• An Introduction to World of Hyatt
• What is the value of various World of Hyatt tiers ?

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If you still haven’t participated in our Giveaway to win a Hyatt Globalist membership for 2 years, here’s your last chance to get a awesome value. And now for how you can earn and burn World of Hyatt points.

Ways you can Earn Hyatt Points

Stays and Eligible Spends : The most prevalent way to earn points is through hotel stays where every World of Hyatt member earns 5 base points for every dollar spent. Apart from this points are earned on dining, spa and other services paid for at the hotel during their stays. As you go up the ladder in terms of status, you get more points per stay. For instance, Explorists get a 20% bonus on points earned and Globalists 30%. Remember, you have to book direct with Hyatt to earn these points, not via an OTA.

Credit Cards : Apart from this there are co-branded credit cards like one from Chase in the USA that give the opportunity to earn points on credit card spends. Until last year, the HDFC Bank Diners Club Black credit card had the option of converting credit card points into Hyatt points, though sadly, as of late 2016 they discontinued this.

Purchase Bonus Points : From time to time Hyatt runs its point sale promotion where members can buy points with a certain bonus percentage attached. The best I have seen so far is a 40% bonus on Hyatt point purchase. A maximum of 55,000 points can be purchased every calendar year.

Collate Points : World of Hyatt also offers the opportunity to combine points with another member. You can collate points once in a month. This is a great idea if you to combine points and add points in one account with folks who have very little points for redemption.

Planning Meetings & Events : World of Hyatt members can earn one bonus point for every dollar spent when organizing meetings and events at a Hyatt hotel.

Organizing your wedding at a Hyatt property can get you enough points to use it on your honeymoon. It happened with us, when Ajay and I celebrated our wedding at the Park Hyatt in Goa we earned enough points to redeem it for a few nights at the Park Hyatt in the Maldives. In return the wedding spend got us a value of INR 2, 40,000 later in one of the best luxury hotels that the Hyatt has to offer.

Award Redemptions & Using Reward Points:

Free Award Nights : Hyatt divides all its properties into 7 categories. Reward nights begin from 5,000 points per night for a standard room in a Category 1 hotel example at the Hyatt Amritsar and go up to 30,000 points per night in a category 7 hotel, like the Park Hyatt-Vendome in Paris.   You can also redeem award stays at Regency, Club rooms and Suites for a higher number of points. Suite awards nights cannot be redeemed in certain hotels like the Park Hyatt Sydney.

Redemptions are also possible in one of Hyatt’s 6 all-inclusive resorts located in the Caribbean and Mexico.

Points + Cash : This option allows you to book award stays by using half the points and cash.  Another great thing about staying on Points + Cash is that it also counts under elite qualifying nights.

There can be really good use of Points + Cash option. For example, the standard room rate at the Park Hyatt Goa, which a Category 4 hotels, is about INR 20,000 in peak season. Using a reward night for full redemption at this resort will get you a value of  INR 1.33 per reward point. If you book a room under cash and points combination you’ll pay 7,500 points + USD 100/ INR 6,500 for a night. So, you’ll be paying INR 1.15 per point redemption which makes slightly better sense than a full reward redemption. This excludes the taxes you’d not have to pay as well!

However, here is another example where points + cash makes so much better sense than a full reward redemption. The Park Hyatt Paris where rooms in season go for 1,000 USD / INR 65,000 or 30,000 points a night. A reward redemption gets you a value of 3.3 US cents /INR 21. A Cash+ Points booking here will be 15,000 points + 300 USD which means that you will be paying 2 US cents or INR 13. This is close to gaining a 2x value of your points by using the cash and point combination.

Though with any redemption it completely depends on what works for you, hence I’d suggest you do the calculation among the cash rate, reward points and the combination.

Upgrade your paid nights : As a World of Hyatt member you can also use your points to upgrade your paid nights  to a better deluxe room for 3,000 points or  to a suite for 6,000 points.

Transferring points into Airmiles : World of Hyatt also gives you an option to transfer every 2.5 World of Hyatt point into 1 air mile across 27 participating airline partners. The minimum number of loyalty points required to convert are 5,000.

In my opinion this is not a good option as the value gained with air mile conversion is very low. For instance, if you used 5000 points to redeem a night stay at Hyatt Amritsar, a cat 1 hotel that is priced at an average of INR 4,000 per night; you’ll get a value of INR 0.8 for every point used which is way better than what you’d get with mile conversion.

Car Rental Points & Awards : Car rental awards can be redeemed with Avis at participating locations. For an intermediate size car you need to spend 6,000 points per day.

This is again a waste of your points. For example, I checked the intermediate car rental for Melbourne which shows AUD171/ USD 132. Using 6,000 points for this will give you a value of 0.02 per point. You’d rather use these points for a reward night at a hotel or upgrade a paid stay to a suite.

Dining, Spa & More : You can also use your Hyatt points for services like parking, dining and spa. It isn’t mandatory to stay when redeeming your points for these services.

Bottomline:

Hyatt has a great collection of hotels and the World of Hyatt does offer some real good value at it’s top Globalist tier. The biggest pain point however is that due to its small footprint of about 680 hotels, it does get challenging to complete 60 nights every year at the top level. Having said that, for road warriors if you can maintain that Globalist status the perks are well worth the loyalty.

Share with us your thoughts about World of Hyatt?