Update 12/26/24: A few days ago, we received an e-mail from a reader who said that they had successfully applied a suite upgrade award for an available standard suite when there wasn’t any regular standard room availability. They were later contacted by Hyatt and told that they shouldn’t have been able to do that in the first place, so the reservation would be cancelled (although they were given the option to pay $600/night to book directly into the suite).
We assumed that this incident was just a hiccup with one property, but it appears that Hyatt really never meant to make it possible in the first place. Over the last couple of days, we haven’t been able to find any properties where we can apply a suite upgrade to to an available standard suite online when there is no standard room available. My Hyatt concierge told me that it was an accidental IT glitch and now even reps who previously knew how to get around it weren’t able to. At least for now, this appears to be dead.
Bah humbug.
~~~
Last week, we wrote a post covering the new ability to self-apply Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards (SUA) and Club Access Awards online without having to call or message a rep to manually apply them.
I might have buried the lede a bit, however. One of our favorite parts about this change is that there no longer needs to be standard room availability in order to apply a SUA online. As long as there’s a standard suite available, you can now book directly into it. Previously, this was only possible only with some reps who knew what they were doing, making it complete pain to get it done. (h/t: MilesTalk, Frequent Miler Insiders)
How to apply Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards online
We put this in the original post about the changes, but heard that multiple folks were still unaware, so figured a separate post about it was warranted.
How to apply Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards online
Guest of Honor, Club Access and Suite Upgrade awards can now all be added as a part of the normal booking process.
On the website, there is a menu at the top of the search results screen that allows you to apply existing awards to the room results listed beneath. You simply choose what you want to use and finish the booking.
When booking through the app, there is a dropdown menu called “Available Awards.”
By expanding this menu, you can see all the awards that are currently live in your account:
Once you select an award, it will automatically be applied to the room and rate that you choose. When you’re choosing to use a Suite Upgrade Award, the display will change to show you the new rate for a suite with the award applied:
Indeed the best part of this change might be that you can now book an available suite directly, even if there is no standard award availability. In the past, most reps wouldn’t let you use a suite upgrade unless there was a standard room available to book first. Now, a standard suite will be available during booking even if there’s no standard room available…and you can easily book itself. That’s a marvelous upgrade to the utility of Suite Upgrade Awards.
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Try reducing the number of people for the room. Some times a standard two queen room is not available on points but a standard king is. That will open up the option to book a room with a suite upgrade award that allows three people for the room.
I guess I got lucky because I was able to complete my stay in the suite for 9K.
What a lovely Christmas gift for loyalists from Hyatt.
Hyatt continues to make me feel better about not pursuing Globalist status again after 4 years with status. They continue to devalue the program. Getting 40 nights gets you 95% of the benefits of globalist status.
You mention standard room availability throughout but only use the phrase “standard award” once. You are only talking about using SUA for the cases of standard awards rooms.
Using paid rates, you can upgrade from any “room” standard or deluxe.
Just to avoid any confusion…
I am looking for some feedback on the new online SUAs. I booked a reservation at a Hyatt property (not mr and mrs smith) next summer in Europe. This property blocks out at all standard room awards points. They only show standard suites on points for every night, as points plus a cash upgrade. However, if you go online and choose to use a SUA, it allows you to book a suite night award on just points plus the suite upgrade. I did this a couple of days ago and this morning, Hyatt customer care emailed me and said that I should not have been able to do that. There “solution” was that they would not charge me any points, but I would have to pay 630 euros a night for the suite upgrade. The room itself with no points, goes for 640 euros a night. Looking for some feedback on T&C’s. Was it an error that I could book a room with just points and a suite upgrade, based on this setup?
This was extremely timely. I’m one of those who didn’t pick up on this in the first post. I just booked a hotel where there were no 9K standard rooms but a standard suite was available for 17K. Sure enough, I added an expiring SUA and the suite became bookable for 9K.
Thanks!
So, they are basically following their own rules. Nothing has really changed.
[…] of time as these needed to be applied by a phone representative in the past. Now, Frequent Miler is reporting that members can book directly into a standard suite with an award when a hotel does not have a […]
[…] hat man zusätzlich auch ein sehr nettes Feature ermöglicht. Frequentmiler.boardingarea.com ist aufgefallen, dass man nun auch ohne Verfügbarkeit von Zimmern bei Verfügbarkeit von […]
Wasnt this posted in other places for months, no HT? I thought yall better than this
Nope, you couldn’t book SUAs online until last week. If you read the post, which it sounds like you didn’t, we hat-tipped both MilesTalk and Frequent Miler Insider readers who brought it to our attention (in the second paragraph).
I’m glad you thought we were better than not attributing it, though. We’d like to think so, too.
I’ve always been curious if, as part of the hiring/screening process, Greg has you write a sample post, he goes on there and writes a bunch of (removed by admin) comments, and then he sees what replies you can come up with.
You’re all very good at it. But maybe that’s just due to lots of practice.
By the way, the List of Current Hotel Promotions that you just updated doesn’t appear to have a way to add new comments. Not sure if intentional.
Thanks for the heads up! Fixed the Hotel Promotions post.
Yesterday I booked a 3 night stay with SUA. Prior to this change, one of those nights had no standard suite availability, only premium availability, so I didn’t have hope I would be able to apply the SUA. I was just practicing the new system and voila! The award was applied to the stay. Feature or glitch?
Yay! Is this a feature or a glitch?
It’s a feature
Sadly, it was a glitch.
LOL and 🙁