Hyatt Launches the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card

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UPDATE: Some or all of the offer(s) mentioned in this post have now expired

After a few weeks of rumors suggesting that Hyatt and Chase may be about to release a premium co-branded consumer card, we now know that those rumors were slightly wide of the mark. While it’s true that a new World of Hyatt co-branded card is being introduced, it’s not a premium consumer card. Instead, Hyatt has just announced the launch of the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card which is a Visa card issued by Chase.

World of Hyatt Business Credit Card

Here’s what you need to know about the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card from Chase:

Annual fee:

• $199

Cost of employee cards:

• $0 (zero)

Current welcome offer:

60,000 Bonus Points after you spend $5,000 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. 15,000 more Bonus Points after you spend $12,000 in the first 6 months.

Earnings:

• 4 points/dollar at Hyatt properties worldwide
• 2 points/dollar at fitness clubs and gyms
• 1 point/dollar on spending in all other categories

Cardholders also earn 2 points/dollar for their top three (out of eight) qualifying spend categories each calendar quarter through 31 December 2022 and their top two (out of eight) qualifying spend categories in 2023 and beyond.

The qualifying spend categories include:

• Dining
• Airline tickets purchased directly with the airline
• Car rental agencies
• Local transit and commuting
• Gas stations
• Internet, cable, and phone services
• Social media and search engine advertising
• Shipping

There is no cap on the number of points that can be earned in these categories.

Key benefits:

• All cardholders are given World of Hyatt Discoverist status
• Cardholders earn 5 Tier-qualifying night credits for every $10,000 of spending put on their World of Hyatt Business Credit Card.
• Spend $50,000 or more on the card in a calendar year and receive 10% of the redeemed points back as bonus points for the remainder of the calendar year (up to 20,000 points).
• Spend $50 or more at any Hyatt property and earn $50 in statement credits up to two times each anniversary year
• Gift Discoverist status to up to 5 company employees
• No foreign transaction fees
• Complimentary roadside dispatch
• Primary rental car collision damage waiver
• Access to Hyatt Leverage, Hyatt’s global business travel program that offers special rates to qualifying small and mid-sized enterprises at participating Hyatt hotels worldwide.

Related: How the Hyatt Leverage program works & how it can help you save on hotel stays

Thoughts

The cost

The first thing to consider before diving into what this card offers, doesn’t offer, and possibly should offer is the cost.

At first glance, the annual fee of $199 looks steep for a credit card that doesn’t offer a free night certificate, but once you take into account the two $50 Hyatt credits that this card offers, that annual fee is effectively reduced to $99. That’s not too bad.

The welcome offer

75,000 points is a very nice welcome offer for a Hyatt co-branded credit card and as I value Hyatt points at 1.4 cents each (based on the value that I know that I can get out of them without too much trouble), this is a welcome bonus worth $1,050.

That’s pretty good for a card whose effective annual fee can be reduced to just $99 and it’s a bonus that can help justify the card’s annual fee for a few years.

The earning rates

As far as this card’s earning rates go, I have to confess to being a little underwhelmed because there’s nothing here that makes me think that this is a card that a Hyatt fan absolutely has to have.

Anyone interested in the new business card almost certainly already has the $95/year World of Hyatt Credit Card (the consumer card) so they already get 4 points/dollar at Hyatt properties and 2 points/dollar at gyms. The same card also gives them 2 points/dollar on dining, airfares booked directly with airlines, and local transit regardless of how much (or how little) they spend in each of those categories so these earning rates that the business card offers aren’t going to impress anyone who already holds the consumer card.

Yes, it’s true to say that the Hyatt Business Card also offers cardholders the opportunity to earn 2 points per dollar on spending in two out of the following categories every quarter …

• Dining
• Shipping
• Airline tickets when purchased directly with the airline
• Local transit & Commuting
• Social Media & Search Engine Advertising
• Car Rental Agencies
• Gas stations
• Internet, Cable & Phone Services

… but if these categories are important spending categories for a small business owner, that owner would probably be better off putting most of that spending on the $95/year Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card.

Thanks to the fact that Chase Ultimate Rewards Points convert to Hyatt points in a 1:1 ratio, the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card effectively earns 3 Hyatt points/dollar (50% more) on the first $150,000 spent in combined spending on shipping, social media and search engine advertising, internet, cable and phone services (as well as on most travel spending) and would be a great option for most small businesses whose spending falls into these categories.

Put simply, I’m struggling to see how the earning rates offered by the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card will help it stand out or will help it appeal to a large audience when there are better options available.

The key benefits

The World of Hyatt Business Credit Card offers a number of benefits that it shares with the World of Hyatt consumer card (e.g. cardholders get Discoverist status and the card doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees), it introduces a few benefits that we haven’t seen before, but it also fails to offer a couple of useful benefits that holders of the consumer card get.

