I made over 600,000 points worth of Hyatt bookings booked before today’s devaluation (this is what those bookings cost now)

Like a lot of World of Hyatt members, I wasn’t exactly enamored when Hyatt announced that its award charts were being completely revamped and that from today, 20 May 2026, we could expect some properties to charge up to 67% more for an award booking than they were charging yesterday.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this Hyatt devaluation, there’s not much any of us can do about it in the medium or long term, so we’re either going to have to learn to live with it or we going to have to shift focus to another hotel program.

In the short term, however, it wasn’t all bad news as Hyatt gave us enough notice of the changes to allow us to lock in the current award prices for stays as far ahead in the future June 2027. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

The bookings I made

I like planning trips months and months in advance (often over a year in advance), so when Hyatt dropped the bad news, I already had my trips for what remains of 2026 planned out and I had a reasonably good idea of what trips I’d like to take (and need to take) in the first half of 2027.

All I now had to do was to choose the properties at which I (or Joanna and I) would like to stay.

That wasn’t particularly tricky, so using a combination of the World of Hyatt points I already had in my account and Hyatt’s “points advance” benefit (afforded to Globalist members), these are the bookings I locked in.

• Hyatt Place Kraków – 1 night for 3,500 points
• Park Hyatt Siem Reap – 3 nights for 45,000 points
• Grand Hyatt Erawan (Bangkok) – 4 nights for 48,000 points
• Park Hyatt London – 3 nights for 75,000 points
• Grand Hyatt Hong Kong – 4 nights for 100,000 points
• Il Tornabuoni (Florence) – 3 nights for 135,000 points
• Park Hyatt Milan – 4 nights for 180,000 points

All together, these bookings will require 661,500 World of Hyatt points.

Quick thoughts on the bookings

I’m reasonably happy with what I have booked.

When it comes to paying, I may not end up parting with quite as many points as the total above suggests as I may be able to use up a few Category 1-4 Free Night Awards and possibly even a Category 1-7 Free Night Award to help bring down the cost.

Having said that, the bookings aren’t perfect as I didn’t manage to get every booking I was aiming for. The Hôtel du Palais Biarritz never released award space for the dates I could visit, so that forced me to switch my attention elsewhere. Specifically, to the Park Hyatt Milan.

Had the situation been a little different (i.e. had this huge devaluation not been looming), I probably wouldn’t have booked the Park Hyatt Milan (the Hyatt Centric Milan Centrale would have been fine) and I probably wouldn’t have booked the Il Tornabuoni in Florence either as, usually, I don’t really see the point in throwing a lot of points (or money) at a city center property when I know I’m going to be spending most of my time outside of the hotel exploring the city in which it sits.

What pushed me to change my booking habits this time was the fact that given the cash prices that these hotels charge and the number of points I expected a single award night to cost once the devaluation kicked in, this would probably be my last chance to see what these properties are like.

I’m not prepared to pay $800+ for a night at a city center hotel (let alone the $1,400+ that the Park Hyatt Milan often charges) and I’m not about to part with 65,000+ points for a single night at one of these hotels either, so either I suck up the cost to book awards at these properties ahead of the devaluation or I accept that I’ll never get to experience them.

I chose to suck it up and pay the pre-devaluation points price.

What these bookings would cost if I made them today

So, now the devaluation has hit and we find ourselves living in a world where the Hyatt award chart has more seasons than Vegas has hotel rooms and more numbers than a drug dealer’s phone book, what would it cost to make the exact same bookings?

Here’s the answer:

• Hyatt Place Kraków – 1 night for 3,000 points (14.3% decrease)
• Park Hyatt Siem Reap – 3 nights for 60,000 points (33.3% increase)
• Grand Hyatt Erawan (Bangkok) – 4 nights for 48,000 points (no change)
• Park Hyatt London – 3 nights for 105,000 points (40% increase)
• Grand Hyatt Hong Kong – 4 nights for 100,000 points (no change)
• Il Tornabuoni (Florence) – No standard room availability*
• Park Hyatt Milan – 4 nights for 220,000 points (22.2% increase)

*A standard suite is available for 76,000 point/night (228,000 points/stay)

The six reservations that I could now still make would, today, cost me 536,000 points. Yesterday, they cost 451,500 points.

That’s an increase of 18.7%.

To be fair, I should point out that the increase in the cost of the Park Hyatt London reservation was entirely down to the fact that the property moved from Category 7 to Category 8. Had the property remained in Category 7, there would have been no price increase.

What this means is that the net effect of the award chart changes on the bookings I made pre-devaluation (and which can still be made today) has been to increase the cost by 54,500 points.

That’s an increase of 12.1%.

Quick thoughts

I have to admit that I’m surprised. The cost of my bookings has risen quite a bit less than I had expected it to. This may be down to the fact that a good number of my bookings aren’t for peak season dates and it may be down to the fact that, possibly, Hyatt has decided not to be too shocking with this set of price increases and that we won’t see the full impact until sometime next year.

I don’t think we’ll know what the true picture looks like until we get a lot more data from other people’s bookings, and we may have some time to wait before all of that filters through.

Bottom line

I was one of the many World of Hyatt members who locked in a number of award bookings before today’s devaluation and having now seen how things have played out, I’m happy with what I have planned.

One of my bookings has actually come down in price (but only by 500 points), two of my bookings haven’t changed in price at all (which surprised me), three of my bookings have increased in price by an average of 31.8%, and one of my bookings can no longer be made as the inventory appears to have disappeared.

It could have been a lot worse and I’m a little surprised that it wasn’t.

How did you do? Have you been surprised by any of the changes to the cost of the bookings you made before the devaluation?