👋 Hyatt just smacked us in the face (again)

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 58 seconds

☀️ Good morning from Ürümqi, the bustling capital of China’s extremely unique Xinjiang Province.

While I load up on plov and kebabs, let’s talk about some big news from the weekend:

• 👋 Hyatt just smacked us in the face (again)

• 🏨 The highest-value hotel program

• 🙋‍♀️ Who needs a travel upgrade?

👋 Hyatt just smacked us in the face (again)

Earlier this year, I told you about how Hyatt is “revamping” its award chart (basically a major devaluation across the board).

Well… I have some good news:

They’ve just announced the list of hotels that are increasing in category this year, making the price of these hotels go up even further.

Oh, shoot… did I say good news? I meant very bad news. ☠️

How Hyatt works

Hyatt prices its hotels based on “categories,” which range from 1–8 (plus some all-inclusive and other specialty charts).

Based on that category, the price of a hotel is fixed within a certain range.

But once every year, hotels are re-evaluated and can move up or down in category – which changes that pricing range.

And by “up or down,” it usually means up.

This year’s changes

In total, 136 hotels are changing categories, with 112 increasing in price. 😑

You can check out the full list here, but the hits to the U.S. and Europe are particularly rough.

Some highlights include:

• Andaz 5th Avenue New York (Category 7 to 8)

• Hotel du Louvre Paris (Category 7 to 8)

• Hyatt Regency Aruba (Category 7 to 8)

• Park Hyatt London River Thames (Category 7 to 8)

ALL of these hotels are now moving into the highest possible category.

Hyatt is also bumping a number of hotels from Category 4 to Category 5, which means they will no longer be bookable using Free Night Awards from Hyatt credit cards or milestone rewards.

The small silver lining

These changes go into effect on May 20.

But if you book your stays before that date, you’ll lock in the current award pricing even if your stay is months down the line.

That means we have a pretty solid window to transfer points to Hyatt and lock in stays for the rest of the year at lower rates.

For example, those of you who recently picked up this credit card might be sitting on 75,000 UR points right now, which can go REALLY far with Hyatt’s current pricing.

Take the Hyatt Regency Seattle, for example. It often costs around $300 per night, but is bookable for a max of 18,000 points per night… which is a great deal:

Next month, two things will happen:

• This hotel will move up a category, and

• That new category will have a new cap of 35,000 points

In other words… the points price is basically doubling overnight.

And this isn’t a one-off – this is happening at over 100 hotels around the world.

So yeah… I highly, HIGHLY encourage you to poke around the list, transfer some of your UR points to Hyatt while you still can, and lock in some reasonably priced stays.

And if you’re feeling as doomy and gloomy about Hyatt as I am, let’s talk about where you can shift your attention after May:

🏨 The highest-value hotel program

Programs like Hyatt can offer insane value. Fixed award charts mean you can get outsized returns when cash prices are high.

But when devaluations hit, that advantage disappears fast.

Which is why it might be worth looking at a program where the value is… well, fixed.

I’m talking about Accor Live Limitless.

As I’ve mentioned before, Accor points have a fixed value of 2 euro cents each.

That’s roughly 2.3 cents USD, which is pretty solid… especially since you can transfer points from multiple U.S. programs.

The best part? No games.

If a hotel costs €80 per night, it’s 4,000 points.
If it’s €160, it’s 8,000 points.

That’s it. You’re just offsetting the cost at a fixed rate.

But it doesn’t stop there…

You can also use Accor points for things like food and drinks, spa treatments, parking, and more – all at that same fixed value.

I actually did this at an Accor hotel in Benin earlier this year. 👇

I charged a bunch of meals to my room and wiped it out with points at checkout (and then proceeded to almost get murdered by bandits on the Benin-Nigeria highway, but that’s another story).

How to earn Accor points

You can transfer points to Accor from programs like Bilt Rewards, ThankYou points, and Capital One miles.

Now let’s talk about that last one…

The transfer ratio from Capital One to Accor is 2:1. So yes, you’re cutting your points in half.

But because Accor points have a strong fixed value, it can still work out very well.

For example, let’s say you sign up for the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and earn 83,000 miles (75,000 from the welcome offer plus at least 8,000 from meeting the minimum spend requirement).

You could transfer those to Accor and end up with 41,500 Accor points worth a flat €830 (around $974 USD).

That’s enough for a 5-night stay at this Accor property in Tokyo… with over $300 in value left over from just one card’s welcome bonus:

And you know what you don’t have to worry about? Any of these:

• Award availability

• Surprise devaluations

• Complicated award charts

• Dynamic pricing

So if this Hyatt news has you feeling down in the dumps, I get it. But also… don’t be down in the dumps. Stop it. 🙅 

There are still plenty of ways to get great value.

And if you want to go deeper, check out our full guide to Accor Live Limitless.

That’s all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and don’t feel too down about Hyatt.

Ciao,

43.8266° N, 87.6169° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony.