It’s time the World of Hyatt credit card was given a refresh or replaced completely

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When Chase unveiled the World of Hyatt credit card in 2018, it introduced it to replace an existing Hyatt credit card which, at the time, was coming up to its eighth birthday.

Now, as the current World of Hyatt credit card moves into its eighth year of existence, it’s time for Chase and Hyatt to act once again and to give the card a significant makeover or to put it out of its misery and issue something completely new.

The World of Hyatt credit card (in brief)

• The card comes with an annual fee of $95
• The card’s earning rates look like this:
  • 4 points/dollar at Hyatt properties worldwide
  • 2 points/dollar at restaurants worldwide
  • 2 points/dollar on airfare booked directly with airlines
  • 2 points/dollar on local transit and commuting spending
  • 2 points/dollar at fitness clubs and gyms
  • 1 point/dollar on all other eligible spending
• The card’s key benefits are as follows:
  • Card holders are given World of Hyatt Discoverist status just for holding the card.
  • Each card anniversary, card holders are given a Free Night Certificate valid at properties in Categories 1 through 4.
  • Card holders get 5 elite night credits credited to their account at the start of every calendar year.
  • Card holders can earn 2 elite night credits for every $5,000 of eligible spending that they put on their card.
  • Card holders can earn a second free night certificate (valid at properties in Categories 1 through 4) when they put $15,000 of spending on their card in a calendar year.

Note: terms apply to all earning rates and benefits.

The key benefits which are still relevant

There are two key benefits of the World of Hyatt credit card which remain as relevant today as they were when they were first rolled out in 2018:

• The 5 elite night credits that card holders are given at the start of every calendar year, and …
• The 2 elite night credits that card holders can earn for every $5,000 of eligible spending that they put on their card.

If you’re a Hyatt fan who cannot organically earn the elite status you’re aiming for (i.e. you cannot earn it through your natural travel patterns), the elite night credits that the World of Hyatt credit card offers can be very, very, useful.

That, however, is it.

The issues with the World of Hyatt credit card

The best way to sum up the problem with the World of Hyatt credit card is to say that while the miles and points world has changed considerably since 2018, the World of Hyatt credit card has stood still.

It hasn’t evolved and, as a result, a lot of the card’s constituent parts are a considerably less relevant and/or useful than they were when the card launched.

Here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean:

The Free Night Certificates are a lot less useful now

Back in 2018, the Category 1-4 Free Night Certificates were great.

The World of Hyatt program had a lot of properties sitting in Categories 1 through 4 and it wasn’t hard to find some really great hotels within each of those categories (the Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort in Costa Rica being a prime example).

In 2025, that’s no longer the case.

With the exception of the pandemic years, each year has seen Hyatt move more and more desirable properties out of reach of the Category 1-4 certificate, and we’re now in a position where a lot of major cities don’t have a property at which the certificate can be used.

On top of that, if you now scan through the list of all the properties that sit within Categories 1 through 4, you’ll find that a significant percentage of them are limited-service properties (Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, etc…) and a lot are in locations that most people have little interest in visiting.

Yes, there are exceptions to this and there are still places where a Category 1-4 certificate can be put to good use – the Hyatt Regency Seattle for example – but the fact remains that the Category 1-4 certificate is a lot less useful and a lot less valuable now than it was back in 2018.

The earning rates are less than impressive

To be fair, even back in 2018 most of the earning rates on the World of Hyatt credit card looked less than impressive (there are plenty of other cards out there that have consistently offered better returns on spending on airfares, dining and transit, and most people immersed in the miles and points game already hold those cards), but the World of Hyatt card did have one ace up its sleeve – it has always offered the best return (4 points/dollar which we equate to a 5.6% rebate) on spending at Hyatt properties worldwide.

The fact that the World of Hyatt card has, since its introduction, offered a better return on Hyatt spending than any other major credit card has been a key reason why a lot of people have held on to the card for as long as they have, but that key differentiator has just disappeared.

The newly refreshed Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card now offers 4 points/dollar (which we equate to a 6% rebate) on all spending made directly with hotels (terms apply) and as Chase points transfer over to Hyatt in a ratio of 1:1, this is a card which, effectively, now beats the World of Hyatt’s key earning rate.

Yes, the Sapphire Reserve Card comes with a considerably higher annual fee than the World of Hyatt Card ($795 vs $95) and that’s something which will put a lot of people off (people like me, for example), but for a good number of people who can make the Sapphire Reserve work for them (i.e. make the annual fee worthwhile) and who don’t have a need for World of Hyatt elite night credits, it will be the Reserve Card that they reach for when paying for a Hyatt stay.

