It’s been a few hours since Hyatt’s award chart changes went live, so it’s now possible to start getting a gauge on quite how bad—or not—these changes have been.
Based on a relatively small sample size, I’m (in a mild way) pleasantly surprised so far by what I’ve seen. While there are inevitable increases for some nights, there are more nights than I was expecting where pricing has either stayed the same or dropped.
I took screenshots last night of award pricing at a number of popular Hyatt properties, then did the same again today in order to be able to do a before and after side-by-side comparison. I picked hotels that are in different categories and looked at pricing in different months in order to get a better sense of how the award chart changes are being implemented.
As a reminder before we proceed, here’s what award pricing will look like from now on for a standard room:
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong
July 2026 pricing before award chart changes:
July 2026 pricing after award chart changes:
This property is one of the examples where the results are better than I’d expected. The Grand Hyatt Hong Kong is a category 6 property and July previously had a mix of off-peak (21K points) and standard (25K points) award nights.
I’d expected the standard nights to map across to ‘Moderate’ pricing which is the middle tier of pricing, thus would be 30K points per night. However, that hasn’t happened; all the standard nights in July have been mapped across to ‘Low’ pricing which means they’ve remained exactly the same at 25K points per night.
The off-peak awards meanwhile have mapped to ‘Lowest’, so they’ve dropped slightly from 21K points per night to 20K.
Grand Hyatt Kauai
January 2027 pricing before award chart changes:
January 2027 pricing after award chart changes:
The Grand Hyatt Kauai is a very popular Hyatt property and, having stayed there in December 2024, it’s not hard to see why. It’s a beautiful property in a great location with excellent service.
You’ll sadly have to pay more for that privilege now though. When checking pricing for January 2027 before the award chart changes, there was a mix of standard and peak pricing. On the plus side, standard pricing that month has been mapped across to ‘Low’ in the new chart rather than ‘Moderate’, while peak dates have mapped across to ‘Moderate’ rather than ‘Upper’ or ‘Top’. That’s where the good news ends though, because prices have still risen for those dates by 5K or 10K per night.
You might notice that there’s a difference in award availability for January between the before and after screenshots. I don’t think Hyatt has reduced availability at this property following the award chart changes; instead, I suspect it’s that this hotel was a popular option for people making bookings late last night after I’d taken these screenshots.
Hyatt Centric The Liberties Dublin
December 2026 pricing before award chart changes:
December 2026 pricing after award chart changes:
This is a great hotel in the heart of Dublin’s Golden Triangle whiskey district. My wife and I stayed there in the past and we’re hoping to visit again in a few months. I was therefore curious what pricing would look like post-changes and picked the month of December which, admittedly, isn’t necessarily a wonderful month to visit Ireland weather-wise.
The Hyatt Centric is a category 5 hotel and had a mix of off-peak, standard, and peak pricing for December. Those dates appear to have mapped across to Lowest, Low, and Moderate respectively which is probably the best that could be hoped for.
That means that dates that were formerly off-peak are now slightly cheaper (17K versus 15K), standard dates are the same (20K), and peak dates are slightly more expensive (23K versus 25K). If you’re looking to visit in December and have some flexibility with your stay dates, you’d actually be able to redeem fewer points now than you would previously if you pick the ‘Lowest’ dates.
Hyatt Place Sterling-Dulles Airport-North
November 2026 pricing before award chart changes:
November 2026 pricing after award chart changes:
I picked this property to compare pricing because it’s one of an ever-decreasing selection of category 1 Hyatt hotels in the US. I picked November partly because it could be a good option if you need an end-of-year mattress run to earn Globalist status and partly because there were numerous days that month that were previously off-peak and so were formerly only 3,500 points per night.
I thought Hyatt might map those nights over to ‘Low’ pricing, thereby making them 4,500 points per night, but that’s not happened: formerly off-peak dates were mapped to ‘Lowest’ which means their pricing decreased to 3K points per night.
Standard nights that month mapped to ‘Low’ which meant those too dropped by 500 points per night from 5K to 4,500, while peak nights also dropped 500 points as they mapped from peak (6,500) to ‘Moderate’ (6K). All-in-all, very good news. I haven’t checked to see if that’s the case for every single month, but for November at least it’s positive. I did glance at December’s pricing and saw that there were many 3K nights available that month too.
Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile
February 2027 pricing before award chart changes:
February 2027 pricing after award chart changes:
If you’d like to visit the City of Love (and the City of Light) in the month of Valentine’s Day, award pricing at the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile is pretty good, although Valentine’s Day is already booked up.
Award nights for February 2027 were previously all off-peak or standard. Off-peak has mapped to ‘Lowest’ and so, similar to the Hyatt Centric Dublin The Liberties, has dropped from 17K per night to 15K. Standard nights mapped to ‘Low’, so those have remained at 20K.
Hyatt Ziva Cancun
March 2027 pricing before award chart changes:
March 2027 pricing after award chart changes:
Hyatt has been increasing its all-inclusive portfolio in recent years, so I figured it’d be worth checking pricing for at least one of their all-inclusives.
The Hyatt Ziva Cancun was at peak pricing for the entirety of the month of March, so 58K points per night previously. Thankfully Hyatt has mapped those dates to ‘Moderate’ rather than ‘Upper’ or ‘Top’, but it nonetheless means pricing has increased to 65K points per night.
Thompson Central Park New York
October 2026 pricing before award chart changes:
October 2026 pricing after award chart changes:
Last but not least, here’s a comparison for the Thompson Central Park New York. Pricing was previously at peak rates for the entirety of the month of October 2026. Once again, Hyatt has mapped that to the middle of the road ‘Moderate’ rate rather than ‘Upper’ or ‘Top’, but also once again that’s nonetheless led to an increase in pricing, albeit only going up from 29K points per night to 30K.
Other thoughts
Based on what I’ve seen so far, this is about as good as we could’ve hoped for. It looks like in many cases Hyatt has mapped things across so that pricing is still somewhat similar to before, even if it means that hotels that were previously at peak pricing are now at ‘Moderate’ rather than ‘Upper’ or ‘Top’. At the lower end, in all the instances of hotels that previously had off-peak pricing that I looked at, those have mapped to ‘Lowest’ rather than ‘Low’ which means that pricing for those nights has dropped a little.
As mentioned earlier, the examples above are just a small sample size. I’ve checked pricing for my existing reservations and in most cases the pricing is either the same or slightly lower; in the latter instance, Hyatt will proactively be giving a points rebate for the difference. In one or two cases the pricing would slightly increase if I was to rebook which seems to be because those dates that were formerly standard have mapped over to moderate.
Needless to say though, YMMV depending on which properties you’re looking at and which dates you want to stay. I imagine there’ll be numerous properties where pricing has increased compared to before.
While the implementation of these changes is (sort of) good news for now, it does give Hyatt a lot of leeway for jacking up prices in the future by moving nights up by one or more pricing tiers. For example, by making many formerly peak nights Moderate, it gives them the flexibility to move those up to Upper or Top. If that does happen, that’ll have a big impact on the value that can be achieved in the World of Hyatt program.
For now though, I’m counting my blessings that the changes that I’ve seen so far represent a tremor rather than a seismic shift.
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This devaluation is awful. I know you want to make money from chase referrals, but please just present accurate information.
If there is a travel blog/company that doesn’t bias its reporting for partnership income reasons, it’s Frequent Miler. This is a bit of a low blow and unfair accusation. You can see the data above, it matches my own findings.
There ARE hotspots that have skyrocketed – mostly Japan, in my searches. Much higher points prices for some hotels. There also seems to be some IT problems causing some hotels to simply not show any points availability at all, but I think now this is an IT error as I see most hotels still have availability, just some are glitching out. hyatt.com as a whole is completely down so I think they are finally fixing this (I hope)
I agree that your comments are unfair. Stephen presented a wealth of data to support his conclusions and you provided nothing. FWIW, my personal experience with 20 future reservations totally supports his conclusions. If you disagree with him, how about providing some thoughtfulness and data in your response?
I suspect (and you can kind of see this in your examples) the revenue managers just haven’t changed their revenue buckets yet.
Low/normal/peak are just 1-3 and 4/5 are basically unused still. Once the hotels update their buckets it’d be worth revisiting to see how it changes.
