I started qualifying for SPG plat when I was 26. I was struggling financially as an entrepreneur then but the on property benefits were so good I convinced my wife to push to requalify every year. When lifetime came out, I told her I was going for it. We did vacations around Starwood.

After the Marriott debacle, she forbid me to go for LTG. We benefitted from platinum but also went out of our way.
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I am glad she put her foot down on LTG. I won't abandon Hyatt as long as I keep getting suites at Park Hyatts and Andazes.

But I just Told her about the devaluation and how we have 800,000'points. She's mad and think I should finally just give in an pay for what I want and forget loyalty. So my guess is I'll switch to Marriott and four season/ rosewood types 20-30% of stays rather than forcing a Hyatt stay out of loyalty.

Rosewood Beijing, London and HK over PH, HR Churchill and GH type of thing. I did 130 nights in Hyatts last year and have 45 now. I'll requalify this yr and next but might do 60-80 nights rather then 100+ anymore

Except that it’s quite easy to get 2 percent back with cash back - albeit without many or any travel benefits.

Eh, I’m not really much of a credit card reward chaser anyway, and I’ll keep traveling where I want to and trying my best to enjoy it.

That’s been true for a while since the introduction of Citi Double Cash and yet we are seeing rapid growth of Marriott, United, and Delta cards. Many people here probably only get these cards for the SUB or annual benefits, but the data from the banks and these programs clearly suggest that people are putting spending on these cards.

You are absolutely right that for people who want simplicity or have the spending power to pay for whatever travel experience that they would be happy with, a cash back card is probably the best option.

But I think a lot of people are willing to put in some effort to play this continuing evolving game.

A lot of people are probably thinking: If I put this much more spending on the card, then I’ll get another milestone award, or hit globalist and get destination or parking fee waived.

It’s a delicate balance for these programs, if the change is too drastic and triggers bad word of mouth that cause a massive exodus, that would be bad. But gamification is a pretty established field and they’ve had years to learn from the SPG transition and Delta.

Agreed - I’ll keep playing for now, but bad word of mouth sure can be a beast…

Yeah I had mentioned in my post last night that from a PR perspective Hyatt had made a mistake with dumping such a massive negative change on people with nothing to soften the blow.

That means that the narrative moving forward these next few months is going to just focus and spin on the negative changes. This will be amplified with the hotel category devaluations in April and the actual release of the award calendars with these changes in May. Especially with no explicit statements that besides electronic points transfers and expanded award calendars for elites, we can’t expect any positive changes.

I remember the blowback delta got a few years ago when they rolled out a massive devaluation of the program all at once. They pulled back pretty quickly but have been implementing these changes more gradually and the blowback is now more incremental grumbling. I don’t see Hyatt backing off on this unfortunately.

I guess It’s better to just slowly turn up the heat of the pot than drop the frog into already boiling water.

Right, they had a pretty good reputation as a "safe" place to put your spend. Not sure thats the case going forward.

Genuinely not sure what to do after hearing this news. I'm a ~60-90 night/year person, predominantly work with personal travel mixed in. We plan our vacations around Hyatt properties, and have even gone as far as to get friend groups to make block reservations at Hyatt properties when we travel together. Everyday spend goes on my WoH CC, and we've had fantastic experiences with the program after first qualifying for Globalist in 2021. I'm already more than halfway to Glob again for 2026, but this is a kick in the nuts.

The damaging blows to World of Hyatt by greed
 

Doctor of Credit calculated a 37% increase in point redemptions cost
I already thought many of the redemptions costs high prior especially to this insanity looking at Hyatts deficiencies
and lack of Improvements since Jeff Zidell @ Hyatt left office who created the transition from Gold Passport to World of Hyatt
Like SPG it was an iconic world class program that differentiated itself from the rest of the competition
And while he and I didn’t always agree he was an innovator and along with some negatives came net positives

However these extraordinary negative changes are massively more than the next 10 to 14 years of inflation
if we figure typically inflation @ 3% a year historically

Ive always had faith and trust in Hyatt to generally do the right thing for its members but this is a game changer
Looking at the overall coming carnage coming they will without a doubt lose business across the board from myself and that likely of others.Their management should be ashamed much like Southwest and their self destruction aberration.
My business short haul flying is down 97% and it will never recover going forward

There simply is no way to be an apologist for Hyatts business decision making
Like Southwest they did it too aggressively and too fast all while trying to preserve award charts and avoiding a complete dynamic pricing model which is ultimately what they really wanted anyway but were too frightened to do it
That’s my thoughts and assessments and now it on to some 3rd party sites to book hotel reservations which will be more rewarding for my travel needs
And when a hotel stay goes bad I can count on far better than Hyatts brand assurance I will get my money back
Booking on 3rd party sites is something I didn’t do for many years.
But here we are 🤷‍♂️🙄🤯🫠
Hyatt you’ve really blown it this time out at bat

Hyatt did what it did because of the IPO and the unrestrained destructive greed mentality that brought.

Southwest did what it did because of human scum hedge fund activist filth that bought enough shares to force change so they could extract short term profit while destroying a culture and airline that took decades to build.

Common trend.

Alaska Summit is very good if you're not US based, but if you don't want to redeem the miles maybe it's not valuable.
Bilt Palladium is good if you're willing to go through the hoops but if you don't have a rent/mortgage in the US it is harder to maximize
Maybe a general 2x card with no FTF is good enough

Thanks. I've been looking hard at Alaska summit. I just wonder if I could ever use the 25,000 companion certificate. I've never seen an Alaskan lounge. But the 3x on foreign spend is very attractive. Thanks for the suggestion

It should be reasonably easy to use assuming you have a partner/family. Cardholder doesn't need to be traveling so just need any two people on a >25k mile cost flight (less is also ok but you forfeit the difference) and it works globally.
Also, it's 3.3x if you link a BoA account or Merrill Lynch account

Silver lining is that premium suite point costs won't change much.

I missed that. Has Hyatt released anything on premium suites?

Points redemptions are going to the 5 tiers, same as standard room awards. I'm not too familiar with the prices on current award charts, but Cat 8 at the new highest tier is 110k/night. Suite upgrade pricing is staying the same though. VFTW has a good overview of all the different changes and charts, including one showing all the new premium suite award prices.

https://viewfromthewing.com/hyatt-re...ore-expensive/