There are many ways to get Hyatt free night certificates. The World of Hyatt card offers a category 1-4 cert each year upon renewal and again when you spend $15K within a calendar year. Additionally, Hyatt offers free night certs as Brand Explorer rewards (when you’ve stayed at 5 different brands); as Milestone Rewards (when you earn 30 elite qualifying nights within a calendar year, you get a category 1-4 cert, and at 60 nights you get a category 1-7 cert); and sometimes as rewards for miscellaneous promotions.
One annoying aspect of these free night certificates is that they seem to be limited to single-night stays. If you search for more than 1 award night at a time, the Hyatt website doesn’t show free night certificates as an option to pay for your stay. Luckily, there’s an easy solution: Pay My Way.
The problem
Normally, to use a free night certificate, you simply log into Hyatt.com, search for a hotel, and check the “use points” box.
With a one-night stay, if you have a free night certificate that is valid for the stay, the search results will show two selections titled “Standard Room Free Night”. The one with the subheading “Free Night” allows you to use your free night certificate. The next is for paying with points:
However, with a multi-night stay, Hyatt won’t show you an option to use your free night certificates, even if you have enough to cover the entire stay.
“Pay My Way” lets you use a Hyatt free night cert on a multi-night stay
The solution to the multi-night problem is simple. Switch to searching for a paid stay. You can do that by ensuring the “Use Points” check box isn’t checked. Once the results come up, select the “Select and Book” button. Click “Member Rate” to get the best cancellation policy. Next to the “Book Now” button, you should see a link to “Use Pay My Way.” Click that:
When you click “Use Pay My Way,” you’ll be given the option to choose how you want to pay for each night of your stay. Here you can choose for each night whether to pay with cash, with free night certificates (titled “Awards”), with points, or with Points + Cash. If you have enough free night certificates, you can pay for the entire stay with those certificates. Or, as shown below, you may choose to pay partly with free night certificates and partly with points.
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This is great! Thank you
Your Facebook post with a link to this post is incorrect. The Facebook post is for the Best Hyatt Category 1-4 Hotels & Resorts.
Downside is flexibility if needing to change later. I usually break my stays up into 1-4 night separate reservations, in case I need to cancel or change parts of it, and I don’t want to lose the availability or rate. I see no upside in combining a FN cert with additional nights on the same reservation.
If you’re planning to rack up incidentals on your stay or you have something like the breakfast benefit with status, it can be a real pain to track charges and credits over multiple days and make sure they get charged or applied correctly. One reservation is always easier to manage than multiple. You’re trading flexibility for simplicity.
A lot of the general points and miles game comes down to “how complicated do you want to make your life?”. This is just another example of that.
If you do it this way and pay one night with a certificate and the others on points or cash, is there any chance you’re allowed to apply a suite upgrade award to the whole reservation? I know that usually you can’t stack a free night award with a suite upgrade award.
nope. Cannot apply a suite upgrade to any booking made with a free night cert. Your best bet would be to split the reservation (putting the free night cert reservation at the beginning or end of your stay) and apply the upgrade instrument to the points reservation. Call the hotel to link the reservations and pry they don’t move you to a different room between reservations.
Thanks for the answer!
This is awesome. I’d love to know the strategy for using multiple free night certificates with Hilton and also multiple fhr bookings.
I called to book a reservation with multiple free night awards before. Even combined them with a night on points.
No kidding? I would not have guessed that. Do you have a strategy with multiple FHRs?
Nothing deep. I’ve got a Surpass and Aspire I generate FNAs with through spend. Can usually net 3 or 4 FNAs within a 12 month period depending on where I’m at within an upgrade / downgrade cycle on each card.
Sorry, my friend I wasn’t clear. When I said FHR I meant the American Express fine hotels and resorts. I have several platinum cards and would like to use those $300 credits back to back but I’ve never really come up with a good way of doing that.
There’s really no trick there with FHR. You simply have to make back to back bookings and really stay on top of tracking your benefits. I totally get that it’s a pain to make the hotel aware of your back to back bookings when you check in and to properly track your credits day to day. I’ve definitely spent some time myself fighting with a front desk to get credits properly applied on the the right days. Sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.
