Oh Hyatt, not you too … ?

For most people who play the miles and points game, periodic changes to the various rewards programs are expected. They come with the territory.

Mostly, the changes that we see being made are ones which make the programs less valuable and, often, harder to exploit to the full. Some changes bring about improvements, but mostly, things get worse with time.

That’s fine. That’s the game, and we’re the one’s choosing to play it.

That being said, not all devaluations are the same. Some are more “disastrous” than others and some are handled a lot better than others, and this is where, historically, we’ve seen some big differences between the various airline programs and various hospitality industry programs.

Take Radisson Rewards for example. That was an acceptable (if not very exciting) rewards program for a while and then, suddenly, a little under 4 years ago, the program devalued massively overnight. Member balances were suddenly worth half of what they had been worth the day before and no notice was given that this change was on the way.

Effectively, that killed off Radisson Rewards for a lot of people, and most miles and points blogs/sites don’t even bother reporting on it any more.

What’s the point? It’s a program that you can’t trust and it’s a program in which the “rewards” aren’t, for the most part, worth chasing.

We also have programs like Marriott Bonvoy which, while still a very major player in the miles and points game, is a program that has used the past few years to gradually get less and less rewarding and which is operated by an entity which likes to focus less on the happiness of Bonvoy members and more on the happiness of hotel owners.

If you surveyed a pool of Marriott Bonvoy members who understand the miles and points world (i.e. you exclude those who are blindly “loyal” because they don’t know any better) and asked if they trusted the Bonvoy program, I suspect a significant number would say no.

Why? Because since the Starwood acquisition, Marriott has become quite adept at pushing through negative changes without much notice and you can count the number of positive changes made in that time on a single hand.

Then there’s Hilton Honors, a program which seems to take great delight at increasing the cost of award nights without telling anyone (it has done this at least twice in the past year) and diluting some member benefits to the point where they’re not really benefits anymore.

Do most Hilton Honors members trust the program not to make negative changes without any notice?

I don’t know, but I have a feeling that they don’t. If they do, I’d be interested to understand where that trust comes from.

The airline programs are just as bad. Some are even worse.

United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa, British Airways, and Virgin Atlantic are just some of the airlines that have, in recent years, pushed through very significant negative changes to their rewards programs without notice or, worse yet, while telling their members that the changes are only being introduced because that’s what members asked for.

Devaluing a rewards program is one thing, but treating your program’s members like they’re imbeciles who are incapable of seeing and understanding what’s going on under their very noses is a whole new level of bad behavior.

The truth is that most people who play the miles and points game can, eventually, accept a program’s devaluations if they’re given advance warning and if they’re given a chance to use some or all of their points/miles before the devaluation hits.

They find it a lot harder to “get over it” when a program foists changes on them without any notice, when a program tries to push out its bad news when it thinks no one is watching, and/or when a program attempts to gaslight them when explaining why negative changes are being made.

People don’t like sudden negative changes and people don’t like being taken for fools. None of this is rocket science, and yet quite a few rewards programs still don’t seem to have worked this out (or perhaps they simply don’t care).

In this regard, the World of Hyatt has, up until now, been a standout in the miles and points world.

Sure, we’ve seen a number of devaluations to Hyatt’s rewards program in recent years, and all have been as popular as a visit to the dentist. But Hyatt has, on the whole, given World of Hyatt members a reasonable amount of time to adjust before any negative changes have been introduced.

• When the World of Hyatt announced the introduction of Milestone Rewards in 2018, members were given almost three months’ notice (and they ended up getting even more time after COVID struck and the hospitality industry panicked).
• Every year, when Hyatt changes the World of Hyatt categories to which some hotels are assigned, members are usually given ample time in which to make bookings before the changes come into effect.
• When, in February of this year, Hyatt announced that it was pushing forward with wholesale (and overwhelmingly negative) changes to its award charts, members were given 12 weeks in which to prepare for the worst (and some of us did).

Have members been enjoying the annual hotel category changes? Mostly, no. Have members liked the recent massive changes to the award charts? Definitely no. But none of these changes were made in an underhand way.

None of the changes were pushed through without notice and at no point (that I can remember) did Hyatt try to tell its members that they asked for the changes to be made (who would ask for fewer benefits to be linked to elite status or to pay more for award nights?)

That’s important. It means that, up until now, although any negative changes announced have been most unwelcome, World of Hyatt members have been able to have a little bit of faith that Hyatt could be trusted not to do anything sudden or underhand or to engage in any British Airways-style gaslighting.

If you polled World of Hyatt members a few weeks ago and asked them if they “trusted Hyatt not to act in bad faith”, I think that most would have said yes.

If you took that same poll today, the answer may be different. And if it isn’t, perhaps it should be.

So, what’s changed?

