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Hyatt has launched its Points Calendar which allows you to see award pricing on a month-by-month basis at a glance. This is good in theory, but there are some parts of its execution which aren’t ideal.
It’s easy to find the points calendar for any given property. When doing a search at a hotel, you’ll see ‘Points Calendar’ listed just below its address. This link is displayed no matter whether you’re searching for paid or award nights.
Clicking ‘Points Calendar’ opens the calendar in a new tab. Unsurprisingly, the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque is at peak pricing during the 2022 International Balloon Fiesta. With it being a category 1 property though, even at peak pricing it’s only 6,500 points per night which is still great value versus paid prices.
What was disappointing was seeing the ratio of off-peak to peak pricing. From March 1, 2022 (when off-peak/standard/peak pricing kicks in) to the end of the calendar, only 6 nights at the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque are off-peak, whereas a whopping (in comparison) 58 nights are peak-priced.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this property goes up a category the next time Hyatt adjusts category levels which might be one reason they’re taking advantage of peak pricing in the meantime. I love Albuquerque (we’ve spent about a month there this year at different times), but outside of the International Balloon Fiesta I can’t really think of any reason why peak pricing would be justified on so many of those 58 nights.
I was apprehensive that this kind of pricing discrepancy might end up being widespread, but it doesn’t look like that’s necessarily the case. One popular award redemption is for the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa. That’s a category 7 property and so costs 30,000 points per night for standard pricing.
When checking out the Points Calendar for this hotel, I was pleased to see that a significant number of nights are available at the off-peak price and so it only costs 25,000 points per night on those dates. From March 1, 2022 through the end of the calendar, 30 nights were at peak pricing (35,000 points) but 84 nights were off-peak. That’s a much better situation than with the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque, but perhaps a larger number of nights from late November 2022 to the end of February 2023 will be at peak pricing which would balance things out.
What’s To Like
There are a couple of features to like about this new Points Calendar. For starters, being able to see at a glance what award pricing will be like over the course of a month for a property is useful.
Secondly, they’ve helpfully highlighted which dates are off-peak. However, that leads on to one of the things I don’t like about the Points Calendar.
What’s Not To Like
While it’s nice having off-peak dates highlighted which makes them easily identifiable, it’s not so easy identifying peak dates. That’s because both standard and peak pricing dates are presented in exactly the same way.
Off-Peak is labeled ‘Off-Peak’ and the box is green, but standard and peak are both in plain white boxes and only say ‘Points’ below the figure – peak dates don’t state ‘Peak’. While I can understand Hyatt not wanting to highlight situations where there’s a significant number of peak nights in a month, I’d been hopeful that off-peak, standard and peak dates would all be more clearly differentiated. The fact that for six of the eight category levels standard prices begin with the same number as peak prices (15,000/18,000, 20,000/23,000, 30,000/35,000, etc.) presumably means Hyatt is hoping many guests will miss the fact that there’s a sometimes substantial difference in prices on their dates.
Another problem with the Points Calendar is that the award pricing displayed in the calendar doesn’t necessarily mean that there are any awards bookable – it just means that those are what the prices would be if there were award nights available. That’s a little disappointing but I guess it’s in keeping with how Hyatt displays awards on the main search results page.
For example, let’s say you search for an award stay in San Diego for New Year’s Eve this year (this is before off-peak/peak pricing kicks in, but it works for the purpose of this illustration). It shows the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort as being bookable from only 25,000 points.
However, if you click through to book an award it shows that there’s no award availability after all. That makes it seem like the Points Calendar is working on that same basis where it looks like there could be award nights available even when there aren’t when you actually go to book a stay.
Overall, Hyatt’s Points Calendar is a great feature to have, but be sure to double check how many points will be charged and be prepared for no availability after clicking through to actually book an award.
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What about free night awards? For example I can see quite a few nights in the next few weeks at the Ventana Big Sur, Cat 7, at 30,000 points but ZERO that will take the Cat-7 Free night award for 60 nights as a Globalist.
I think this Peak/Off Peak pricing should be called what it is – a devaluation. To say it’s better than Marriott is not anything to be happy about.
Free night awards are not affected at all by the peak/off-peak pricing. Hyatt’s certs are category based. If the hotel is category 7 and there’s a standard room available, you should be able to use the free night cert even if the hotel is peak priced. If that’s not showing up for you, I recommend contacting Hyatt Concierge on Twitter.
Thanks, Greg. This hotel seems to be always like that. But I will contact them via Concierge.
