(EXPIRED) Match M Life back to Hyatt Explorist ’till Feb 2020

Thanks to World of Hyatt’s partnership with the M Life, the loyalty program of MGM resorts & casinos, you can enjoy reciprocal status between the two programs. Hyatt Explorist and above matches to M Life Gold. If you previously matched your Hyatt Explorist status to M Life Gold, you can now match back from M Life Gold for this year and pick up 4 new club lounge access upgrades that are valid through February 2020 (as well as guaranteed 2pm late checkout at most Hyatt properties). This status-matching merry-go-round is bound to break down someday, so hop on while you can.

The Deal

• Match your M Life Gold status to Hyatt Explorist status (which gets you 4 club access
• Direct link to M Life matching page (see instructions below)

Why & how to do it

The “why” is simple: you should get Hyatt Explorist status through February of 2020 and 4 club access awards (which you can apply to a reservation to get club lounge access at a hotel with a club lounge, though keep in mind these are only useful at hotels with a club lounge). The nice thing about this partnership has been that the status years are staggered. Hyatt status ends on the last day of February. M Life status ends on the last day of September. If you match from M Life Gold to Explorist today, you’ll extend your Hyatt status until February 2020. Then, in October, when your M Life status runs out, you may be able to match your Explorist status back to M Life Gold. Then, in January 2020, you could theoretically match M Life Gold back to Hyatt Exporist until February 2021…and so on. This is how it has worked for the last couple of years. That ride may end at any time, so get on while you can.

It will be easiest if you first go to https://www.mgmresorts.com/en/mlife-rewards-program.html and sign in. I also brought up a separate tab and logged into my World of Hyatt account.

Then, go to https://www.mgmresorts.com/en/mlife-rewards-program/preferred-partners/hyatt-hotels.html. If you’ve logged in to your M Life account, you’ll see the following (note that if you have not yet logged in, you will not see the “click here to opt in” button shown below):

Once you click that button, it will either prompt you to link your Hyatt account and walk you through the steps or, if you’ve previously linked and logged in to your Hyatt account, it’ll bring you to the Hyatt status matching page and confirm. In my case, I’d previously linked the accounts and matched statuses. Therefore, the message it gave me made it sound like this match right now didn’t do anything as it said I had already matched:

However, it still re-matched. Here is a look at my Hyatt club access awards before I clicked to opt in this evening (note that the expiration says 2020 because there was a situation last year where for some reason it was awarding club upgrades that were valid through 2020, but I took this screen shot before matching tonight). Note that I had 4 earned and 3 available.

And here are my club access awards after I clicked to opt in to the match:

As you can see, I now have “8 earned” and 7 available. I’m very confident that means my Explorist status has been matched through February 2020 as that is the only way I would have earned 4 new club access awards.

If you previously matched and did not re-qualify for Explorist status, you’ll want to run this match now. Personally, I like having Explorist status for the 2pm check out. While I have several very generous Globalist friends who have been willing to book Guest of Honor stays for me so I can enjoy their Globalist benefits, I sometimes run into a situation where I’m booking at the last minute and/or I’m locked out of Hyatt transfers, and having the ability to get a guaranteed late checkout still is helpful. If you have M Life Gold, I’d definitely recommend matching — and then setting a reminder on your phone to match back in October.

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