My Hyatt 2 free nights in suite expiring soon
 

Hi guys, I applied for the Hyatt Visa card in May last year and I was doing a diamond challenge then and so the 2 free nights I got from applying for the card are 2 nights in suite.

Now fast approaching the one year mark with having the card, and my free nights are at risk for getting unused. I broke up with the gf and so I have no plan of going anywhere soon. My questions is how to the most use of these 2 nights. I am thinking of 3 options as below.

1. Can I ask Gold Passport to extend the expiration date of these 2 free nights? I seem to vaguely remember someone on here did that...

2. Can I make a speculative stay for like 360 days out and make changes to the stay later? And if so, can the dates be changed in the future? Can the hotel be changed in the future?

3. If not, I'll probably book a vacation for my parents, though it's not the perfect time for them to go on a vacation either (with my nephew still an infant) though they want to.

Thanks for any help.

1) I did - although, it did appear to be against policy.

2) Very Doubtful.

I found Gold Passport very accommodating when extending the dates. However, they'll only do it once, only for one month, and only upon request. It gets passed to the higher ups for evaluation. I think you would improve your odds if you had a specific use in mind and mentioned it when making the request.

You can't use them for a speculative booking. IIRC, the terms say that both redemption AND travel must occure before the expiration date. So you can't use a certificate that expires at the end of this month for travel next month just because you happen to book it before the expiration date.

This is a good reminder why one should have a specific award in mind before applying for a CC that comes with x free nights that expire in a year. A year goes by pretty fast, and Chase/Hyatt are hoping that many people do not use these awards.

What is your basis for that claim?

Well, plans change. Always uncertainties in this game that are hard to predict :cool:

Common sense.

Points don't expire (as long as one uses the account).

Free nights expire. Therefore, the cost to Chase is less than if they awarded points. If this were not the case, Chase would give points as the sign up bonus.

The cost is only less if not all the free nights are redeemed. Put another way, Hyatt knows that some free nights will expire unused, so they are willing to discount the cost that Chase pays.

Therefore, both Chase and Hyatt plan that x% of awards expire unused. If more awards are redeemed, then Hyatt's costs go up, and Hyatt will pass those costs to Chase during the next contract negotiation.

This is the same reason that Hyatt (and other programs) prefer to award free (expiring) nights than run generous point promotions.

Common sense can answer many questions.

Sorry - I did not mean to suggest that you got the card without having the free nights earmarked for a nice stay. Your post made it clear that this was not the case.

I just wanted to remind people that these expiring free nights can easily end up being worthless.

Common sense and business sense. The room rebate is not at 100%,
Probably x% and dependent on past year experience. There are always people forget to redeem those rooms... And don't forget, we are on FT and talk about where is the best value redemption... Some of them may be using the certificate in the same city or cat 2 just because they are going there.
So the costs even out as well...

Can the room nights be donated to charity or a not for profit org for a tax credit?

Kind of an old thread but I wanted to give an update to this as I had this issue and I finally called in to find out instead of speculate. I have 2 free nights from Chase which expire on March 31st. I called in and told the agent I read online that I might be able to extend the expiration by a month.

I had booked a room for the last weekend of March at the Paris Vendome and said I pretty much wanted to move it to the last weekend in April. The lady informed me that they can extend them, but only after they expire. Obviously I am a little bit leery of cancelling the reservation, letting the certs expire, then calling in April. She put me on hold and talked to a manager. It turns out you can extend them, but you have to do it in the month they expire. She told me to call back in on March 1st and they will happily extend them for another month. I'll report back in a month and let you guys know if its true.

Just called in to try and do this, and was told that as of Oct 1st, they no longer extend the sign-up certs, but they will convert each to 10K Hyatt GP points. They said they would still extend the anniversary certs up to one month.

Not sure if anyone else has encountered this...

10k points per night is not bad consodering the free night awards are supposed to expipre

i would try to trade them if someone needs them asap. im not sure if thats possible or not.

ghzhammer Free night awards are not transferrable the member who the awards are assigned to has to be staying in the room.