Hyatt Copies A Nifty Starwood Feature: A Headstart On Status By Spending On Their Card

If you’re a holder of the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Card, you should be familiar with their feature that gives you stay and night credit every year you maintain their card.  You can get 5 nights and 2 stays by holding the SPG Amex, and actually double that if you have both the personal and corporate versions of the card.

Now, Hyatt’s version of this benefit is significantly less rewarding.  You need to spend $20,000 on their card to get 2 stays and 5 nights of credit.  If you spend $40,000 annually, they’ll give you an additional 3 stays and 5 nights.  Based on the current rewards offered by the Hyatt credit card, I won’t approach that spending level.  But, Hyatt also appears to be ramping that up as well…

The news indicates that they will soon be giving 2 points per dollar spent at restaurants, on airline ticket purchases (direct from the airlines only) and car rentals.

This aligns the card much more closely with the benefits of the Chase Sapphire card, one of the cards I use for a good chunk of my spending.

At first blush, I still think I’d probably keep my spending on the Chase Sapphire, but I also achieve Hyatt Diamond every year by staying in their hotels a ton of nights.  Were that not to be the case, I could see directing $20,000 in spend to the Hyatt Visa Card.  I might earn marginally less value on that spend, but the head start on the top-tier hotel status I covet most would probably make it worthwhile.

ETA:  View From The Wing has info on how to get a $75 statement credit when applying for the Hyatt Visa Card.  If you haven’t signed up for the card and plan to do so, this looks like the current best way to do so.