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A little over a month after its last promotion ended Hyatt is back with another attempt to tempt us all into buying Hyatt points – this time it’s a targeted promotion with a bonus of up to 40% on all purchases of 10,000 points and more.
Buy Hyatt Points – Headline T&Cs
- Offer available with purchases made between 12:01 am ET September 12, 2017 and ends 11:59 pm ET October 3, 2017.
- Purchase a minimum of 10,000 Bonus Points in a single transaction and receive up to 40% additional Bonus Points.
- Bonus Points will be awarded upon completion of individual transactions.
- Bonus Points can be purchased in increments of 1,000, up to 55,000 points per calendar year.
- Members can receive points in increments of 1,000, up to 55,000 points per calendar year.
- Offer may be withdrawn or changed without notice.
- Offer cannot be combined with any other offer.
- Only purchases made online are eligible for the promotion.
The promotion I was targeted for was one that offers a 35% bonus so that what I’m going to concentrate on – if you were fortunate enough to get a 40% bonus offer the math won’t be too dissimilar.
The Math
The first thing to note is that as long as you purchase 10,000 or more points you will be buying Hyatt points at the best available cost/point.
Whether you buy the minimum number of points that entitles you to the 35% bonus…..
….or the maximum number of points allowed….
….the cost per point doesn’t change – it remains at ~1.78 cents/point.
Should You Buy Hyatt Points In This Promotion?
Considering we know that Hyatt offers bonuses of up 40% which allow you to buy Hyatt points at 1.71 cents each the easy answer would be to simply say no and to move on….but it’s not that straight forward.
While Hyatt does offer bonuses on point sales reasonably frequently, the 40% bonuses don’t come around that often in any given year and, when they do, they’re mostly targeted (like in this instance) – so you’re not guaranteed to be offered the 40% bonus even when it’s around.
That makes a 35% bonus promotion worth taking a closer look at.
One of the keys to deciding how good this promotion is is the Hyatt award chart:
The very top Hyatt Properties cost 30,000 points/night so, if you were to buy enough points in this promotion to book such a property, that would set you back approximately $528 (I’m assuming you have the 300 points needed to top up the award already in your account.
Straight away that’s the first indicator of how good or bad this offer is.
Would you be happy to pay $528/night for a hotel room? If not then you should probably be discounting this offer already.
I’m know that some people will argue that a few Park Hyatt resorts will charge a lot more than $528/night (the Park Hyatt Maldives is an example often given)…
…and will therefore say that the 35% bonus offer isn’t bad at all.
This argument may make sense for someone topping up an 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?
If we take a look at a mid-tier Hyatt property (like the category 5 Andaz West Hollywood that I enjoy using as an example as often as I can) the math can make this promotion look both good and bad.
20,000 points in this promotion wold cost approximately $355 and during low season that’s not a great deal at this property.
When it’s not busy, rooms at the Andaz West Hollywood can be picked up for $285 + taxes…
….which comes to approximately $329/night:
Buying points to book these nights would be a terrible idea.
In peak season things can be different – if you can find award availability points can be a money saver.
When things get busy it’s not at all unusual to see rooms rates go past $400 before taxes….
…and when you factor those taxes in the rate gets closer to $500/night:
If you were to buy points in this promotion and then book nights like these you’d be on to a very good thing.
You could easily buy three nights worth of points in this promotion for approximately $1,070 and save over $370 on a long weekend.
When Else Does The Promotion Make Sense?
Cash & Points Redemptions
Cash & Points redemptions are another example where, sometimes, if you buy Hyatt points in promotions such as this one you can save some cash.
Here’s a Hyatt award chart showing the Cash & Points redemptions across all Hyatt categories:
As the Andaz West Hollywood is a category 5 property the Cash & Points rate is 10,000 points + $125 cash per night….and once the taxes are factored in the cash element increases to $145.18:
In this instance 10,000 points is saving you from paying $337.31 ($482.49 – $145.18) meaning that you’re getting 3.37 cents of value out of each Hyatt point.…that’s pretty good considering the points were bought for just 1.78 cents each.
Bottom Line
In some cases this isn’t a great deal at all but in others if you buy Hyatt points in this promotion you will definitely save money – as always, it all comes down to individual circumstances and the math.
There’s nothing in this promotion that would encourage me to buy points speculatively (always a bad idea) but if I was planning a stay in the next few months I’d check award availability, crunch the numbers and see if buying points at 1.78 cents each could save me some money.
Follow this link to check your bonus and to buy Hyatt points
