skj

Yes, discounted rates (AAA, senior or corporate) booked on hyatt.com qualify for this promo.

OsakaWino

Or booked via a Hyatt call center.

Yes, this is a nice promo for leisure travellers for a change. 6 revenue nights at PH Tokyo netted me 15,000 bonus pts rather than the 5,000 I would have gotten from most recent promos.

Benjh

Agreed. But the "second qualifying stay" part is mind boggling. I'm spending 4 nights at the Andaz Toranomon right before my Kyoto stay, spending 100k points, and somehow it doesn't qualify me for the promotion. However if I book a $65 night at a Hyatt Place by an airport it would. Makes no sense.

It would be easier to just qualify from the first stay anyway.

OsakaWino

Seems typical of the new WoH. No matter what they give us, they always seem to want to qualify it or limit it or offset it in some way by taking away something else.

RTW1

Although I don't like it, and find it to be somewhat cheap...... it makes perfect sense.

They want to entice all those with long stays to book at least one additional night. The point of a promo is not to award us but to entice us to stay more....

austin_modern

It also avoids having a very long stay ending on day 1 of the promo period counting

RTW1

Yeah, but that's a problem they created with a lousy IT system and lacking common sense.

Nobody in his right mind would count a stay of x number of nights for a promo (or qualification) on the checkout date.

For this type of promo it's a bit different, and you are right...that's the most likely reason for the current qualification rule. But it's still a pain.

CloudCoder

This promo is typical of all recent Hyatt announcements: the best customers pay the highest penalty.

The rule about "starting from the 2nd stay) causes all customers to forego the "double points" on their first stay. The amount of this "penalty" depends on what kind of customer you are.

Consider customer #1 who stays one night at a time at a cheap Hyatt Place. That customer is out 700 points.

Now consider customer #2 who stays a week at a time in a central business district. That customer loses out on 15,000 points.

The bigger you are as a customer, the more you are penalized by this promotion. This follows an alarming trend, such as "the sooner you qualify for status, the longer you'll endure No Benefits starting 13 months from now".

I just don't understand a loyalty program which gives the harshest penalty to the best customers.

notquiteaff

My first stay would have been a reasonably expensive four night stay in the Bay Area. I don't have a nearby cheap HP to frontload a stay that I actually don't need just to make the more expensive stay count for the promo (and reduce the value of the bonus points significantly).

So I booked Marriott instead.

azepine00

Coincidentally marriott promo also starts from second stay. And the spg one doesnt apply to one nighters. Someone always gets screwed...

notquiteaff

Marriott had other benefits; promo did not factor in that choice (I won't have a second stay with Marriott). Better hotel, lower price, lounge access.

(Marriott also would have been two lower-end properties in near-walking distance from my home if I had wanted to do a MR to "prime the pump" (tm)...not that it would have made economic sense)

dsquared37

Did you just make up that phrase?

MikeFromTokyo

Can you do a quick one night stay somewhere beforehand?

Otherwise, you could spend your first night at GHT, and then Andaz would be the second stay.

Kacee

Nobody "pays" a penalty, that's just silly. If you choose to stay at a Hyatt, your bonus is dependent on the program rules. Hyatt has elected not to bonus until your second stay. Same as Marriott's current promo, where you get nothing for the first stay.

And if you think this promo is bad for high spenders, check out Marriott's - 2k per stay, no matter how much you spend.

OsakaWino

His stay at Andaz is on all-pts, so it would not earn any bonus pts anyway.