Change 1

Recently, we’ve seen the Hyatt CEO claiming (admittedly in a brief interview) that reaction from members to the recent World of Hyatt award chart changes has been “overall positive“.

That’s a statement that is clearly untrue and it’s the kind of statement I would expect to see coming from the head of United Mileage Plus post one of its devaluations. It’s very “Comical Ali” (anyone remember him?) and it’s not what I expect to hear from the top guy at Hyatt.

Change 2

Also recently, we have started to see a number of high-end Hyatt properties rebranding themselves as “resorts” (when they’ve very obviously not resorts) in an apparent attempt to limit the benefits they have to offer to elite members.

Specifically, by calling themselves a resort, properties can get out of having to offer late check-out to World of Hyatt elites.

Hyatt appears to be doing nothing about this behavior and it’s the kind of behavior that we see coming straight out of the Bonvoy playbook – hotels allowed to do whatever they want in an attempt to short change elite members is something that Bonvoy elites have been having to deal with for years.

How is a property like the Park Hyatt Tokyo a resort? Presumably in the same way as the Niagara Falls Marriott Fallsview Hotel & Spa is a resort.

How is the Park Hyatt Sydney suddenly a resort? Presumably in the same way that the Lingfield Park Marriott Hotel & Country Club in the UK is a resort (it’s a very mediocre hotel that sits overlooking a horse track).

Change 3

Just the other day, the World of Hyatt terms and conditions were amended to include this paragraph:

For Free Night Award or Points + Cash Award reservations made on or after June 30, 2026, Explorists, Globalists, Lifetime Globalists, and primary cardholders of a Hyatt-branded Credit Card (regardless of tier status) will have advance access to booking as compared to other Members.Eligibility for this benefit is based on tier status at the time of award booking and booking windows are based on the time zone of the applicable hotel or resort.

This, we assume, relates to something that Hyatt announced at the same time that it told us that it was going to perform award chart surgery:

Additionally, Explorists, Globalists, Lifetime Globalists and World of Hyatt Credit Cardmembers will enjoy early access to award night availability and more opportunity to plan ahead and turn points into memorable future getaways.​

So, what’s this all about?

Well, we’re told, that from 30 June 2026, Explorists, Globalists, Lifetime Globalists, and primary cardholders of a Hyatt-branded Credit Card will be able to book awards 13 months out while everyone else will only be able to book 12 months out, and Hyatt is acting as if this is a great new feature that World of Hyatt elites (and co-branded card holders) should be happy about.

The problem, however, is that everyone can already book awards 13 months out at most World of Hyatt properties.

Here, for example, are most of London’s Hyatt properties showing award availability for 3 July 2027:

Here are most World of Hyatt properties in the Manhattan area showing award availability for July 6th 2027:

And here are all the Tokyo area World of Hyatt hotels showing award availability for 7 July 2027:

As it happens, and in a roundabout way, I highlighted the fact that everyone can book awards almost 13 months out in an article we published just ahead of the recent devaluation.

What this means is that what we’re seeing is a very good example of Hyatt gaslighting its World of Hyatt members.

The upcoming change on 30 June isn’t a new benefit for anyone. It’s actually a restriction of benefits for World of Hyatt members who don’t have elite status or a World of Hyatt co-branded credit card.

This is a devaluation being presented as an enhancement and this type of thing is could have been taken out of any number of other program playbooks – Marriott Bonvoy, American Airlines AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, Hilton Honors, etc…, etc… (the list of rewards programs that have tried to pull this trick goes on and on).

That’s not very Hyatt-like.

It’s disappointing

Where we’ve come to expect Hyatt to offer transparency, honesty, and a focus on delivering for guests, we’re now starting to see it indulging in untruths and a bit of gaslighting, as well as seeing it, apparently, standing back and allowing select properties to make changes which are deliberately aimed at limiting the benefits they have to offer to World of Hyatt elites.

Is this kind of behavior rampant and out of hand? No, not yet. But Hyatt has been turning an increasingly blind eye to member hotels playing games with award availability and elite benefits in recent years, and now that we’re seeing untruths and gaslighting being added into the mix as well, things look a little worrying.

This is a slippery slope that Hyatt is now on and it’s a slope that we’ve seen countless other rewards programs slide down and never turn back.

Up until recently, I would have been confident in saying that, on balance, I would probably trust Hyatt to to be a noticeably more upstanding part of the miles and points world than most (or possibly all) of the other programs.

Now, I’m not so sure.

It will be interesting to see what else Hyatt says or does in the next twelve months as that may give us a good indication on how we can expect it to behave in the years ahead.

Will we see it acting more like the Hyatt we thought we knew or will we see it descend into the same pit of mediocrity and apathy that a lot of the other programs currently occupy? I really hope it’s the former, but I’m having doubts.