaluation in 2020.
How bad will it be?
The Upcoming 2020 World Of Hyatt Devaluation:
As is par for the course these days, major devaluations are disguised by buzz word phrases such as “more free night award flexibility”, and “getting the most out of your points”.
Don’t be fooled, this is corporate speak for “we’re devaluing our program, but we’re gonna try and make it look like it’s for the benefit of the consumer”.
We’ve been through this before with Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy. This is no different, it just hurts more because it comes from one of the best hotel loyalty programs of all, the World of Hyatt (long my personal favorite hotel loyalty program).
What’s Changing: Off-Peak And Peak Reward Night Redemptions
In March 2020, World of Hyatt will introduce Off-peak and Peak point redemptions in addition to their Standard redemptions.
What’s The Good News?
The good news is World of Hyatt is still relying on an award chart with redemption rates listed by hotel category (unlike the sometimes “wild-west” revenue-based pricing we see in programs like Hilton Honors).
Also, if you are affected by these changes, they will automatically resolve in your favor (you won’t lose points, but you may gain some).
World of Hyatt is also stating that you’ll receive pricing notice “usually 13 months in advance”and that there will still be only 8 award categories and that the award pricing will be centrally set by Hyatt corporate offices (as opposed to individual hotel operations as with Marriott Bonvoy).
World of Hyatt is also doubling the value of your points when used for dining and spa purchases (etc.), although I don’t know of anybody who uses their points on such things.
Concerning the free award night certificates (such as those you receive from the Chase World of Hyatt credit card) there is a bit of good news. Those free award night certificates will continue to stay pegged to the hotel category – not the new award pricing thresholds. This means those award night certificates can potentially become even more valuable as they’d be redeemable up to the “peak” pricing levels.
What’s The Bad News?
The obvious bad news is it will now cost 1,500 to 5,000 more points on many nights (starting in March 2020) to book the same property than it did in 2019.
Almost just as bad is the fact reward night redemptions will vary by night (from day to day) as opposed to say “season”, so you’ll never really know exactly how many points a stay will cost unless you check every single day of the stay.
Additionally, we have no idea exactly how many nights total will fall under “off-peak”, “standard”, or “peak” pricing – as this will likely vary by each hotel.
Does Hyatt Have An Official Website For These Changes?
World of Hyatt has published the new awards charts on this official page dedicated to the new award pricing.
For your convenience, here is the new points award chart, followed by the new points + cash award chart.
The New “Off-Peak” And “Peak” Award Chart:
The New “Off-Peak” And “Peak” Points+Case Award Chart:
The Bottom-Line: The Upcoming 2020 World Of Hyatt Devaluation
This is not good news. Part of the reason so many people love the World of Hyatt loyalty program was because the point system was so easy to use and to gain great value from. I’m guessing Hyatt realized this too and moved to align their program with their more consumer-unfriendly industry rivals.
In the end, it could have been worse – much worse – but this is still a major devaluation in one of the last-standing “static” award charts. While these changes are clearly negative, they still leave the World of Hyatt with a program that is (at least for now) far better than than their competition (see: Bonvoyed.com).
For these reasons, even with this devaluation, World of Hyatt will easily remain my go-to hotel program into the near future (barring any further devaluations).