I didn’t mean to imply that the Peak/Off Peak is anything to do with not showing Cat 1-7 cert availability.
I have a stay booked in 2022 and with the changes it looks like now it is 5,000 less points per night. I thought Hyatt would refund the points automatically but it’s been a few days and it hasn’t happened yet. Is it easier just to cancel and rebook?
I wouldn’t risk it. Hyatt has advised that they’ll refund points automatically, so I’d give them time to do that.
I just happened to have 3 nights booked throughout Europe next summer that all priced off-peak so in the short-term I’m happy.
One interesting thing I found is the points required to book a “suite upgrade” with 6k or 9k points in addition to the standard rate has NOT seemed to change. So that is good when the property has gone peak, bad when off-peak.
Calala Island (Cat 8) has 3 off peak dates (35K) for the whole calendar every other date is peak pricing at 40k a night
40K is standard pricing for cat 8, not peak. Pricing for this property went down for 3 days of the current calendar, and stayed the same on all other dates.
It looks to me as though a stay I have booked well in advance for the Park Hyatt Tokyo has gone down on a couple of my nights. Unfortunately, It doesn’t appear that it repriced automatically. Debating whether to try to cancel and rebook. I don’t have enough points in my account to make the new booking before I cancel the old one.
Just replying to my own post. I went ahead and cancelled. I was a little apprehensive because I was worried that when I cancelled I would only be credited with the points that it would not require to book the stay (165,000) instead of the amounts of points that I had used to book the stay (180,000). But it cancelled fine, I got the 180,000 back, and then was able to rebook for 165,000. I’m sure I will learn to hate this new pricing scheme, but for now at least I’m 15,000 points to the good.
I’m in the same boat, but too afraid to cancel since my booking is for a specific room in a property. I.e., even with enough points, I would still have to cancel first so that the room would open back up, and who knows what the hotel and/or others might be doing?
Thus, if FM or others have info on when points will be rebated, I would still be very interested.
I don’t know when they’re planning on rebating the points, but I don’t think it’s worth you cancelling and rebooking. These changes only went live a couple of days ago, so I’d give them a little time to sort through all the rebated points that’ll be necessary.
Yes, what Stephen said! Don’t cancel! Hyatt promised to rebate the difference. I’m confident that will happen, but it might take a while.
Yes, the biggest PITA about Hyatt award nights is the terrible experience of having to check one night at a time! Can’t they at least display a week like some airlines do? They miss a good opportunity to improve it during this roll out!
Displaying the (static) calendar of peak / off peak days is pretty easy from an IT perspective. Having it pull live availability for a month or more in an acceptable amount of time is a harder problem to solve. Judging by the response time for a one night query over four or five locations Hyatt’s booking engine is pretty slow and might need re-architecting to attain sufficient responsiveness.
Anybody able to see the calendar through the app? Or is it only available through the website?
Yeah, I updated the app and it’s still only showing old rates… So use the website to find peak pricing and then book in the app at old pricing!
Don’t see how this is a benefit besides checking on/off peak times.
Saw the calendar updates as well. It is super frustration as you have to litterally sit there and mess with night of days and check per do on award availability. Is there a better way? Can you leverage concierge to basically give you back availability for a few given periods at a hotel or two to avoid clicking 1,000 times!?!?
The one really good deal I’ve found so far that highlights the positives of the change is the Andaz Papagayo in Costa Rica is basically 80%+ off-peak pricing through 2022. I was there in May and it’s a great property, I’d consider it a steal at 17000 pts/night.
I was there in April and would 2nd that notion
I’ve stayed there and was not that impressed. All bluster at check-in with a fancy cocktail and sit on the couch with someone who explains the property. The room was great, but the rest … only so so. I found the food choices weak and you are somewhat captive.
Haha there’s always one
My go-to cheap cat 1s near ORD, the Hyatt Place and House in Schaumburg, both seem to have not a single off-peak night to the end of schedule. They have some peaks, though.
Maybe Dec-Mar will be off-peak.
I actually looked at the same thing. The farthest out the site allows me to see is 11/26/22 and the HH/HP both show up as 3,500 for that day (though the system does not allow you to actually book that day since it is beyond 13-month window…so maybe tomorrow it will be available). I do not see any others at that level. To your point, it is likely the winter months that end up as off-peak.
I tried a few Houston area cat 1s and found most had 2 off-peak nights. The Toronto-ish area one has no off-peak nights. I wonder if off-peak will just be tough to find with them not wanting people to mattress run towards status for 3500 pts a night.