Originally Posted by
Michael Ad
Has anyone seen a situation where Points + Cash is available for a hotel room, but points alone is not?
I never have, at least on the Hyatt website.
But I have a reservation in 2019 for points plus additional points for a suite. Then, I made Globalist for next year, so I wanted to swap out the additional points for the suite with a TSU. I contacted my concierge who told me that we could make the switch, but since they’d have to rebook, they’d have to do it as Points + Cash + the TSU because no rooms were available for only points currently.
I agreed because it’s not a huge deal to me either way, but I also can’t really figure out why this happened.
Does the hotel make more money this way, so they’re forcing me into something more valuable for them? My assumption was always that they make more the other way - that the points get reimbursed at more than 1.25c each during busy seasons, which this is.
Anyway, I agreed to go from 20K points for the base room to 10K points plus $125. There will be some taxes, so it'll be a bit more than that, but I think the resort fee will still be waived for me (maybe I'm wrong about that, and that's where it's profitable for them?).
Any thoughts on what's going on would be appreciated.
My understanding of this is as follows:
1. Base rooms are available for points, but the hotels have the discretion to add in additional "buckets" of rooms for Points and Cash if they desire. I've seen several instances of rooms being available for Points and Cash and NOT points. In each case it was a higher category room than the base room.
2. It would be very odd for the base level room to be available for Points and Cash but not just points. If this were the case, I'd ask them to open up the inventory as base rooms are supposed to **always** be available for points. You can ask your Concierge to do this, or call the Globalist line, OR my favorite route: reach out through Twitter. I get great results from Twitter. When pushed, I have had hotels open up points inventory.
3. In terms of how they make money and whether offering Points and Cash is more profitable... Oddly, the formula for how the hotels are paid for points is still a pretty well-guarded secret. What I've heard is that they are NOT paid a set value per point. Instead, the value of points varies GREATLY based on occupancy levels at the hotel. If the hotel is full, point values go up a lot (perhaps as high as to reimburse the hotel the average market rate being paid for base level rooms). If it's empty, the points are worth much less (I've heard as little as a half cent per point... so that means 5,000 point hotels are getting $25). I'd imagine it's a completely different formula for Points and Cash.
4. Point and Cash availability is normally an indicator of low occupancy, in my experience, which would lead me to believe the points value is low, thus it's possible they DO make more money off of Points and Cash over points alone when at low occupancy. However, this is balanced by the fact that they are REQUIRED to offer a chunk of rooms for points only, and they are not required to offer any inventory for Points and Cash.