OsakaWino

Despite the truly nonsensical excuses to the contrary, it is incredibly obvious that all free night awards should be valid for 1 year.

joe_miami

LOL.

VegasGambler

This is nonsense. There are people who travel a lot for business, but only travel rarely for pleasure. Obviously no one is going to use a free night if their employer is reimbursing.

There are also people who very rarely stay at Cat 4 or below. In some places there simply aren't any Cat 4s.

joe_miami

You guys should switch to Marriott or Hilton. They're much more flexible with the free nights they award elites.

Oh, wait. They don't award free nights to anyone, let alone after a piddly 30 nights.

It's a Cat 1-4, not a Cat 4. And true high-rollers aren't paying attention to this and don't give a damn.

VegasGambler

But there are places where there simply aren't any Cat 1-4s. This is particularly true about the places where people tend to go on vacations.

It's not about high rollers who won't stay at anything less than a luxury hotel. It's about people trying to take a vacation in places where people take vacations. In San Francisco even the Hyatt Place is a Cat 5. People paying out of pocket for the Hyatt Place in SF are not high rollers -- they are people trying to take an affordable vacation in SF (which is no easy task). It's a Hyatt Place, not a Mandarin Oriental.

joe_miami

No sense going around and around on this yet again, but I see a lot of vacation-worthy places on the Cat 4 list, and even San Fran had a Cat 4 until very recently:

https://www.hyatt.com/en-US/explore-...ionGroup=0-All

VegasGambler

Yes there are, but expecting people to plan vacations around where there are Cat 1-4 hotels is a little silly.

Your statement about someone who stays at hotels that often is simply false. A very common situation is that someone travels a lot for business and racks up nights that way. Maybe they have the CC too for a bit of a boost.

Then maybe a couple of times a year they take a family vacation. This is obviously a great time to use the free night cert. If they are planning to visit San Francisco on this upcoming vacation... what are the options? Tell the family, sorry, we're not going to SF because all their Hyatts are cat 5? Stay in Emeryville? (No one wants to go on a vacation in Emeryville) Not everyone goes on personal trips every month; this family trip to SF could easily be the the only personal travel for 6 months. There are even people who do no personal travel at all for 6 or more months, even though they travel a lot for business (I work with a lot of people in that situation). I work with so many people who end up taking time off just because their PTO is about to max out (and it takes 18 months to accrue enough PTO for it to hit the max).

The FT community obviously is very heavily weighted towards frequent travelers, but not everyone is in that situation.

joe_miami

No one is expecting that, least of all Hyatt. Hyatt obviously doesn't want people hoarding free nights to use during peak times at high-demand locations. That's the point here.

embarcadero1

HeadInTheClouds

Yes, that would be preferable to making the vast majority of your customers irritated over a benefit they have no conceivable use for. "If you will endeavor to not re-qualify, this will be of great benefit to you!" isn't the best selling point, IMHO.

Respectfully, timing of the month in the year "when" someone re qualifies shouldn't be the determiner as to the utility of their benefit. Should I "hold off" to the last day of the year to re-qualify so that I can maybe use this in June? And seasonality is all over the board - plenty of places have their high season in winter. There are better ways to design a benefit.

iflyjetz

Back to milestones for a moment: For the 40 night award of $100 gift card. Is there any small print on the gift card? As in:
Expiration date
Restrictions on use
Etc

I'd like to use it to pay for a hotel stay. Are there any hotels that won't accept it?

cozysuite

The hotels are limited to these in American continent
There is no expiration date and other restrictions are described here

joe_miami

The "vast majority" of Hyatt's customers are "irritated" because some club lounge awards show up in their account after 20 and then 30 nights? You can't be serious.

By this logic, having them expire in a year would require people who vacation in December to wait until December to re-qualify. There's no solution here that would make everyone happy.

HeadInTheClouds

I am irritated being given something as a benefit that by definition I have no way to use. Who exactly is the audience that is happy about that?

Giving everyone a full 12 month cycle to use the benefit is precisely something that would make everyone happy.

joe_miami

For starters, the people who don't re-qualify.