Great News! World Of Hyatt Is Extending Elite Statuses Into 2022

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In news that will be music to the ears to a lot of readers, Hyatt has just announced that it’s extending its moratorium on points expirations, extending the expiration dates of various award instruments and, most importantly, extending all elite statuses into 2022.

Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian is currently sending out emails to all World of Hyatt members to confirm some very positive moves that the hotelier and its loyalty program are taking in the light of the ongoing crisis – here’s a look at all that news.

Points will not expire before the year end

Under normal conditions, World of Hyatt points don’t expire unless an account remains inactive for 24 consecutive months, but at the end of the second week of March, Hyatt announced that it was pausing the expiration of all points scheduled to expire by 31 May.

That date has now been extended through to the end of the year.

No World of Hyatt points will expire before 31 December 2020 so members have the rest of the year to either use up their expiring points or to ensure that they have some activity in their World of Hyatt accounts which will reset the expiration clock for a further 24 months.

Hyatt is extending the validity of award instruments

World of Hyatt members can earn a number of different awards courtesy of the status they hold or the credit cards they have in their wallets, and Hyatt has just announced that it is extending the expiration date of these awards for an additional year.

All unused Free Night, Suite Upgrade or Club Lounge Access awards with expiration dates between March 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 will be extended to December 31, 2021. This includes existing awards and awards that may be earned throughout this year with a 2020 expiration date.

The World of Hyatt has confirmed that there is nothing that its members need to do with their various award instruments to get their validity extended – awards that expired between 1 March and 31 March 31 will be replaced with new awards on 20 April 2020 and all other qualifying, unused awards will be updated by the 20th day of the month in which the award would have originally expired.

World of Hyatt elites keep their status through 2022

We have been waiting to see what the World of Hyatt would do with regards to members’ elite statuses ever since Radisson and more recently Hilton, announced that they would be extending elite statuses into future years – now Hyatt has stepped up to the plate.

All World of Hyatt members will have their current elite status extended through to 28 February 2022 regardless of what activity takes place in their accounts this year.

Members will see their new elite status expiration date updated in their online accounts no later than 15 April 2020.

Thoughts

Well done Hyatt. Very well done.

If you’re a World of Hyatt elite with various award instruments in your account you can sit back and worry about something important now because Hyatt has just taken care of you very nicely indeed.

World of Hyatt elites now know that they have their current status locked-in through February 2022 (even if they can’t set foot into a Hyatt property for the rest of the year), and they know that their suite night awards, lounge access awards, and free night awards aren’t going to go to waste because their expiration dates have just been extended through the end of next year – how great is that?!

Even the free night awards earned through card_name will see their expiration dates extended through 2021.

Coming on top of Hyatt’s decision to suspend all of its award chart changes (including the introduction of peak and off-peak pricing), these latest moves show that somewhere inside of Hyatt’s operations there’s a group of people who understand that this crisis is an excellent opportunity to show the world that they genuinely care about making their customers’ travels simpler and that they understand that loyalty isn’t a one-way street.

They also appear to understand that a lot of us are paying very close attention to how corporations are behaving in these turbulent times and that once this is all over, we are very likely to reward those who treated us well and punish those who revealed their true colors.

Bottom line

Kudos has to go to Hilton for being the first of the major loyalty programs to take significant measures to keep its elites happy, but Hyatt has followed suit nicely and done a great job for its elites.

These are some very positive moves that Hyatt has just announced and they are moves that will be making people feel very good about the World of Hyatt loyalty program right now…and rightly so.

I have no Hyatt elite status whatsoever, but watching how the hotelier has acted in the past 3-4 weeks (and having seen how badly Marriott has been acting during the same time), I more convinced than ever that I’ll be moving a lot of my business to Hyatt when this is all over and it will be business that Hyatt will richly deserve.