VegasGambler

Well when you pay with the gift card instead of the WoH credit card you are missing out on 400 WoH pts, which I value at about $7. So that gift card is worth $93 or so to me.

joe_miami

peteropny

OsakaWino

Well now that the thread is back on topic, I will repeat that It think the milestone changes offer a real upside for Discoverists (which I am eventually destined to become, likely sooner than expected). Getting 2 Club Access Awards at 20 nights is a major improvement for this tier, making it worthwhile to try for 20 nights without having to go all the way to Explorist. It is also relatively sustainable: one week at an Andaz on a Prive rate and then one week each at a GH or HR using a Club Access Award does not sound too bad to me.

MarkOK

Yes, I think that is a good point. This makes decent benefits available for a much less frequent traveller. Let's say there is someone -- Jane Doe, that is a relatively light traveller. Maybe 2 weeks of vacation and 8 nights of work travel a year. If she swings those nights all to Hyatt, she can earn lounge benefits for those 2 weeks of family vacation at a property like HR Lake Tahoe, HR Honolulu, GH Baha Mar, etc etc etc. The 10 extra nights would be out-of-the-way to make 30, and the 4 lounge passes are probably not all usable anyways. The changes can be decent incentive to choose Hyatt over Marriott or Hilton.

GUWonder

OsakaWino

Exactly. While Discoverist has now become more attractive, Explorist has become even less worth striving for than before, especially with the low incentive of the 40-night milestone. If they had wanted to give some incentive to Explorists to stay more, one suite upgrade at 40 nights would likely have appealed to many. Stretching 30 nights all the way to 50 nights is a bit much. Someone in the 20-45 night/year range might be more interested in Discoverist at Hyatt and then going somewhere else, maybe getting Hilton Gold through a cc.

Discoverist is now especially attractive to seniors who do not travel for work. 3 weeks of vacation at Hyatt a year gets 2 Club Access Awards, which can be used on Senior rates.

mnredfox

CloudCoder

Hyatt apparently wants an easy system where you "get something" after every 10 nights. Yet it would make more sense if the awards were stairstepped in a more logical sequence so that each 10-night milestone gives you more of an award. Right now, the sequence does not "grow" as you go up the stairsteps. If we rank the top three milestones by value:

1. 60 nights (biggest)
2. 30 nights
3. 50 nights

The milestone with the LEAST value is 40 nights. In a better world, the cheapest award of all would occur at 10 nights instead of 40 nights.

It would make a lot more sense if the awards generally increase as you go up their staircase. For example:

1. 10 nights - a club certificate
2. 20 nights - 5K points and a club certificate
3. 30 nights - 10K points and a club certificate and Explorist status (better rooms, more bonus points)
4. 40 nights - 15K points and club certificate
5. 50 nights - 15K points and a TSU
6. 60 nights - 20K points and a TSU and Globalist status (better rooms, more bonus points, concierge, club access)
7. 70 nights - 25K points and a TSU

etc.

I would be _perfectly_ fine with getting points instead of Room Night Awards. The Room Night Awards are flawed anyway. They can't be upgraded and they expire too soon.

Maybe the math would have to be tweaked. You'd want to give approximately the same cumulative value under any new program. Still, it makes a lot of sense for the award values to increase each 10 nights, instead of sometimes increase (30 or 60 nights) and sometimes decrease. (40 or 70 nights).

jpdx

Maybe I'm just a little slow today, but how do the club lounge awards benefit Globs? We get lounge access anyway, so we get nothing at 20 nights? Or will we receive 2 lounge access awards that are valid for the following year in case we don't requalify? Or are they for the current year and we can use them for friends or gift them to others?

hailstorm

Yes.

CloudCoder

If you qualified for Glob in 2018, then you get Glob benefits for all of 2019. But what if you don't qualify in 2019?

Under the old program, you'd "soft-land" to Explorist and you'd get 4 lounge awards.

Under the new program, you'd "hard-land" to whatever level you actually earned. Stay zero nights in 2019 and you get zilch in 2020. Stay 20 nights and you get two lounge certs.

The net result is that sort-landing is a thing of the past, and you have to requalify every year.

OsakaWino

I'm sorry if I missed it, but have they actually said that they are no longer "soft landing". They previously were very specific that members not re-qualifying for their current status would only be downgraded one tier. Unless they have announced that they are not doing that any more, I would think that a Glob not re-qualifying would be given Explorist status, but without the automatic 4 Club Access awards. So a Glob who failed to re-qualify but had 20 nights would have Explorist status and the 2 Club Access awards still valid for 12 months and a Glob who failed to re-qualify and had fewer than 20 nights would have Explorist status with no Club Access awards.

I do realize that a strict reading of the T&C would seem to preclude any type of soft landing, but wasn't that also the case with the old T&C? Hyatt just said that it had always been their policy to only downgrade one tier.

gengar

Soft landing definitely wasn't in the old T&Cs, but was explicitly stated by Hyatt reps (I even think Zidell mentioned it once). I'd thus expect Hyatt to announce publicly and explicitly if they were to change the policy, even if not technically in the program terms.

OsakaWino

Yes, Jeff is explicitly quoted here on FT at the launch of WoH that this was, and always had been, Hyatt policy. It can be found here:

World of Hyatt [Pre-Launch]

4. If a current 2016 Diamond will transition to be a 2017 Globalist, and completes 5-9 stays (but less than 10 nights) in Jan-Feb 2017 -- thus earning Platinum -- what will be their tier starting March 2018 (assuming no further stays)? Discoverist or Explorist?

Answer: As always, our members are transitioned down one tier if they fail to qualify to maintain their tier level. Therefore if someone is a Globalist and is set to downgrade at renewal, the member will become an Explorist.

After Jeff left I wanted confirmation and this is the response I received from the Hyatt concierge on FT on 11 OCT 2017:

I did get clarification and you are correct. Members only ever go down one tier at a time.

But I guess policy that is not documented in the T&C could be changed without notice...