Hyatt & American Airlines Will Offer Crossover Earnings & Benefits

By
Ziggy
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a bed and chair in a room
A suite at the Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo
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Ok, now this is very interesting. Hyatt and American Airlines have announced that they plan to offer elite members of their respective rewards programs the opportunity to earn more points and miles when they fly with American or book stays with Hyatt.

Hyatt & American Airlines Team Up

Here’s what members of each rewards program can expect:

American Airlines AAdvantage Elites

airplanes parked at an airport

Per Hyatt:

  • As well as earning the usual number of World of Hyatt points when staying at Hyatt properties, AAdvantage Gold, Platinum, Platinum Pro, Executive Platinum and ConciergeKey members will be able to earn one AAdvantage bonus mile for every eligible dollar spent at qualifying Hyatt properties.
  • AAdvantage Platinum, Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum members will have the opportunity to participate in limited time status challenges. Upon registering, these elite members will be able to immediately enjoy their new loyalty benefits in the reciprocal program tier as they work to maintain that elite tier status.
  • American Airlines ConciergeKey members will receive World of Hyatt Globalist status as a new way to extend the care provided throughout the entire travel journey.

World Of Hyatt Elites

a bridge over water with buildings and a building

Per Hyatt:

  • In addition to the usual AAdvantage miles travelers earn when flying on American, World of Hyatt Discoverist, Explorist and Globalist elites will be able to earn one World of Hyatt bonus point for every eligible dollar spent on qualifying American flights.
  • Explorist and Globalist World of Hyatt members will also have the opportunity to participate in limited time status challenges. Upon registering, these elite members will be able to immediately enjoy their new loyalty benefits in the reciprocal program tier as they work to maintain that elite tier status.

Important To Know

  • No name has yet been announced for this program
  • No date has been set for the start of this program
  • American Airlines ConciergeKey members who are gifted Hyatt’s top-tier Globalist status will not automatically receive the milestone awards that a World of Hyatt member earns as they progress through to Globalist status (e.g. suite upgrades) – those milestones will still have to be passed by spending the required number of nights with Hyatt.

a close-up of the tail of an airplane

Thoughts

I value World of Hyatt points at 1.4 cents each and American Airlines miles at 1.2 cents each so, essentially, this reciprocal program offers an extra rebate of between 1.2% and 1.4% when travelers book though American Airlines and Hyatt.

That’s not exactly going to blow people away but it is a bonus on top of what we’ve been getting so far so it should be welcomed.

This new program looks like it has quite of the few hallmarks of the old Starwood/Delta crossover program but, as I never actually participated in that, I still have one unanswered question that hopefully someone can help me with:

Based on how things worked with the Starwood/Delta relationship, will flyers have to credit their flights to AAdvantage to earn the bonus Hyatt points or will booking a fare through American Airlines be enough?

a building with a sign on the side

I ask because I still book fares through American but I credit most of my oneworld flights to the British Airways Executive Club so I’m not sure how useful one half of this relationship will be to me.

I’m most excited about the opportunity to challenge for Hyatt status as I have a few Hyatt stays coming up towards the end of this year (one big one in particular) and I’d love to have some kind of status before those come around – I love a late check-out 🙂

Hyatt and American have both said that they will release further details of their new program “soon” (which doesn’t really tell us much) so, for the time being, we’re left to wonder what else may be on the way and how we can exploit this new relationship to the fullest possible extent.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. This is very similar to the Delta SPG crossover. You had to have status at SPG/Starwood first. Then whenever you flew Delta you’d get one star point per dollar spent on Delta flights.
    With Delta you had to have status first. Then you’d earn one skymiles for every dollar spent at an SPG hotel and the hotel could give you other benefits like late checkout and an upgrade to a higher room.

    So the key is that you have to have status with the AA, then you’d get bonus AAdvantage miles with each Hyatt stay. If you don’t have status then you don’t get any bonus points.

    Ziggy I think the value of 1.2¢ for AA and 1.4¢ for Hyatt is too low. No one should be getting that low of value from points and miles.

    I will stay that it is good that AA is trying to make their program better and more valuable.

    • Thanks very much for the info and input.

      My valuations aren’t based on what I can get out of the points but rather the value at which I’m neutral on whether I take cash or points/miles.

  2. While the free points are welcome, I think that this arrangement gives Hyatt Globalists the short end of the stick. American EP elites get free top tier Hyatt status for being top tier AA. Hyatt top tier elites, myself included, get absolutely nothing. I suppose that I could take the challenge, but I rarely fly on paid tickets so this would be of little value. Even Marriott offers United sliver status to high tier elites, so it seems exceedingly strange that a Hyatt 10 night and 100 night elite get the exact same long term benefits. I wonder whether this major inequality was intentional.

Comments are closed.