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As is usual this time of year (pandemics aside), the World Hyatt has now announced its hotel category changes for 2024 and once again, it’s not great reading if you’re a Hyatt fan. Yes, the announcement that came yesterday could have been a lot worse, but even so, there isn’t much to be happy about with the changes that are on the way.
Key to know
- The changes announced will come into effect from 8:00 a.m. CT on 26 March 2024.
- All award night bookings made before 8:00 a.m. CT on 26 March 2024 will be priced using the current hotel categories.
- Bookings at properties whose award cost rises after the changes come into effect will not be repriced unless a change is made to that booking on or after 26 March 2024.
- World of Hyatt members with bookings at properties whose award cost falls after the changes come into effect will receive an automatic rebate of the difference starting on 27 March 2024.
Full details of the changes can be found on this page.
The numbers
Overall
183 properties will be moving World of Hyatt categories on 26 March with 137 properties moving up a category (75%) and 45 properties moving down a category (25%).
Geographic region
This is how these movers are split by geographical region (number of movers & percentage of movers):
- USA
- 65 up (36%)
- 21 down (11%)
- Africa & Middle East
- 7 up (4%)
- 1 down (<1%)
- Asia & Pacific
- 24 up (13%)
- 20 down (11%)
- Canada, Caribbean & Latin America
- 17 up (9%)
- 1 down (<1%)
- Europe
- 24 up (13%)
- 3 down (2%)
What this shows us is that 47% of all movers (86 properties) are in the United States, while Africa, Middle East, Canada, Caribbean, and Latin America have just 14% of all movers between them (26 properties).
In the US, Washington DC seems to be taking a bit of a hit with its 7 movers all going up a category, while California fares better with 11 of its 17 movers going down a category.
As far as the Asia Pacific region goes, 18 properties in China make up the bulk of the 44 properties moving categories in this region (7 up and 11 down), so if you strip those properties out, that leaves the rest of this huge region with just 14% of the movers.
The two key award charts
For reference, and before I go any further, this what Hyatt’s award chart looks like for Standard Room redemptions:
And here’s the award chart for Standard Rooms at all-inclusive properties:
Categories & brands
Unusually, the heaviest concentration of movers is to be found in the lower World of Hyatt categories with 21 properties moving from Category 1 to Category 2 (43% of which are in the US and 38% of which are in Europe), and 15 properties moving from Category 2 to Category 1 (40% of which are in China).
In total, 52 Hyatt Place/Hyatt House properties will be changing category on 26 March with 37 properties moving up (27% of the risers) and 15 properties moving down (33% of the fallers).
Of these 52 properties, 43 (83%) are in the United States (31 up and 12 down).
As far as the higher-end brands go, there isn’t much movement this time around:
- Alila – 7 movers (5 up & 2 down)
- Park Hyatt – 8 movers (7 up & 1 down)
- Andaz – 5 movers (5 up & 0 down)
- Grand Hyatt – 11 movers (8 up & 3 down)
These four brands have just 31 movers between them (17% of the total).
Just 5 properties are moving up to Category 8 …
- The Everline Resort and Spa
- Vail Residences at Cascade Village
- Hyatt Centric Park City
- Alila Villas Uluwatu
- Hotel Du Palais Biarritz
… and 1 property is moving down from Category 8 to Category 7 – Alila Marea Beach Resort Encinitas.
As far as the all-inclusive resorts go, 3 properties are moving up to the top-tier (Category F) where standard rooms can cost up to 58,000 points per night – Hyatt Zilara Cap Cana, Hyatt Ziva Cap Cana and Hyatt Ziva Cancun.
Free night certificates
Hyatt now issues free night certificates that cover the following categories:
- Categories 1 – 4
- Categories 1 – 7
- Categories 1 – 8 & A – F (all inclusives)
Clearly, none of the changes will affect the third type of free night certificate (no new super-category has been introduced), but the upcoming changes will definitely impact the first two.
19 properties will be moving from Category 4 to Category 5 moving them out of reach of the Cat 1-4 free night certificates that Hyatt issues. To counter this (a little), 5 properties will be moving from Category 5 to Category 4 and will be within reach of the Cat 1-4 free night certificate.
The net effect is that World of Hyatt members will have 14 fewer properties at which to use their Cat 1-4 free night certificates, and this continues a trend that has been obvious for a number of years.
The fact that popular properties such as the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, the Grand Hyatt Washington, the Thompson Chicago, the Andaz Bali and The Tribune (in Rome) are all soon to be out of reach of the Cat 1-4 certificates, makes this news even more disappointing.
Never has a Cat 1-4 certificate been harder to use economically and as I’ve said before, it’s time that Hyatt refreshed its lowest value certificate to include category 5 properties.
As mentioned earlier, 5 properties will be moving from Category 7 to Category 8 moving them out of reach of the Cat 1-7 free night certificates that Hyatt issues. Going the other way, just 1 property will be moving from Category 8 to Category 7 and will be within reach of the Cat 1-7 free night certificate.
The net effect is that World of Hyatt members will have 4 fewer properties at which to use their Cat 1-7 free night certificates.