On the plus side, I’ve also had hotels screw up tracking my multiple days in my favor. At one recent stay, I had a hotel bring me an additional welcome gift on the “check-in” day of my second reservation, which they’re not technically supposed to do. Granted, it was just some chocolates and a bottle of middling wine, but still not nothing.
That’s awesome thanks for the advice
[…] This will likely come in handy for all you Hyatt enthusiasts: How to use Hyatt free night certificates on a multi-night stay. […]
Why is this even news? I just make separate reservations. Then tell the hotel when I am checking in that I have another booking the next night. The agent will 99.9% of the time allow me to have the same room.
This way it’s way faster and you don’t have to say anything at check-in saving you more time 🙂
I add my voice in dissent: In addition to the danger of getting a non-refundable rate (h/t to Ryan below), the Pay My Way “feature” does not pop-up for Corporate or Special rates (and may not for Senior etc. — I haven’t checked) and so you are going to pay more for the cash nights just for the “benefit” of access to the Pay My Way grid. Whereas, as per DSK (below), there are real advantages to single night bookings of stays.
Great tutorial! One more tip – select “Member Rate” or “Standard Rate” before selecting “Pay My Way”. If you select “Advance Purchase Rate” or leave at the default “Members Advance Purchase” option, the restrictive cancellation policy (non refundable) seems to apply. Selecting “Member Rate” or “Standard Rate” and then applying points/FNCs in “Pay My Way” seems to apply the typical award cancellation policy (refundable).
Was just coming here to echo this. My dad almost got stuck with a non-cancellable points and certs reservation because he didn’t click a different cash rate to start.
Thanks so much for explaining this!
Can I use. Free Night Certificate to book a Hyatt All Inclusive hotel that is a Category A hotel and only 15,000 points a night?
Unfortunately, no. Currently, the Category 1-4 certificates aren’t applicable to all-inclusives. Only the 1-7 certs.
Pay my way never shows up on my app, doesn’t have to be on a computer?
One other thought that has worked out very well for me when I plan a vacation far in advance. When I expect to earn more cat 1-4 free night certificates in the future, I will book a series of one night stays on separate reservations using points. As I earn more certificates (for example, early in the year I may over a period of a few weeks or months earn a cat 1-4 for having the credit card, a cat 1-4 for $15K spend on the credit card and a cat 1-4 for 30 nights), I will try to make a new reservation for one night using the newly earned certificate, and then cancel the one-night reservation on points and get my points back. That way, as the year progresses, I use up my certificates and get my points refunded. Worst case is if availability on points dries up and the hotel won’t let me substitute a certificate, my vacation plans remain intact. I have done this with Hilton and Marriott as well on stays less than five nights. I have never, ever had to change rooms mid-stay–the only impact (if any) may be to have my keys redone every morning when I go to breakfast.
Very helpful tips! Thanks
Same strategy (book each day individually) on a pre-devaluation booking. If you need to make any changes (e.g., shorten a long trip by a few nights) the entire reservation gets re-priced (higher), so it behooves one to book each night individually (you can always cancel a night and get points back) rather than book under one whole reservation
[…] Been in this hobby for almost three decades and still learning something new: How to use Hyatt free night certs on a multi-night stay. […]
Thank you for this great and useful information! Several times I have used a combination of Free Night Certificates (FNC), Points and even sometimes cash. I always had to call MyHyatt Concierge to get this done correctly (especially when pulling the FNC with the earliest expiration date). This process seems so much easier!! Only one big question…when using PMW to book, does it select and apply the FNC with the earliest expiration date? Especially if you don’t want to use up all of your FNCs on one reservation. I use my FNCs strategically throughout the year. Thank you again for this valuable information!
What I do is I make a dummy booking far in advance using a FNC that I DON’T want to use now (say my 1-7 Cat one) so that it is kept separate before I book using a later date Cat-4 one. Or, if you have multiple 1-4 ones just note the dates then book each one separately (far in advance) and keep track of each separately and cancel as appropriate. Awkward, yes. But sometimes the concierge can make a mistake and I prefer being in control anyway.
Thanks! Great strategy to be 100% certain.