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Update 4/14/23: We’ve just received a response from Hyatt indicating that they plan to honor the original terms of the promotion. Here’s what they said (bolding is mine):
…we are working to ensure that any World of Hyatt member who was registered for Bonus Journeys on or prior to March 20 and had a qualifying stay with a checkout date of March 20 will receive credit toward the Bonus Journeys promotion.
Since this issue was brought to our attention we have been working towards a solution to honor the original FAQ. At the end of the promotion, activity will be reviewed and accounts will be credited by June 15, 2023.
I’m glad to see that Hyatt plans to honor the original wording of this promotion. We’re still not certain why the wording changed (and it could have been an honest mistake) but, regardless, this is the right thing for them to do. It’s probably best to doublecheck your account post-June 15th to make sure that it was applied correctly, but at least we know it’s their intention to make everyone whole according to the original terms that were published.
We’ve talked a lot recently about Hyatt’s latest promotion, particularly now that Bilt has offered a fast track to Globalist status that stacks with the Hyatt promo.
Thank you again for bringing this to our attention. We understand the inconvenience this has caused, and we are working to ensure that any World of Hyatt member who was registered for Bonus Journeys on or prior to March 20 and had a qualifying stay with a checkout date of March 20 will receive credit toward the Bonus Journeys promotion.
Since this issue was brought to our attention we have been working towards a solution to honor the original FAQ (below for reference). At the end of the promotion, activity will be reviewed and accounts will be credited by June 15, 2023. We appreciate your patience while we worked through this.
Unfortunately some readers have recently encountered an issue with the promotion and didn’t earn bonus points for a stay as expected. The reason for that has turned out to be because Hyatt has been shady and changed the terms of the promotion, going against a scenario they’d previously explicitly stated would be eligible.
As a quick reminder, here’s how the latest Hyatt promotion works. You earn 3,000 bonus points for every two nights you stay during the promotion period after your first stay. That first stay can be for only one night and award stays count for both your first stay as well as subsequent stays, along with paid stays. You can also earn 500 bonus points for every two nights you stay in 10 eligible cities.
The promotion is running from March 20 to May 26, 2023, so your first stay has to occur during that time to trigger the bonus point earnings on subsequent stays. After publishing the post about the promotion, a reader asked what would happen if they checked in on March 19 and checked out on March 20 – would that count as the first stay?
Based on past promotions I’d assumed that it would, but you know what they say about assumptions. Thankfully, the Frequently Asked Questions section on Hyatt’s registration page specifically addressed this question, so I replied with the following answer which I’d copied and pasted from that FAQs section.
Yes – the FAQs for the promotion helpfully mention this exact scenario:
9. I have registered for the promotion and have a stay on March 19 with a checkout on March 20, 2023. Will the night count towards the promotion
Yes, Eligible Nights completed between March 20 and May 26, 2023, will count toward the promotion. This would count as the first stay needed to start earning. However, it will not earn Bonus Points.
Perfect, so any stay booked for the night of March 19 where you check out the following day would count as the first stay needed for the promo. It’s there in black and white on Hyatt’s own website. Case closed.
Sadly not.
A few days ago we started getting reports of people who didn’t earn bonus points on a Hyatt stay conducted after a first stay on the night of March 19. At least one reader reached out to Hyatt to query this and received the following reply from Hyatt:
Thank you. The bonus points start with the second eligible stay after registration within the dates of 3/20/2023 and 5/26/2023, the stay checking out on 3/20 does not qualify. ~ Christi
That seemed strange as I was sure that their website had explicitly stated that a stay checking out on March 20 would count. When checking the FAQs section again, I noticed it said the following:
9. I have registered for the promotion and have a stay on March 19 with a checkout on March 21, 2023. Will the night count towards the promotion
Yes, Eligible Nights completed between March 20 and May 26, 2023, will count toward the promotion as the stay includes the night of March 20, which is within the stay period. This would count as the first stay needed to start earning. However, it will not earn Bonus Points.
As you can see, the wording now says if you checked in on March 19 you’d have to check out on March 21, not March 20. Here’s a screenshot of that new wording on their site on April 11:
If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed that Hyatt had always displayed that wording. However, I knew for sure that I’d copied and pasted different wording to reply to a reader back in February when registration for this latest Bonus Journeys promotion first opened.
Just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I plugged the registration page URL into the Wayback Machine. Their most recent copy of that page is from March 2 (you can find it here) and sure enough, the FAQs section does display the original wording that explicitly states that a stay the night of March 19 is eligible:
That means that at some point in the last few weeks Hyatt has updated that page to completely contradict what they’d previously advised World of Hyatt members. As a result, anyone who stayed with Hyatt after having completed a stay on the night of March 19 will earn zero points for that second stay because Hyatt has now changed its mind and decided that it’ll be classed as the member’s first stay during the promotion period.
That’s a truly awful stance for Hyatt to take. It would be one thing if the wording on the registration page was previously unclear and they added a section to ensure members knew exactly what would and wouldn’t be eligible. That’s not the case in this scenario though. For at least nine days (and likely longer than that) when they got the most coverage from travel sites sharing details about the promotion, the FAQs were 100% clear that staying on the night of March 19 and checking out on March 20 would count as a member’s first stay. At some point since then they decided not to honor that and quietly sneaked in the contradictory terms.