Bloggers need to STOP excusing devaluations by saying “Oh, its not so bad.” Yes it is. Just stop it already. The same nonsense was spewed everywhere about Alaska’s massive devaluations, but truth is, they massively devalued.
But how would they make money!??
Think of the poor bloggers!
Over at Thrifty Traveler they have a decidedly different take. Spoiler alert, they think it’s worse than expected. Interesting how two travel blogs can come up with such different views.
It’s not worse than expected — at least not yet. They based their decision almost solely on award levels at category 8 hotels. I’m a Globalist, and have never stayed at a Category 8 hotel. Why would I? Who could possibly gin up enough points to do so, and why would they? At that point, I might as well put the money to a down payment on a house.
Because Thrifty Traveler is typically less bias and more honest than most other blogs.
I’m sure Greg or Nick or maybe even Stephen will reply with their usual “ermm actually” defensive reply but there definitely is a bias here and pattern of tolerating and even slightly justifying devaluations from FM.
They will call it being optimistic, with lukewarm criticisms. I call it excusing bad consumer practices by these companies. To each their own.
Did you even read their post? Sure, worse for Category 8 but everything else was fine…
Just think of it as the Nigel Tufnel award chart. Previously they had 8 categories, but now it goes to 11 (55,000, 65,000, and 75,000 being categories 9, 10, and 11). They haven’t filled them in too much, but as cash rates rise the modal “column” will shift right from Low/Moderate to High/Top. They’re replacing the headroom they previously had (shifting categories) with new headroom (shifting columns).
From the comments about which hotels are actually touching the new categories it sounds like Hyatt is doing what I think the FM team expected — trying to cut out the cases in which it was costing them 4, 5, or 6 cents to “service” each point. Someone mentioned the Vendome at 75,000 points is *still* yielding more than 2 cpp in value which is still *above* the FM RRV for these points.
Did we ever learn whether the hotels or World of Hyatt is the one that sets the day-by-day points levels?
Yes, Hyatt sets the points rates, not the hotels. The hotels have no control other than playing games with classifying standard rooms as non-standard rooms and setting minumum night requirements. The hotels are actually very happy in the instances when each point costs Hyatt 5+ cents. It means they get huge reimbursements from Hyatt.
Assuming that these high cpp nights are when occupancy is high (reasonable), I think the hotels would still prefer cash customers.
100% of the Average Daily Rates is better than 90-95% of the Average Daily Rate!
Hotels receive 100% ADR when occupancy exceeds 95%.
I don’t think this is universally true.
This is how it used to work, but no more. Hyatt announced that the hotels will be setting points rates themselves, going forward.
Nigel Tufnel!! That is perfect! They couldn’t have “off-peak,” “peak” and then just add “even peakier peak.” So they did this instead.
How long does it take for Hyatt to refund points if property went down in price? Hasn’t happened automatically for me yet.
Change your room type. Wait a day. Change back to your original room type. Might work.
I called and had them do it manually since my points didn’t get refunded automatically. Took just a few minutes.
Everyone should chill. There will always be some ways to find deals. I’m spending 558,000 points on Hyatt stays in 2026, but if I cannot do it, I’ll pivot to another opportunity. Have fun, it’s just a hobby, y’all!
More like a fissure… less geological, more medical…
Aneurism, anyone?
will be the RRV be recalculated based on the new data?
Yes, I imagine we’ll be doing that once Gondola has had a chance to gather the data.
I’ll bet you it doesn’t change by more than two tenths of a cent.
Sounds about right to me. Likely moving from 1.7 to 1.4-1.5.
Park Hyatt Paris is a bloodbath, some nights in summer this year are at 75k points lol
I agree. On the other hand, one will still be getting 2 cents a point, or slightly over. Just a reminder of the deal we were getting previously, assuming one valued staying there. Which I do. Or did.
Got mine booked for July before the devaluation, safe to say I’m not going to go back there for 75k though, too many new places to visit then repeat the old places, and for that price no thanks.
Zut alors! C’est de la merde.
I booked a few days ago at 40,000 points. My dates are now 65,000 points.
