Hyatt devaluation deep dive

Hyatt’s devastating devaluation, along with its annual depressing category changes, is scheduled to slam us on May 20th. Now that we have complete award chart details (found here), I analyzed the changes to find out just how bad the future World of Hyatt may be. The good news is that I found a few (very few) bright spots in this bleak new landscape…

What’s changing? What’s not?

Changing

• 3-tier to 5-tier award pricing: In the old system, award pricing was based on a three-tier system: off-peak, standard, and peak. With the new system, there will be five tiers: lowest, low, moderate, upper, and top.
• Increased award prices: With few exceptions, middle and top award prices will increase. You’ll find much more information about this in the analysis below.
• Wider range between the lowest and highest price tiers: Previously, award prices for standard hotel rooms varied by at most 10,000 points (e.g., Category 8 hotels ranged from 35K to 45K). Now, award prices for standard hotel rooms will vary by up to 40,000 points (e.g., Category 8 hotels will range from 35K to 75K per night).

Staying the same

• Category-based Award Charts: Hyatt will continue to categorize hotels into 8 numbered categories (1-8) and to categorize all-inclusive hotels into 6 alphabetic categories (1-6). Award prices will continue to be determined primarily by the hotel’s category and secondarily by the new pricing tiers (lowest, low, moderate, upper, and top).
• Three sets of award charts: Hyatt continues to maintain separate award charts for Hotels, All-Inclusive Resorts, and Miraval Resorts.
• Points + Cash Awards: Hyatt will still price Points + Cash awards in the same way as before: The points component requires half the points of a regular free night, and the cash component requires half the cash of a regular paid night.
• Room upgrades on paid nights: Hyatt will continue to charge the same number of points for upgrades:
  • Club upgrade: 3K points per night
  • Standard suite upgrade: 6K points per night
  • Premium suite upgrade: 9K points per night
• Free night certificates: Free night certificates will still be usable at any hotel within the categories allowed by the certificate, regardless of whether the hotel is

Methodology

Three-tier comparison

With Hyatt moving from 3 to 5 pricing tiers for each category, it’s impossible to compare the award charts column by column. Instead, I decided to compare new vs. old based on the lowest, middle, and highest prices. Here’s how the tiers line up with this approach:

By comparing old vs. new in this way, I ignored two of the new pricing tiers: “Low” and “Upper.” On the high end, this means that I looked at the worst possible outcome with the new charts, whereas on the low end, I looked at the best possible outcome. There are other reasonable ways to do this comparison, but I believe this option is as good as any.

Three sets of award charts

Hyatt continues to offer separate award charts for Hotels, All-Inclusive Resorts, and Miraval Resorts. My analysis included all of these charts. Within Hotels and All-Inclusive Resorts, the charts are further broken down by Standard Room, Club, Standard Suite, and Premium Suite. I compared all of these chart variations except Club.

Findings

• Bad News:
  • Across all charts, the largest devaluations occur at the highest prices. In other words, new Top pricing tends to be significantly higher than old Peak pricing.
  • With most categories, the Middle price for a standard room increases by 25% or more.
  • With many categories, the Highest prices for a standard room increase by 50% or more.
  • The highest price for a Miraval standard room with single occupancy has jumped by 50% (other Miraval increases are significantly less extreme).
• Good News:
  • Across all charts, the new Lowest Price is almost always the same or slightly lower than the old Lowest Price.
  • Suite pricing shows less inflation than standard rooms for both hotels and all-inclusive resorts.
  • Premium suites have the least inflation overall. In many cases with the new charts, the price for a premium suite is only slightly higher than a standard suite.
  • Most Miraval price increases are modest (except at the Highest prices)

Award Charts: Hotels

Standard Room Award Chart Changes

Standard room pricing gets worse the farther to the right you get on the new charts:

• Lowest Price: The new lowest price is always at least as low as the old lowest price.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages 25% higher than the old. The worst new middle prices are for category 4 (33% increase) and category 8 (38% increase). The only category with less than a 20% increase was category 7 (17%).
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages a whopping 48% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is category 8 (67%). Categories 2 (58%), 5 (52%), and 7 (57%) are also particularly bad.

Standard Suite Award Chart Changes

Standard suites follow the same ugly pattern as standard rooms (where the devaluation gets worse towards the right of the chart), but the devaluation here is not as extreme as with standard rooms:

• Fixed differential from standard rooms: The difference in price between suites and standard rooms hasn’t changed at all. For example, category 3 standard suites cost 8K more than category 3 standard rooms. That’s the same in both the old and new charts:
  • Price difference compared to standard room, by category:
    1. 3K
    2. 5K
    3. 8K
    4. 9K
    5. 12K
    6. 15K
    7. 18K
    8. 21K
• Lowest Price: The new lowest price is always at least as low as the old lowest price.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages 16% higher than the old. The worst new middle prices are for category 4 (21% increase) and category 8 (25% increase). The smallest increase is in category 7 (10%).
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages 32% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is category 8 (45%). Categories 2 (38%), 5 (34%), and 7 (38%) are also particularly bad.

