After months of sitting in the doldrums of welcome offer mediocrity, there’s an increased welcome offer out for the Chase World of Hyatt card: you’ll get five Hyatt Category 1-4 free night certificates after spending $4k within the first three months. This is a vast improvement over the previous offer of 45K points after a whopping $15K in spend.
This card has a lot to offer for folks involved in the Hyatt program and five free certs is the best offer we’ve seen in quite some time. However, if you’re just looking for Hyatt points, don’t forget about the better offers on the Chase Ink Business Preferred and Ink Business Unlimited cards, as Hyatt is a 1-1 transfer partner with Chase Ultimate Rewards.
Offer and Card Details
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
5 Category 1-4 Free Night Certificates ⓘ Non-Affiliate Five category 1-4 free night certificates after $4K spend within 3 months of account opening.$95 Annual Fee This card is subject to Chase's 5/24 rule. Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: Great card for welcome bonus and annual free night. Might be worth using regularly for additional free night and as a path to status. Earning rate: ✦ 2X restaurants / cafes / coffee shops, airlines, local transit, fitness clubs and gym memberships ✦ 4X Hyatt and Mr & Mrs Smith Card Info: Visa Signature issued by Chase. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: One free Cat 1-4 night certificate after $15K spend in a calendar year. ✦ Get 2 elite qualifying night credits every time you spend $5K in purchases Noteworthy perks: ✦ Free category 1-4 night every year upon renewal ✦ Additional free category 1-4 night after $15K spend in calendar year ✦ Discoverist elite status ✦ 5 elite qualifying nights |
Quick Thoughts
First off, Hyatt Category 1-4 certs can be quite valuable, as they can be used for Category 4 properties that cost 18,000 points per night at peak pricing. However, like all free night certificates, they have a hard expiry, in this case 12 months from issue. If you don’t use them by then, you lose them. In addition, they can’t be used for anything above a Category 4, even though a Category 5 at off-peak pricing is less expensive than a peak Category 4. That makes them significantly less appealing than the equivalent amount of points. For the purposes of our Best Offers page, we value them at ~$200 each.
Despite the shortcomings, this is still an offer worth ~$900 in the first year and there’s also some significant benefits to the World of Hyatt card that make it a keeper for many. These include:
- An automatic 5 elite night credits per year.
- The ability to earn 2 elite night credits per $5K spend
- One anniversary Category 1-4 free night certificate per year
- The ability to earn another Category 1-4 free night certificate after $15K spend.
Combined, these will make it a keeper for most folks that are invested in the World of Hyatt program. If you spend the $15K per year that’s required for the additional free night cert, and do most of it in the card’s 2x bonus categories, you’d end up with 30,000 points, 11 elite nights (including the 5 that you started with) and another 1-4 free night certificate.
If you’re not terribly concerned with Hyatt elite status and just want the points, you can currently earn 90,000 of them with the Chase Ink Business Preferred and Ink Business Unlimited cards…and you can spend them on any Hyatt property you want without having to worry about an expiration date. Those are easily more appealing offers if the rest of the Hyatt card’s perks don’t matter to you.
- 5/24 Rule: You most likely will not get approved for a new card if you have opened 5 or more cards (with any bank) within the past 24 months. Most business cards do not count towards that five card total. Business cards that DO count include: TD Bank, Discover and the Capital One Spark Cash Select, Spark Miles and Spark Miles Select.
- 24 Month Rule: If you’ve previously had a card before, you can only get a welcome offer on that card again if you no longer have the card AND if it has been more than 24 months since you last received a welcome offer for that card. This rule does not apply to the Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards (see below). There can be exceptions with some business cards.
- 48 Month Rule (Sapphire cards): If you’ve previously had either the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve cards, you can get the welcome offer for another Sapphire card only if you no longer have either card AND if it has been more than 48 months since you last received a welcome offer for the card.
- Southwest "Family" Rules: In addition to Sapphire cards' 48-month rule, Chase applies additional "family" rules to the Southwest cards. You're not eligible for the welcome offer on a personal Southwest card if you currently have one, or if you've received a welcome offer on any personal Southwest card within the last 24 months. This doesn't apply to business cards. You also can't be approved for Southwest consumer card if you already have one open.
- IHG "Family" Rules: You're not eligible for the welcome offer if you've received a welcome offer on any personal IHG card within the last 24 months. You also can't be approved another IHG consumer card if you already have one open.
- 2 per month Rule: Most applicants are limited to 2 new cards per month. Business cards are usually limited to one per month.
- Marriott cards: Approval for any Marriott card is governed by a labyrinthine set of unintuitive rules. You can see the full eligibility chart here.
