These devaluations are bad enough now that more people should be asking if Hyatt will sooner be:
(a) getting the equivalent of Category 9 and/or 10 on award charts; or
(b) going down the Hilton and Marriott route with variable point pricing.
I have always taken it that when a loyalty program moves to 3 tier pricing for any particular redemption target (route and/or place), then we are much closer to getting the kind of sky high pricing in points that make the loyalty program generally less useful for redeeming toward award travel than for elite status benefits. Post-IPO and post-Hyatt credit cards, Hyatt seems to be walking on a road already well traveled in this regard in the loyalty program world.
I have just run down a huge balance of Hyatt points. I was considering transferring Chase UR points into Hyatt points, but it seems like a lot of properties of interest to me that are having their price points hiked up big time were already out of inventory using points even before this category change thing was released to us. Did Hyatt give the properties a heads-up on their being re-categorized and basically a green-light to play inventory games to sort of frustrate the efforts of Hyatt customers to get in front of this devaluation?