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Hyatt has revived a promotion it ran both in February and in May this year which gives Gold Passport Members a 30% bonus on purchases of 5,000 points or more. Although you have to buy a minimum of 5,000 points to get the bonus (which isn’t exactly many anyway), the price per point remains the same regardless of how many points you buy above the 5,000.
The Math
If you want to buy the maximum number of points the promotion allows (55,000) it will set you back $1,320…..
….which, with the bonus, would give you 71,500 points at a cost of $1.85 cents per point.
Is It Worth Buying Hyatt Points Now?
The easiest way to look a this is to see how much it would cost to buy enough points for an award night at, for example, one of the top Hyatt properties around the world.
An award night at a Category 7 Hyatt property cost 30,000 Gold Passport Points (for a standard room) and, in this promotion, you can buy near enough 30,000 points for $552:
The question you need to ask yourself is would you be ok paying $552/night for a hotel room? If not then this offer isn’t for you…at least not for the purposes of buying a night outright.
You don’t have to take a super expensive Hyatt as an example if you don’t want to, the same test works at all levels of the Hyatt award chart.
As I’ve said in he past, I know that a number of the famous Park Hyatt properties will considerably more than $552/night (like the Park Hyatt Maldives):
But, while that may appear to make the promotion very tempting that isn’t actually the reality.
This argument may make 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.
Are you going to fly to the Maldives for a single night?
When Buying Hyatt Points Make Sense
There are some Hyatt properties where, during certain times of the year, using points bought at 1.85 cents each is cheaper than paying cash for a room.
Taking the Andaz West Hollywood, as an example:
A standard room at the Andaz West Hollywood can be pricey:
And when you add the taxes it only gets worse….
I consider $450 to be a lot to pay for somewhere to lay my head and I almost certainly wouldn’t pay it but, luckily, this is where Gold Passport Points comes in useful.
For the same night as you would have to pay $450 in cash you can book a standard room room for 20,000 Gold Passport points:
To buy those 20,000 points in the current promotion would cost you $370 netting you a saving of $70 or 15.5%. Not bad as long as you’re ok with paying $370 for a night at the Andaz 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.
Staying with the Andaz example from above:
From the screenshots you can see that, instead of paying $450 or 20,000 in Gold Passport points, you could choose to pay $125 + 10,000 points for a standard room. Adding in taxes moves the cost up to $145 + 10,000 points.
In this example 10,000 points is saving you from paying $305 ($450 – $145) meaning that you’re receiving 3.05 cents of value for each Hyatt Gold Passport point.
That’s pretty good if you just bought points at 1.85 cents each.
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.
Remember
- 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 (excluding bonuses) so, if you’ve already purchased any Hyatt points this year, make sure you’re aware of how many more you’re allowed to buy.
Bottom Line
In a lot of cases this isn’t a good deal but, as always, it comes down to individual circumstances (how many points you have/what plans you have for the points) and the math.
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 just with points I’d purchased but that’s not how everyone feels – different people have different comfort zones when it comes to hotel prices.
The cash & points redemptions are more interesting and the example I gave above is around what I’d be prepared to pay (at most). What makes these kind of redemptions even better is that you can upgrade them with Diamond Suite upgrades and they count towards elite qualification. Those two things put together would probably persuade me to buy some points if I was looking to book some stays.
