Hyatt’s Gold Passport program is known to be one of the best loyalty recognition programs out there for hotel guests, and is the Kool Aid for miles and points bloggers such as yours truly. However, I’ve not held their Diamond Status for an extended period of time ever, largely because of my irregular stay patterns with respect to hotels. I’m not a lawyer or a consultant or a full-time blogger, so for me, I did not have a circumstance to do 25 stays or 50 nights to get the status.

Hyatt also has another generous offer to get you to Diamond status however. They will allow you to enrol in the Hyatt Diamond Challenge, which grants you the Diamond status by completing 12 nights within 60 days. You do need to present your top-tier credentials with another competing program to be able to sign up for the challenge. Diamond status is granted up-front to the end of the month where you are expected to complete the challenge, and you do get the upgrade certs in your account as well, which help you upgrade paid stays to suites.

I was on the fence about the status and its utility, however when Hyatt announced the 50% off sale in India, I realised it was a great time to be able to go for the status, at lower pricing than it would usually happen for. I had some stays in mind, and worse comes to worse, I could have quit the challenge mid-ways.

I started with my planned stay at the Park Hyatt Goa Resort and Spa which was planned for the long weekend in August along with friends. Here is my earlier reviewmy earlier review of this property. I will write another one of the past stay soon, and will update this post. PH Goa upgraded us to a junior suite on arrival. I always love coming back to this resort.

When in Pune, I decided to head to Hyatt Pune to explore the brand, and I loved the personalisation element. Here too, we were send to a junior suite without having to apply a Diamond upgrade cert.

Then, I hopped across to the Hyatt Regency Punethe Hyatt Regency Pune, where I was upgraded to their Club Room. I did not find this hotel very engaging with their customers, but by now I was 4 nights down.

Next, I was back from a long stressful trip, and decided to check into a hotel for the weekend to get my bearings straight. I first headed up to the Grand Hyatt Mumbai and then to Hyatt Regency Mumbai. Both of them upgraded me to the Club category rooms, and at the Hyatt Regency, this was not the best category of rooms ex-suites, so they further upgraded me to the Club Deluxe rooms.

In October, I was over to Kolkata, and I decided to stay at the Hyatt Regency Kolkata. A best rate guarantee helped me with the pricing on the hotel rooms, and the hotel upgraded us to a duplex suite. This was one great stay.

On my recent work trips, I stayed a couple of times at the Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport due to my quirky arrival and departure times. This helped me round up the requirements for the challenge.

However, I did throw in another stay at the Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill, just to be sure about my stay requirements being met, and it was a very good stay, but something I’m still to write about.

After finishing the requirements, I went back to the Hyatt Gold Passport team, who promptly upgraded the status to last till February 2016. I also managed to pick up 10,000 GP points towards a promotion this quarter.

Conclusion: Hotel status is a great thing to have if you plan it strategically, and I am glad to be with the Hyatt Gold Passport program all the way till 2016, so next year I can work on getting in the status via the regular stay requirements maybe.

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