30% Bonus When You Buy Hyatt Gold Passport Points

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Hyatt has brought back a promotion it last ran in February this year where Gold Passport Members can purchase points with a 30% bonus. As with the last promotion you have to purchase a minimum of 5,000 points for the bonus to kick in but should you be buying in the first place?

Should You Buy Hyatt Points In This Promotion?

The first thing to note is that as long as you purchase 5,000 or more points you will be buying Hyatt Gold Passport points at 1.85 cents each – it doesn’t matter how many you buy.

Here’s a link to the promotion

If you want to buy enough points to buy (just about) a night at a top Hyatt property it will set you back $552….

…and that should be your first clue as to how good or bad this offer is if you’re looking to book an award with points only (no cash element) at one of the 30,000 points/night Hyatt properties.

Would you be happy to pay $552/night for a hotel room? If not then you should probably be discounting this offer already.

I’m more than aware that some will argue that a number of Park Hyatt properties can charge a lot more than $552/night (like the Park Hyatt Maldives)…..

…and will therefore say that the 30% bonus offer isn’t bad at all. But this is an argument most often put forward by those trying to persuade themselves that the offer is good for them when, more often than not, it really isn’t.

This argument may makes sense for someone topping up a Gold Passport account to allow them to book a multi-night stay (or for someone wanting to add a night to an existing booking) but it makes absolutely no sense for someone without enough existing points to book a few more nights as well.

After all, who’s going to fly to the Maldives for a single night?

When Does The Promotion Make Sense?

There are certain properties where, during certain times of the year, using points purchased, at 1.85 cents each is cheaper than paying cash for a room.

Taking one of my preferred Hyatt properties, the Andaz West Hollywood, as an example:

A night at the Andaz West Hollywood can get expensive:

And that doesn’t include taxes!

To me $450 is a lot of cash to pay for a hotel room and I wouldn’t book it but, fortunately, this is where Gold Passport Points come in useful.

For the same night as you would have to pay $450 in cash you can book the same room for just 20,000 Gold Passport points:

If you were to buy those 20,000 points at 1.85 cents each you would part with $370 giving you a saving of $70 or 15.5%…and that’s not bad at all as long as you’re ok with paying $370 for a night at the Andaz West Hollywood in the first place.

Cash & Points Redemptions

Cash & Points redemptions are another example where, sometimes, promotions such as this one can save you some cash.

Keeping with the example above:

From the screenshots you should be able to see that, instead of paying $450 in cash or 20,000 in points, you could choose to pay $125 + 10,000 points for an Andaz King room. Once you factor in taxes that goes up to $145 + 10,000 points.

In this instance 10,000 points is saving you from paying $305 ($450 – $145) meaning that you’re getting 3.05 cents of value out of each Gold Passport point.…not bad if you’ve bought the points for 1.85 cents!

Note: You would still be effectively paying $330 for the room so, if you’re not comfortable paying that, this still isn’t a deal for you regardless of anything else.

Things To Bear In Mind

• This promotion is running 16 May – 15 June 2016

• Hyatt’s points purchases are processed via Points.com so there’s no opportunity to get more points via a credit card that gives bonuses for hotel spend.

• You can buy a maximum of 55,000 Gold Passport Points per calendar year.

Bottom Line

In a lot of cases this isn’t a great deal at all…but it all comes down to individual circumstances and the math.

Personally I wouldn’t pay $450 or $370 for a hotel room so this promotion would be no good to me if I was looking to book an award night.

The cash & points redemption however is a little more interesting and is on the borderline of what I’d be prepared to pay – the fact that you can upgrade Cash & Points reservations with Diamond Suite upgrades and the fact that they count towards elite qualification would probably persuade me that this is an ok deal for me.