Yesterday we reached out to the Hyatt rep who’d originally provided details of the promotion and who’d previously answered some other questions we had about the promo, asking what could be done for members who followed Hyatt’s guidelines to the letter, only to encounter this subsequent bait and switch. We’ve not heard back from them yet, so we’ll update this post if and when we receive a reply.
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Honestly, Hyatt has been horrible about this issue. They were crediting people immediately with the issue but they refuse to do so now. They want me to wait 2 more months to receive the points I rightfully earned last month. Such bullshit. Hyatt really pissing me off with this promotion
The night of Mar 19th was the last night of an earlier promotion sent to many of us, 1500 pts/night for 10 nights (promotion varied the pts and number of nights but I think not the date). . Maybe that’s why there was a snag.
Stephen, same theme with Hyatt, slightly different subject.
Today I saw something for the first time with Hyatt. At the Baha Mar in Nassau, Bahamas, noticed that Hyatt charges a Resort Fee and a Service Fee. Hyatt advertises that Globalists get Resort and Destination Fees taken off the bill. Apparently Service Fees are not taken off. Its just a relabeling of a fee. Seems underhanded to me. Not the way I would expect Hyatt to treat their better customers.
I hope I’m interpreting the bonus journeys terms correctly. So after the initial stay, if I stay 5 nights in one stay, then 3 nights in another stay, I should get 12k points, correct? In other words the “every 2 nights”, is total, not per stay? I hope so, otherwise I just bonvoyed myself at Hyatts, which would be quite a feat.
Yes, that’s correct – 12k points – as you get 3k bonus points for every 2 nights you stay in the promotion period regardless of whether those are consecutive nights or not.
Thank you Tim and Stephen. Really appreciate all that you two are doing… you guys are basically holding the site together these days. Thanks!
Exact same thing happened to me for the 3/20 stay. Will be contacting them. Thank you, Stephen.
I have the same question about the wording of the start date for the Bilt offer. If stays are credited on the check out date (4/17), does that stay count towards the 10/20 night status challenge?
Thank you for this info. I reached out to the Globalist line and they credited me immediately and even let me know that my next stay I should receive another 6000 points. I have a 3 night stay and a past night leftover should count if not I am to callback and ask for the points and the note is in my acct. Don’t give up. Concierge said they know all about this.
Happened to me as well. I sent an email to worldofhyatt at hyatt dot com on 4/12/23 explaining the situation, and they credited the bonus points I was seeking on 4/13/23.
I also am in the same situation where I did not get points credited after having a stay on 3/19, checking out 3/20. I called in and was told to wait 2-4 weeks before calling back. I will call back again, but would appreciate any updates here.
Hilarious username.
My points were manually credited to me immediately by my concierge. I bet another CS agent would do the same for you.
I am not Globalist, but was able to have those points credited via Chat. It was actually much easier than I anticipated.
Not that it makes a difference, but I would bet (a small amount of) money that this is down to either miscommunication between management and IT or simple programmer error. They probably meant to have the original terms implemented but what they got was a checkout date greater than 3/20, not greater than or equal to 3/20.
And, instead of fixing it, they decided it would be cheaper to simply handle the calls as they came in.
Always test your edge cases, kids, even if they seem obvious or trivial.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. Hyatt was also super shaddy with a corporate fast-track status promotion I registered for last year. The Ts&Cs stated that after the first stay, trial Explorist status would be granted for 90 days and to keep this status until Feb 2024, a total of 10 nights had to be earned within the 90 day period. After staying the required 10 nights within the eligible 90-day period, I noticed that the expiry date of my Explorist status did not extended. After reaching out to Hyatt on multiple occasions and escalating the issue to an Advanced Guest Care Agent within the Consumer Affairs Dept, I was firmly told that the promotion expired a few days prior to my last stay so those nights would not count, even though they were earned within the eligible 90-day period and the promotion expiry date was never disclosed in the Ts&Cs. I’m pretty angry about this since I wasted a significant sum of money paying for a stay that should have counted towards the promotion. Hyatt can’t be trusted in my opinion and I will stick with Marriott and IHG going forward for my future personal and business hotel bookings.
I checked out first stay on 3/20 and stayed another three night after that. Of course I did not receive the bonus points. I inquired a week or so ago, was told it would take up to 10 days to receive the bonus after the stay. Obviously it did not happen. I asked again yesterday, they told me the first stay did not count under T&C. I saw this article today, and sent them the original T&C, they finally credited me 3000 bonus points. But they still owe me one night of bonus and I am sure it won’t automatically credit with another stay. I was told to contact them again at the end of the promotion if they need to adjust further. Hyatt was being sneaky and that was very disappointing for loyal customers. They should provide some additional compensation to make it right, but instead they are still trying to make it difficult for its customers. The number 1 goal for a loyalty program is to foster loyalty, not destroy it. Someone at Hyatt should lose his/her job for this.
I had this exact scenario: I had a one night stay checking out 3/20/23 that I had booked before the promo. The night did not initially trigger the promo but I reached out to Hyatt customer service and they fixed it for me
I have different experience. Had 1 night stay on 3/30 in Milan then 3 nights in Venice and 3 nights in Florence.
Only credited 1 3000 bonus points
Chatted with Twitter concierge, that my Milan stay is missing causing me to miss out on 6000 points. They can’t find my Milan stay. Gave them my confirmation. Nothing found. “Escalated” to another team.. hmmm