World of Hyatt’s decline by a thousand cuts | Coffee Break Ep12 | 5-28-24

Frequent Miler on the Air

Frequent Miler

Aviation, Places & Travel, Society & Culture, Leisure

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You know we're fans of Hyatt...but some of their recent behavior has been downright painful! That's what we'll discuss in today's Coffee Break episode.

(01:28) - Hyatt introduced Category 8, claiming it would only be for SLH

(03:05) - Introduced peak pricing

(04:26) - As feared, they moved Hyatt properties into that Category 8

(04:43) - Introduced a separate (way more expensive) award chart for all-inclusive properties

(05:35) - Created Homes & Hideaways at poor value...then later moved a number of "Destination Residences" properties to Homes & Hideaways

(07:53) - Ended MGM partnership

(08:34) - Ended SLH partnership

(09:54) - Introduced Mr & Mrs Smith dynamic pricing

Still plenty to love:

(13:03) - Best-in-class top tier status benefits (you know you’ll get breakfast / lounge, free parking on award stays, meaningful upgrades, etc).

(14:17) - Best milestone rewards (confirmable suite upgrades, Guest of Honor awards, valuable free night certificates)

(16:04) - Lots of sharing options: share free nights, upgrade certs, globalist status (via GOH awards), points, etc.

(17:09) - Ability to supplement elite earning with credit card spend

(18:08) - Generally very good value for points for properties that adhere to an award chart

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Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a Voyescape podcast.
0:04.0	You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com.
0:08.0	Here we go.
0:16.4	This is not your typical frequent mile on the air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling coffee break.
0:24.6	Each coffee break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points.
0:30.2	And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy.
0:37.3	Today's coffee break, world of Hyatt's decline by a thousand cuts.
0:41.3	We love our Hyatt. We love the program, but over time it's been it's been hurting us little by little.
0:48.3	Yeah, they've just sliced a little bit back and sliced a little bit more and a little bit more.
0:53.3	And so yeah, it's been really when you look at it overall, it's been kind of painful. Each little thing has not necessarily been awful on its own. But when you look at a number of the things that have happened, there have been a number of downsides over the last few years. Of course, there are still a number of things to love too. We'll talk a a little bit about both. Don't forget, wherever you're watching or listening to this, please like the video or the podcast, leave a comment or a piece of feedback. We appreciate those things. And remember, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list and follow us on all the various social media. All right, let's get into this. So 1,000 little cuts.
1:28.7	Well, we don't really have a thousand of them to discuss today, but we have a number of
1:32.2	these little devaluations, some of them more stealthy than others or more front and center
1:37.5	anyway than others.
1:38.8	The first one up is that Hyatt introduced category eight several years ago.
1:43.3	And that was, you know, somewhat disappointing.
1:46.3	Well, of course, somewhat disappointing because previously the top category was category seven.
1:51.2	So they created a new category that would cost even more points, a devaluation of sorts.
1:55.6	But the good news is that in the beginning, they said this is only for select small luxury hotels of the world.
2:02.1	They're only select properties because of the partnership with SLH.
2:06.1	There were some places that were just so high end that they didn't quite fit on the old world of high at award charts.
2:11.7	So they needed a new category for SLH.
2:14.1	And of course, when that happened, I think all of us had a collective like holding of our
	...

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