Hyatt Retroactively Crediting Award Nights Towards Status For Loyalty Members In 2017
Interesting. And, a solid move, IMO. Apparently, Hyatt is sending out notifications to loyalty members regarding their 2017 elite status. They appear to be retroactively crediting award nights for 2017. That’s a pretty significant windfall for some members:
I had two friends reach out to me this morning with the news. Stuck on phone calls all morning, I didn’t realize I actually received the e-mail others had. So much for being on the ball!
It appears I earned an extra 10,000 points as a result of Hyatt acknowledging award stays from 2017.
Doing The Right Thing, At A Cost
Hyatt was absolutely late to the game when it came to counting award stays towards your elite status. There was no specific obligation on their part to retroactively apply those changes. It makes sense, but frequently loyalty programs don’t act as I might think they should. This change absolutely costs them money in the short-term, issuing points, suite upgrade awards and elite status. I suspect it will pay off long-term.
I’ve reached out to Hyatt to see if I can figure out who qualifies for this. I’ll report back with any clarification.
Did you receive this e-mail from Hyatt? Did it help you earn status for 2018? I’d love to hear from you.
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This is a typical stupid Hyatt move. How was one supposed to have planned for this? How does this motivate a change in anyone’s behavior? They are giving away stuff that motivates nothing. I just don’t understand Hyatt most of the time.
It’s not a stupid move, and you weren’t supposed to (and clearly could not have) have planned for it.
As of October 31, 2017 Hyatt appointed Amy Weinberg to Lead the World of Hyatt Loyalty program. She is making retroactive changes to the program to begin to correct the previously instituted sins of WoH. And to that I say well done, Amy. She didn’t have to do any retroactive changes, simply start new in 2018 and forget the past. But she did go retroactive, an apology in a way, for those who would’ve otherwise benefited from the 2018 award-stay status-crediting change.
As for motivating anyone’s behavior, I guess haters gonna hate, as they say. But this gesture, along with the previously announced changes of award stays counting towards status qualification, as well as extending certain free-night certificates from 4 to 6-months, goes a long way to showing that she is committed to turning the corner and moving forward to restore the loyalty program. I daresay these changes will change some people’s minds and that all is not lost with WoH.
Importantly, she’s rolling out these changes straight away, in the first quarter of 2018. This is because she knows that to delay efforts in restoring the two-way street of loyalty would be disastrous. A Diamond scorned is easily a Globalist lost forever, along with their $pend.
mojo, very well said. I think Hyatt is laying down some good karma here. I’m sure it won’t make everyone happy, no positive changes ever do. But, these are definitely thoughtful changes.
Gene, I disagree. Hyatt is extending an olive branch to try and win over customers. Maybe they feel like they were too restrictive with their program changes. Or, maybe they just wanted to make things right with customers on a piece of tech they wanted to institute years ago. Any way you slice it, this is positive for customers.
Had awards stays in calendar year 2017. So far have not received an email and don’t see any change to my account…
According to this new development:
1. If your award stays + cash-component stays in 2017 add-up to 60 nights, then’ll you’ll be making Globalist after all (congratulations).
2. If your award stays + cash-component stays in 2017 add-up to 70 nights (or 80 or 90 or 100), then you’ll have the choice of 10k bonus-points, or an additional suite-upgrade certificate, for each of those 70/80/90/100 night milestones.
Some people get their emails from Hyatt right away. Some people (like me) get them after about a week. Hyatt IT still sucks.
If neither of the above qualifying statements are true, then this news means nothing in your particular case and you’ll likely not receive an email as there was no effect on your account status.
Ryan, would your award stays have pushed you over a threshold for higher status or one of the 70/80/90 night tiers?
They must be rolling these out slowly. I haven’t received such an email yet.
Kathy, would your award stays have moved you up to a different tier?
So Hyatt is pulling forward points stays from ’17 into ’18 or simply crediting them to ’17? If crediting them back to ’17 that is kinda late. Most people chasing status planned for a certain amount. Adding points stays won’t help many, will it?
geoff, they are crediting them to 2017. Not sure how many it will help. It earned me 20,000 bonus points!
i just got Explorist comp’ed via mlife and still don’t know what to do with it considering I don’t stay with them at all.
@Edward P : my situation is Marriott Gold, SPG Gold, Hilton Gold, and Hyatt Explorist, all comp’ed, but I don’t stay in hotels anywhere remotely close to hitting top tier anywhere even if I concentrated on a single chain. What’s your advice in terms of leveraging these benefits and routing my wallet share ?
If you’re not going to hit top tier, I think the one I’d try to keep would be SPG Gold. You’ve got the stay path to help get you there quickly. You could also add the SPG AMEX to pick up a few stay/night credits. If you were able to re-qualify for that, you’d earn Marriott status as well. I think Hilton Gold is pretty darn useless. I’m sort of ambivalent about Explorist. I think there’s value but only if you can stay at a decent number of Hyatt properties throughout the year. Doesn’t sound like that will be the case for you.
10 award stays 2017 as Explorist.. No email as of yet.
MilesHusband, would the 10 award stays have pushed you to Globalist?
including award nights, it would have totaled 31 nights…no email as of yet
PJ, would that have bumped you up to Explorist?
I got that email this morning…. i was 20 nights shy last year but had 23 award stays. They are crediting those award stays so it gave me 63/60 which entitled me another year of Globalist. They also included a cat 1-7 award and 4 suite upgrades. Pretty exciting news to wake up to!
Eric, wow!!! That’s a huge win. I really think this was a great move by Hyatt.
Hyatt is not pulling award stays from 2017 and crediting them in 2018. Hyatt is simply retroactively correcting for some of the WoH sins of 2017, and good on them – they didn’t have to do anything.
Simply put:
1. If your award stays + cash-component stays in 2017 add-up to 60 nights, then’ll you’ll be making Globalist after all and receiving all the perks of 60 stayed nights (congratulations).
2. If your award stays + cash-component stays in 2017 add-up to 70 nights (or 80 or 90 or 100), then you’ll have the choice of 10k bonus-points, or an additional suite-upgrade certificate, for each of those 70/80/90/100 night milestones.
Some people get their emails from Hyatt right away. Some people (like me) get them after about a week. Hyatt IT still sucks.
If neither of the above qualifying statements are true, then this news means nothing in your particular case and you’ll likely not receive an email as there was no effect on your account status.
Got my email. Bumped my 62 nights to 85! Awarded me either two additional suite upgrades or 10k points x 2 or one of each. It appears they even counted award nights used for second and even third rooms I booked on awards. Since I book at least 2 rooms 40% of the time, this could be a huge boost. I was using free nights for my kids, but paid for mine as it was the only way to get credit for the night towards status! Great move Hyatt, I am very, very happy with this move.
Greg, that’s interesting. I need to reach out to Hyatt and confirm that multiple rooms on a given night count. That would be big for me as well. We book two rooms when we travel with the kids.
We ended up with an extra night certificate which was a nice surprise since we were over 70 nights including points stays.
That’s a nice unexpected present!
Received my choice reward email but when I choose my reward, receiving error: “We don’t recognize this membership number. Please try again,”
Is anyone else getting this error message?
COLA, call in to have it fixed. This was reported to my by other readers. Agents were able to fix it for them quickly.