Get a 10% points rebate

Chase and Hyatt say that holders of the Hyatt Business Credit Card will receive a rebate equivalent to 10% of the points they redeem after they spend $50,000 on the card in a calendar year, but there are a few nuances to this benefit that need to be made clear:

• The 10% rebate only applies to points consumed after $50,000 has been spent in a calendar year.
• No rebate will be given on points consumed before $50,000 has been spent even if at some point later the same year, the $50,000 spending target is reached.
• Bookings made before $50,000 of spending is put on the card where the stay occurs after the $50,000 target has been reached will qualify for the 10% rebate as the points are not being consumed until after the spending target has been reached.
• The rebate is only valid on bookings of up to 200,000 points so a maximum rebate of 20,000 points is available each calendar year.

For anyone who can put a lot of spending on their World of Hyatt Business Credit Card early in the year this may be a useful benefit to have, but the fact that the rebate is capped at 20,000 points is disappointing.

We value 20,000 Hyatt points at $280, and that’s not exactly an impressive number considering a cardholder has to spend at least $50,000 to earn it.

For anyone whose spending patterns mean that they only hit the $50,000 spending target late on in the year, this benefit is likely to be considerably less attractive.

Get up to $100 back in Hyatt credits

Holders of the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card will earn a $50 statement credit when they put $50 of Hyatt spending on their card. As this benefit can be used twice in a calendar year, a total rebate of $100 is on offer.

This is a straightforward and useful benefit to have as, effectively, it reduces the business card’s annual fee down to $99 (if you’re not going to spend $50 with Hyatt on two separate occasions in a calendar year this is definitely not a card that you should be considering).

Gift Discoverist status to 5 other people

The official language used to describe this benefit says “gift Discoverist status to up to 5 company employees”, but because the people receiving the gift of Discoverist status do not have to be supplementary cardholders, it’s possible for a holder of this card to gift status to any member of the World of Hyatt program.

While Discoverist elite status isn’t particularly exciting, it does offer status holders 10% more points on all Hyatt stays, free access to premium internet, in-room bottled water, 2 pm late checkouts (where available), and access to bonus American Airlines miles on all Hyatt stays, so it’s not a completely useless benefit to have.

The ability to gift this status to up to 5 other people is a nice thing to have and will be useful for some, but I don’t see it as a huge benefit that’s going to blow people away.

Primary rental car cover

The World of Hyatt Business Credit Card offers cardholders primary rental car cover, and not only is that a good benefit to be given (it prevents a cardholder from having to get their own personal car insurance company involved if they have an accident), but it also makes it a little easier for cardholders to justify using this card for rental car spending.

With the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card and the Chase Sapphire Cards already offering primary rental car cover, this isn’t a benefit that makes the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card stand out, but with rental car spending offering cardholders 2 points/dollar (when it’s one of the top two spending categories in a quarter) it’s a benefit that has its merits.

Bonus Tier-Qualifying nights

The card gives cardholders 5 Tier-qualifying night credits for every $10,000 spent on the card where the consumer card offers 2 Tier-qualifying nights for every $5,000 spent, but unlike the consumer card, the Hyatt Business credit card doesn’t give cardholders 5 Tier-qualifying night credits at the start of every year.

Nevertheless, even though holders of the Business Card don’t get any bonus Tier credits at the beginning of the year, they can still spend their way to top-tier Globalist status by charging $120,000 to their card, and that’s something that may well be tempting to business owners with large bills to pay.

A missing benefit

Unlike the consumer Hyatt card, the World of Hyatt Business card does not offer cardholders a free night certificate nor does it offer cardholders the opportunity to earn a free night certificate through spending.

That’s a little disappointing.

Chase and Hyatt will probably point to the fact that instead of a free night certificate the card offers up to $100 in statement credits every year (something which the consumer card doesn’t offer), but with the business card costing $199 and the consumer card costing $95, and with a free night certificate usually worth more than $100, this is definitely a weakness in the business card’s armory.

Overall

If you’re a big-spending small business owner there’s probably going to be value in holding the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card because it offers the cheapest path to spending your way to the most valuable hotel elite status around and if you’re spending that amount of money anyway, you should be able to put $50,000 of spending on to your card early enough in the year to make earning the full 20,000 points rebate reasonably easy.

If, however, you’re not a big spender, it’s hard to make a particularly strong argument for holding this card long-term.

In year 1 the big welcome offer will offset any weaknesses that this card has (I’d love to have another 75,000 points in my account) but after that, a combination of the World of Hyatt Credit Card and the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card will probably work better for most Hyatt fans.

Between them, these two cards cover most of the bonus spending categories that the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card covers, they cover a lot of the benefits that the business card offers, and, to a large degree, they’re more rewarding – they offer more points in a number of key categories.

As importantly, the combined net cost of holding the World of Hyatt Credit Card and the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card (after you factor in the value of the free night certificate that the Hyatt consumer card offers) will probably be lower than the net cost of holding the World of Hyatt Business card alone, and that makes it harder to justify holding this card.

Big spenders may be tempted and Hyatt fans needing a boost towards earning or retaining elite status may be tempted, but for everyone else, this card will probably be a pass.