The most expensive hotels seem to be hit the hardest (like many in Japan). But overall I agree with Pepper this is less bad than I expected. And some hotels even in Japan remain within reach. Hotels themselves are setting redemption rates going forward according to Hyatt, so it’s not too surprising it varies by hotel.
For those who remember when Marriott changed from simple categories to low-medium-high and then ultimately to fully dynamic pricing, everyone was waiting for the worst. But, the worst didn’t happen . . . immediately. And, like the lobster in the pot, we were lulled into complacency. And, here we are.
Given the Hyatt CEO’s comments about its loyalty program members (at a hospitality conference in Germany a couple months ago), anyone who thinks “oh, it’s not so bad” is in denial of what is likely to come. Like Marriott, not immediately. But, eventually. The contempt expressed about loyalty program members is what it is.
Certainly, take advantage of what you can. But, when Hyatt finally goes full dynamic, you should have already developed your plan B.
What did he say at this conference?
Mind you, he was about loyalty program members as a whole and not just hobbyists. He was talking to other executives at other hotel organizations. In short, members “disrespect the loyalty that (the hotels) give to them,” that members are unappreciative, and the only thing that members care about is points. In toto, there was a tone of foreboding, similar to what Michael Corleone said: “If you want to do business with me, I’ll do business with you.” I couldn’t help but think that the Great Reckoning had started.
Ed Bastian (Delta’s CEO) wanted to “rip the band-aid off” . . . to make planned changes quickly. It backfired. In comments afterwards, he said that the sum total of changes would still happen . . . they’d just be gradual. The take-away was that Marriott’s lobster in the pot approach was the right way.
Economist Adam Smith tells us that out-sized value ultimately doesn’t persist. Things ultimately gravitate to similar average pricing within an industry. Certainly, diamonds in the rough will be found in every program. In a way, it’s surprising that Hyatt held out this long.
Agreed. The mildness of the changes convinced me to go for one more year of Globalist, but I don’t anticipate the benevolence to last much beyond that!
I canceled one of my insufficient points bookings because the price went down (category 3) and you can’t apply suite upgrade awards to an insufficient points booking. I’ll rebook when I have the points.
I have 2 Category 5 stays I had booked (one at HC The Liberties in the summer.) Each of those stays had at least 1 night increase by 2k, and the others stayed the same. Another stay I was considering (category 2) went down.
One down side to the changes – I live in FL and the last few Category 2s in my area were changed to 3s. So blowing points on a mattress run starts to seem increasingly more frivolous.
I was able to rebook a Cat 2 property I booked last night and save 500 points. You see the current price when you look at your bookings but when you look at Points Activity you can see how much you spent on a given property.
It’s worth checking your upcoming stays to see if you have save a few points. All of my other bookings this year were the same or went up.
Thanks for mentioning this. I too, seem to notice this and found the prior price I paid by looking at my prior points activity. Although the “devaluation” is not as bad as I had feared (I don’t often stay at top tier hotels), Boo on Hyatt for not automatically refunding the points for hotels that went down in cost BUT did NOT change their hotel category. Yes, Hyatt said that hotels that change categories if the hotel point cost is lower they would automatically refund your points to cover the difference, but apparently they did not do this for hotels that went down but did NOT change its category.
If you can write code to automatically refund points for those that change categories and go down, you could have done the same for those that did not change category!!!
Did Frequent Miler think all the changes would come at once?
We all know Hyatt will likely introduce the changes gradually to soften the impact.
Yeah probably need to circle back after a few days at least.
Circle back? No need to follow-up or touch-base, we just need to close the loop and pivot away from Hyatt. (Did I miss any opportunities for adding in corporate-speak?)
“We all know” lol
Read the comments on the previous post. Everyone was freaking out as if a meteor were about to hit Earth.
Made three bookings prior to the devaluation: 7Pines Ibiza in August, Zoetry Los Cabos in late October, and Grand Hyatt Kauai in January (4-5 nights each). Ibiza- no change, Los Cabos- up 10k points, Kauai up 50k points. Spent about 500k in Hyatt points, the changes resulted in a slightly more than 10% increase in required points if rebooked. Not too bad, but lots of variability.