Given the choice of 4 World of Hyatt points/dollar (points which you can only use at Hyatt properties) or 4 Ultimate Rewards points/dollar (points which can be transferred over to a wide variety of other programs, including Hyatt, in a 1:1 ratio), I’m reasonably sure I know what choice most people would make.

Even the welcome offers haven’t really evolved

On 28 June 2018, the World of Hyatt credit card was launched with the following welcome offer:

New World of Hyatt Cardmembers can earn up to 60,000 Bonus Points (equivalent of up to 12 free nights at a category 1 Hyatt hotel or 2 free nights at a category 7 Hyatt hotel or resort) on qualifying purchases.

40,000 Bonus Points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening and another 20,000 Bonus Points if they spend $6,000 total within the first 6 months.

Since then, there has been one particularly interesting welcome offer which included 10 elite night credits (that was launched 2020 and was published to help counter the precipitous drop in travel caused by the Covid pandemic) but not much else.

Yes, there have been variations in how the offers have been structured and changes to the spending requirements associated with the welcome offers, but by and large, the value being offered has remained the same or it has got worse.

Right now, for example, the welcome offer on the World of Hyatt card looks like this:

2 free nights at any Category 1–4 Hyatt hotel or resort after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from the account opening. Plus, 25,000 Bonus Points after you spend $12,000 on purchases in the first 6 months from account opening.

That’s a noticeably worse offer than when the card launched and worse than just about all the “points only” offers that have been published since then.

Since 2018, we’ve seen Hyatt introduce seasonal pricing, we’ve seen a new top-tier Category introduced (Category 8), and we’ve seen Hyatt slowly move a most of the better properties into Category 5 or higher, and yet here we have a welcome offer which requires a stunning $12,000 of spending just to earn two limited-use Free Night Certificates and 25,000 points.

If you really want some Hyatt points, save yourself $3,000 of spending and earn the welcome offers on the Ink Business Unlimited® credit card and the Ink Business Cash® credit card (a total of $9,000 of eligible spending would be needed) and, as long as you hold a Sapphire Card or the Ink Business Preferred® credit card, they would net you 150,000 Ultimate Rewards points which can be converted to 150,000 World of Hyatt points.

Which would you prefer? 150,000 Hyatt points for $9,000 of spending or two Category 1-4 Free Night certificates + 25,000 Hyatt points for $12,000 of spending?

Yeah. Me too!

This is now a very niche card

When it was launched, the World of Hyatt credit card was more than just a card for people who wanted to boost their elite night credits.

Even if you didn’t have any aspirations to worthwhile Hyatt elite status, the card was still useful for its annual Free Night Certificate and it’s class leading earning rate at Hyatt properties around the world.

That’s really not the case anymore.

Unless you need the elite night credits that the credit card offers or are someone who likes to amass as many World of Hyatt points as possible and cannot make the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card work for them, it’s hard to make a good case for holding the World of Hyatt credit card.

In fact, if you don’t really need the bonus elite night credits but still enjoy earning World of Hyatt points when you travel, you may not even have to be able to justify the cost of the Sapphire Reserve card.

There’s an argument to be made that you’d do just fine with the Ink Business Preferred® credit card (it has the same annual fee as the World of Hyatt credit card) which will earn you the equivalent of 3 Hyatt points/dollar on up to $150,000 of travel spending per year (all travel spending, not just travel booked with Hyatt).

Trying to add a little bit of balance

As I’ve spent most of this article showing how the World of Hyatt credit card hasn’t moved with the times since it was introduced, it’s only fair that I point out something else that hasn’t moved with the times – the $95 annual fee.

$95 from 2018 is approximately equivalent to $120 today so you could argue that although cardholders aren’t getting as much value out of the card as they once did, they’re also not paying as much for the card (in real terms) as they were when it launched, and this balances things out.

Well, not really.

Yes, the card is “cheaper” to hold now than it was in 2018, but the loss of value in that time far exceeds the ~$25 difference in real terms.

If Hyatt and Chase announced that the card’s annual fee was rising to $120 and the Free Night Certificates would now cover properties in Categories 1 through 5, I would expect most cardholders to be quite happy about that.

Sure, no one likes a price hike, but a Free Night Certificate that covers Category 5 is worth a lot more than $120 in today’s money and that just goes to show how much value the World of Hyatt card has lost in the past 7-8 years.

Bottom line

The World of Hyatt credit card is a shadow of its former self and is in desperate need of a makeover. If you’re not in need of bonus elite night credits the card is a lot less useful, relevant, and valuable than it was when it launched in 2018.

It’s going to be interesting to see how long it will take Chase and Hyatt to rethink what this card offers as the longer this obvious decrease in value goes on, the fewer cardholders I suspect the card will have.