Premium Suite Award Chart Changes

Overall, Premium Suites appear to be one of the few bright spots in the new award charts since most of the premium suite pricing hasn’t increased much:

• New Fixed differential from standard rooms: In the old charts, premium suites are priced at twice the rate of standard rooms. In the new charts, there is instead a fixed number of points per category that are required above the cost of a standard room. For example, in the new chart, category 3 premium suites always cost 10K points more than category 3 standard rooms.
  • New award chart, price difference compared to standard room, by category:
    1. 5K
    2. 7K
    3. 10K
    4. 12K
    5. 15K
    6. 20K
    7. 25K
    8. 35K
• Lower premium over standard suites. Price differences between premium suites and standard suites are much lower than before.
  • New award chart, price difference compared to standard suite, by category:
    1. 2K
    2. 2K
    3. 2K
    4. 3K
    5. 3K
    6. 5K
    7. 7K
    8. 14K
• Lowest Price: With category 1 premium suites, the lowest price has increased by 1,000 points per night. For all other categories, the new lowest price is at or below the old lowest price.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages only 5% higher than the old. The worst new middle prices are for category 1 (10% increase) and category 8 (13% increase). Categories 5, 6, and 7 keep the old middle price.
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages 9% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is category 8 (22%). Categories 2 and 7 also have double-digit percentage increases (16% and 14%, respectively).

Award Charts: All-Inclusive Resorts

All-Inclusive Standard Room Award Chart Changes

Once again, standard room pricing gets worse the farther to the right you get on the new charts:

• Lowest Price: With category F, the lowest price has increased by 3,000 points per night. For all other categories, the new lowest price is at or below the old lowest price.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages 27% higher than the old. The worst new middle prices are category A (33% increase), category E (38%), and category F (30% increase). The only category with less than a 20% increase is category D (17%).
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages a whopping 50% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is category E (67%). Categories B (52%), D (57%), and F (47%) are also particularly bad.

All-Inclusive Standard Suite Award Chart Changes

Standard suites follow the same ugly pattern as standard rooms (where the devaluation gets worse towards the right of the chart), but the devaluation here is not as extreme as with standard rooms:

• Fixed differential from standard rooms: The difference in price between suites and standard rooms hasn’t changed at all. For example, category C standard suites cost 15K more than category 3 standard rooms. That’s the same in both the old and new charts.
• Lowest Price: The new lowest price is always at least as low as the old lowest price.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages 15% higher than the old. The worst new middle prices are for category A (21% increase) and category E (25% increase). The smallest increase is in category F (8%).
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages 31% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is category E (45%). In particular, categories B (34%) and D (38%) are particularly bad.

All-Inclusive Premium Suite Award Chart Changes

Overall, Premium Suites appear to be one of the few bright spots in the new award charts since most of the premium suite pricing hasn’t increased much:

• New Fixed differential from standard rooms: In the old charts, premium suites are priced at twice the rate of standard rooms. In the new charts, there is instead a fixed number of points per category that are required above the cost of a standard room. For example, in the new chart, category C premium suites always cost 20K points more than category C standard rooms.
• Lower premium over standard suites. Price differences between premium suites and standard suites are much lower than before.
• Lowest Price: The new lowest price is always at least as low as the old lowest price.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages only 3% higher than the old. Most categories show no change at all. The categories that increase in price are category A (7%) and category E (13%)
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages 9% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is category E (22%).

Award Charts: Miraval Resorts

Miraval price increases are modest except for the highest prices:

• Lowest Price: The new lowest price remains the same for single occupancy but increases by 2,500 points for double-occupancy rooms.
• Middle Price: The new middle price averages 10% higher than the old. Within room types, the increase ranges from 8% to 13%.
• Highest Price: The new highest price averages 29% higher than the old. The worst increase overall is for the standard room, single occupancy (50% increase).

Conclusion

When booking standard rooms starting May 20th, we’ll pay significantly more points than before, except in rare cases where hotels are priced at the lowest level. In a way, this makes free night certificates more valuable, since they should work regardless of a hotel’s price level, as long as the hotel is in a category the certificate allows.

Standard Suite prices are slightly less inflated, but only because Hyatt has kept the same pricing scheme as before: standard suites cost a fixed number of points (which varies only by category) above standard rooms. Since there hasn’t been an increase in this differential, the devaluation hits standard suites a bit less than standard rooms.

The one surprise bright spot in the new award charts is how little Premium Suite pricing has increased. In fact, in many cases, premium suites will now cost only a few thousand points per night more than Standard Suites. Going forward, if you were planning to splurge for a Standard Suite, it may make sense to go all the way up to a Premium Suite, when available.

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