- Card Limits: Chase doesn't have a strict limit on the amount of cards that you can have, but it does place limits on the total amount of credit that they will issue you across all cards. Because of this, reconsideration can sometimes be successful by moving credit from one existing card to the new card that you want.
- Application Status: Call (888) 338-2586 to check your application status.
- Reconsideration: If denied, call (888) 270-2127 for personal cards, or (800) 453-9719 for business cards, and ask for your application to be reconsidered.
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There’s still some value to be had with Hyatt Cat 4 FNCs – about to do a stay at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya north of Albuquerque in peak balloon festival season, rates are pushing $500 a night. But it definitely takes more cherry picking to where you have to just be happy for some free hotel stays somewhere if you get this offer.
Quick question. If I sign up P2 for this can I use them easily if she’s not traveling with me.
Yes. She can gift the free nights to you and you can use them under your own number with elite benefits and night credit.
I have to admit I’m not impressed. I’m a big Hyatt fan and a Globalist but I’m not deluding myself into overvaluing some category 1-4 FNC when Hyatt has been constantly pulling category devaluations for years. Just because the last offer was even worse doesn’t necessarily make this one good IMO.
I canceled my Hyatt card earlier this year with the hope of getting it again if they offer a better bonus. Sadly, while this is better than the terrible (and misleadingly marketed) previous offer, I don’t think I will jump at this offer. Why? Because I don’t know if I will have good opportunities to use the certs given their limited cat range and their expiration date.
Can these free nights be given away like ordinary certs?
[…] 3, 2024: The World of Hyatt credit card now has a 5 free night offer. HT to Frequent Miler for finding this […]
Even if the potential value is higher, this is a negative trend of copying the Marriott SUBs.
Especially with Hyatt, because Hyatt points are still valuable, but Hyatt cat 1-4 FNCs are worth less than ever before.
It’s long overdue for these cat 1-4 FNCs to include cat 5, or at least allow top-ups.
I completely agree with you about both 1-4 and 1-7 Hyatt certs. They both would be much more attractive with the next category included.
I guess I’m not quite sure about the “negative trend,” though. For ages, the personal Hyatt card offer has been terrible – 45k points after $15k spend (or 30k after $3k).
While I would absolutely prefer points to certs, this is the first time in a long while that Hyatt/Chase has tried to offer something even moderately compelling on this card. That seems positive to me.
If it were three nights instead of five, I’d agree completely that it’s a negative trend.
Hi Tim, no doubt this is a better offer than the previous one, but the negative trend for me is the general move to FNC-based SUBs and then rarely seeing decent points-based SUBs again. For example I don’t think the Boundless has had one since the move to FNCs.
C Hop, the Boundless actually had a points based SUB at the moment, 125K!
That’s not bad at all! Happy to be proven wrong, thanks Daniel. I’d been seeing the Boundless SUB oscillate between 3 and 5 FNCs for a while!
Kinda hyperbolic saying this is vastly improved compared to 45k…
Doubling the potential value for just over 1/4 of the spend seems like quite an improvement to me.
Not sure I agree, under the last offer you got 45,000 points, so you are trading 9,000 points per cert. Perhaps a good trade for 1 cert, but I personally wouldn’t be interested in a 5th cert with all it’s restrictions for 9,000 points. Add to that the higher spend and inevitable deval next year and for most casual travelers it seems objectively worse?
Don’t forget that you’d have to spend $15k to get those 45k points. Apples to apples would be comparing the first tier of the previous offer: 30k points after $3k.
To use your comparison, that’s like trading 6k points per cert for five certs worth up to 18k each. That’s a fantastic trade.
To go back to the main point in the post, if you are a “casual traveler” and all you want is Hyatt points, you probably shouldn’t be getting the Hyatt card in the first place. Get one of the much better Ultimate Rewards cards and transfer the points over to Hyatt.
If you’re staying at Hyatts enough that holding the card is worth it, I don’t think many folks would prefer to spend $15k for 45k points over spending $4k for five 1-4 free nights.
They’re not wrong. That’s just how pathetic the old Hyatt offer was.
Maybe unpopular opinion but Hyatt is really losing its luster for me. The certs qualify at seemingly fewer hotels each year and Hyatt doesnt allow you to top them up. Combine with the loss of SLH, its frustrating. Im eligible for a new SUB but theres so many more valuable and flexible offers right now its just hard to get excited here.
I agree. We’ve already dropped my wife’s Hyatt card and I’m probably going to drop mine when the AF hits in Dec. I’m planning to get a Surpass and put the $15k spend there for the free night. I’ve had difficulty using the 1-4 certs the last 2 years.
Agreed. I just picked up a Surpass a few months ago for ~130,000+ a uncapped FNC. Thats enough to stay for two night at any Hilton property in the world. Hyatt’s 5 1-4 FNC are pretty useless unless you are interested in some local hyatt places