Interesting movers
Everyone will have their own opinion on what category moves are interesting, but for me, these are the ones that stand out.
Moving up:
- Alila Jabal Akhdar category 6 to 7
- Alila Villas Uluwatu category 7 to 8
- Andaz Bali category 4 to 5
- Andaz Costa Rica Peninsula Papagayo category 6 to 7
- Andaz Singapore category 5 to 6
- Grand Hyatt Tokyo category 6 to 7
- Hotel Du Palais Biarritz category 7 to 8
- Hyatt Centric Park City category 7 to 8
- Hyatt Centric Waikiki Beach category 4 to 5
- Hyatt Place London City East category 3 to 4
- Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport category 1 to 2
- Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach category 3 to 4
- Hyatt Regency Bangkok Sukhumvit category 2 to 3
- Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa and Marina category 3 to 4
- Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Gainey Ranch category 5 to 6
- Hyatt Regency Sofia category 1 to 2
- Il Tornabuoni Unbound category 6 to 7
- Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego category 4 to 5
- Park Hyatt Auckland category 5 to 6
- Park Hyatt Changbaishan category 5 to 6
- Park Hyatt Istanbul – Macka Palas category 5 to 6
- Park Hyatt Mendoza category 3 to 4
- Park Hyatt Siem Reap category 3 to 4
- Park Hyatt Washington category 5 to 6
- Park Hyatt Zanzibar category 5 to 6
- Thompson Madrid category 5 to 6
There’s a lot of bad news in this list.
- The Hyatt Regency Sofia has long been one of the very best Cat 1 properties around
- The Andaz Costa Rica seems to go up a Category every year (it was Cat 4 not that long ago)
- The Hyatt Regency Bangkok Erawan is a great pace to stay (review)
- The Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego has been the best value Hyatt redemption in SoCal for years (I visited last summer).
- The Hyatt Place London City East has been the best value Hyatt redemption in London since it opened (I’m a fan).
- The Park Hyatts in Zanzibar, Siem Reap, and Mendoza have been very well priced up until now.
- Seeing the Thompson Madrid and the Andaz Singapore moving up a category before I get a chance to visit either is more than a little annoying.
I could go on …
Moving down:
- Alila Marea Beach Resort Encinitas category 8 to 7
- Hyatt Carmel Highlands category 7 to 6
- Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe category 6 to 5
- Hyatt Regency Tokyo Bay category 4 to 3
- Tommie Hollywood category 4 to 3
I’m struggling to get overly excited about any of the downward movers as, on the whole, they deserve to be going down. We’re not being given any great new redemptions.
The Alila in Encinitas is not a category 8 property, and even putting it in category 7 seems generous. The Hyatt Carmel Highlands seemed dated when I visited (for a day) a few months ago, while the rooms at the Tommie Hollywood are tiny, so both were in categories that flattered them before these changes were announced.
The Hyatt Regency Tokyo Bay is a perfectly nice hotel, but at category 4 (which can cost up to 18,000 points per night) it was overpriced for a property that can often be booked for $160 – $220 including taxes and fees.
I haven’t visited the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe, but I’ve heard good things about it so assuming those reports are correct, having this property move down to category 5 is a small piece of good news.
Overall
Overall, these changes are a clear net negative for World of Hyatt fans and what’s worse, the bad news may not stop here – just because a property hasn’t moved up a category in this set of changes doesn’t mean that it won’t cost more points going forward.
Off-peak, standard, and peak dates are set at Hyatt’s whim, so even if Hyatt doesn’t change a property’s World of Hyatt category, it can still increase the cost to visit by making fewer off-peak and standard dates available, and by categorising most nights as ‘peak season’ dates.
This is the one part of the World of Hyatt that’s hard to track (this is almost certainly deliberate), so while some relief can be taken from the knowledge that ‘only’ 137 properties will be moving up an award category in 2024, that news must be tempered by the fact that other properties may also end up costing more if Hyatt decides to tinker with the number of off-peak and standard season dates it offers at various popular properties.
Bottom line
At 8:00 a.m. CT on 26 March 2024, 183 World of Hyatt properties will be moving award categories with 137 moving up a category and 45 moving down.
How you view these changes will largely depend on your travel patterns, but for most people, this is another set of bad news from Hyatt and whichever way you look at it, this is another devaluation of the World of Hyatt program.
Any time you have a Good News/Bad News situation where the “Good News” is that it wasn’t worse you know it’s pretty awful. Purely anecdotally, every Hyatt I’ve stayed at in the past six months is going up in price. That tells me that the places I want to go are the ones getting jacked up in category. I’m still loyal to Hyatt but there really is a limit to how much I’ll take before looking at Hilton instead.
I tend to agree. While it’s pleasing to see that some of my preferred properties haven’t gone up a category this year (they have in the past), the absence of any interesting properties in the list of fallers is never a good thing – 33% of all the properties moving down are Hyatt Place/House properties and that’s not going to get many people excited.
Agreed — not a fan of Hyatt Place as the breakfast is dismal and the pet friendly policy while I love my 2 dogs is not for me. I leave my dogs with a sitter and don’t appreciate smelling like a dog/cat, entrance smelling like dog using it as a fire hydrant or fleas.