Mattress run for Globalist - not so cheap anymore
 

I havn't done a mattress run since 2015. I'm tempted to do so for the 20 nights for Globalism promotion. But a quick search online has shown that even Hyatt Houses and Hyatt Places, which were dirt cheap 5 years ago, are $100-$150 per night. This makes achieving globalist approximately $3k out of pocket. Is anyone else planning a mattress run?

I may have to MR 1 or 2 nights to get to 20, but I don't see the value if you need many more than that. $2-3K can buy a lot of breakfasts or pay for some nice room upgrades.

Not a pure 20 night mattress run, as I'm moving a little bit of business and leisure before the end of the year back to Hyatt. But I may end up doing a few nights of runs to round it out. There's a reasonable number of Cat 1-2 near me, and I'm point rich at the moment, so P+C is in order. I'd been looking at getting the citi prestige card anyways too, and that would effectively take a ~25% discount off the effort.

Is it worth it? It really depends. This year I will hit Hyatt resorts 4 times with my family of 5, as well as 3-4 weekend getaways (mainly to regency properties). The suite upgrades + late checkout + breakfast easily provide 4 figures of value for me. But for a single traveler just looking for some free breakfast, probably not...

The rates at HP/HH depend on where you are in the USA or in the world. You can still find Hyatt properties for under $100 per night, but of course fewer of these than in 2015. Sometimes certain days of the week tend to be cheaper too.

I did a mileage run about 4 years ago. I found Dallas to be the best valuation. There were plenty of HP's to bounce between so I got a 'stay' each night and they were all around $89 a night.

Someone is welcome to correct me if they have ever experienced anything different, but the Citi Prestige fourth night free benefit as I understand it is valid only once for a stay of four nights or longer, i.e., a stay of 8 nights only gets the fourth night free, not nights 4 and 8. Two stays of 4 nights booked back to back apparently also do not count. Two stays of four nights with a different property for a night in between should count.

Yeah, it's a simple calculation whether the benefits are worth it or not. Maybe need to discount by at least say 50% but otherwise fairly straightforward.

Interesting that even a full 20 night mattress run is worth it in your case. I'm like 8 nights off of SPG 75 and decided the extra 7 nights aren't worth it but then again most of the benefits accrue at 50 nights which I would pay to acquire. Too bad there's no such thing as "rollover nights."

Find a low end Hyatt in Asia or India for best value.

But then what? My understanding is that you need to check-in in person with your passport. So doesn't help unless you're already traveling there, right?

It should come as no surprise that Hyatt feels it can chop benefits in the new WoH and not bother with promos, when random HH/HP hotels can charge $150 per night with good occupancy rates.

The 20-night fast track only gets you Globalist lite. $3k for free breakfast and an upgrade lottery? (No DSUs, etc.) Don't bother.

You could consider doing P+C for your mattress run as a way to lower your out of pocket expense.

Best MR areas are on the weekends around IAD, Chicago suburbs, SF East Bay (C+P only,) and PHX in the summer. Of course, I've done CT runs when they had the 10k pt bonuses, and the MCO area (HP MCO is like 5k on awards so find a 2.5k C+P nt,) but those probably aren't coming back any time soon.

Don't think its worth doing any more, especially since no DIA/Glob amenity points and 60 nts vs 25 stays as many of these areas had multiple properties at low rates so bouncing paid off.

But if you just need a few nts, then OK.

Well, ALL hotels are more expensive now than they were a few years ago. I am getting the extra 5 nights I need to get globalists under the promo mostly at HH Dallas North at ~71$ a night for 1 bedroom King suite. Heck, the wife wants to do after christmas shopping in Dallas, and we need our interviews for Global Entry which are available at DFW the last week of December (though, I was hoping to get it done earlier than that) so we just booked some nights late December checking out Jan 1 to get some nights banked for next year when there appears now that we have a fair shot at ending up at 60 nights.

I don't always price comparison shop anymore, but when I do, I find HP and HHs usually to be very comparable in price to the lower end brands of the Hilton and Marriott families, but on average, things are about 20% more expensive than they used to be not that long ago. But, I know that in some cases, the HP/HHs can get well-marked up on select dates and locations. I just checked the same dates I have coming up in DFW this fall, and the Hampton Inns and Homewood Suites in the DFW area are all 80-120$ a night (the Hhonors price), which in my case is more than my 70$ a night "mattress running" at the HH. (the HR North Dallas is also about 70$ a night this fall, but they are doing renovations it looks like and I didn't want to deal with that).

The price for me ($400 after taxes) is worth it, but I will also enjoy those trips I am doing extra anyways. With only about half of next year planned out and about 20-30 more nights very likely, I will already save about $200 in resort fees, and will get about $700 in real value worth of free breakfasts at full service Hyatts without clubs (assuming my explorist club awards would work otherwise). I expect all in all, I will get about 1500$ in value by the end of next year from the globalist(lite) even if I never get a lottery upgrade.

Rollover nights would be awesome.

Yeah - thought that for years with SPG.

Seems like we all have a routine of hitting status levels, and then not pushing any marginal stays to that chain for the rest of the year.

With Delta's rollover MQMs, I keep pushing flights to Delta always.

Between the promos and diamond amenity, mattress runs used to be pretty easy with Hyatt and often made sense for me. You could almost break even on the points.

Now, there's no way I would add more than 5-10 nights, and even then it would take finding a great rate. The new brg program has potential for mattress running, but they are as stingy as ever in approving those, so unlikely I'll add enough nights to requalify.

Sadly, World of Hyatt appears to be a world without promos, and thus, I'd have an extremely hard time justifying mattress runs these days. In the ancient days of FFN/G/1W/DN bonus and even the olden days of points promo/G/1W/DN, a $100 mattress run could yield a significant kickback (5k points per stay or more not unheard of); today, you'd end up with less than 1k points. With a $50-75 kickback in points value, a $100 mattress run wasn't such a horrible idea; today, not so much.

IHG has rollover nts, and I had 14 of them roll to this year, making Spire rqualification easier.

Doesn't Hyatt have additional rewards for nts over 60 per year? I thought they gave out some free nt awards ever 10 nts over the 60.

At 70, 80, 90 and 100 nights: you get your choice of either 10K points or a Suite Upgrade.

OK thanks. Need to spend a little more time on the WoH T&C's before cmmitting to switching from IHG.

Moving a few nights to Hyatt can easily put me at 10 for the Glob challenge and just booked a 10 night stay for $700 which will (if I don't get second thoughts) push me to the threshold.

I figure the $700 outlay is justified to burn through low/mid six-figure points in comfort next year.

Edit: And it's not fully a mattress run anyway.

I would agree with that. It's been great for burning my points this year. Down to under 30K, with truly excellent stays in Vienna and Zurich the highlights.

Correct. From what I've read over in the Citi FT forum, you could try to bypass this a bit by booking 9 nights: 4 nights through Citi, 1 through WOH, and then 4 more through Citi, but you're betting on the property not merging the bookings and billing you once. Best just plan on only one free night per booking.

I'm staying 2 nights at PH vendome and 7 nights ph Maldives. I need to mattress run 15+ nights but the value will be a wash for me on these trips. However, I will get globalist for 1+ year and that has some value to me for future trips. I may regret the mattress run at the end of the day but I'm not sure. It's a bit crazy to do so many nights.

Cheapest I could find is $95/night + 10% tax

I got in on the explorist promo also, but I'm still debating whether to mattress run to extend the status. Doesn't seem worth it being in the pacific northwest.