I believe EE was referring to full-service Marriott brands where complimentary breakfast is gratis for Platinum members and above.

Your reference to the above chains in the Marriott family is inapposite as you should know that neither of these brands provide a complimentary breakfast as a promise, merely, a voucher in some amount that you could apply to breakfast.

With all due respect, if you are going to expect a benefit and you admit that you "can't keep their rules straight," it is incumbent upon you to know the elite status benefits due you at a given property, at the very least before you stay there.

Moreover, if memory serves me correctly, the C/Y you stayed at is attached to a Marriott Residence Inn where all guests receive a complimentary breakfast (and more room space), so the error was compounded given the usually small difference in points/charges between the two. This is not a fault of the Marriott properties on offer, just those you selected without enough consultation to the rules.

I made a Sydney reservation for next year and a ski reservation.

I would have done some in Europe, but the timing isn't right for me.

I figured any good rooms need to be about a year out, and I don't love Europe in winter.

I think the point was that with Hyatt you don’t need to keep track of these complexities.

You said full service, but it’s not all full service hotels within the Marriott portfolio of brands. It varies by brand and region. That’s a lot of mental gymnastics.

So I think a comparison of breakfast benefit by simplicity of rules is appropriate.

Sad but it was inevitable.
There are many people who never pay cash rates .. they just rack up points on credit cards and exclusively stay on awards.
These award changes address those customers.. but what about people who actually earn on cash rates? Marriott & Hilton earn 10 base pts / dollar on most properties.. Hyatt is stuck at 5 base pts / dollar.
If Hyatt is trending towards Marriott/Hilton level award pricing, then they need to increase base pt earning rates for cash...

I don't disagree that the Marriott breakfast rules are convoluted and require study and often consultation -- in addition to reading past reviews from others as to the outcomes for elites at the various subject hotels -- but I read the jibe otherwise.

Moreover, Hyatt is not that simple overseas as European Hyatt Place properties do not guarantee complimentary breakfast for Globalists; yes some may offer that as other have reported, but if they do, they do this as a courtesy; I have never read that they offered it to more than 2 people, not a family of 3-4, and certainly it is not included in the room tariff as it is in the USA.

Thus, this would be a situation where an unsuspecting US based Globalist could be surprised by their lack of status benefits.

That is probably a tiny fraction of their customers base. And I thought the conventional wisdom was that credit card customers are valuable to airlines/hotels? I mean, no one forced them to launch a card program….

baby / bathwater

you do realize that they are different currencies with different valuations, right? Comparing five Hyatt points to 10 Hilton points is like comparing five USD to ten Argentine Pesos. Kind of.

The value of a Hyatt point will change because of this devaluation. But it won’t be the same value as a Hilton point, and it wasn’t before the devaluation.

Well, what would then be the point of the whole change? I mean, the whole point seems to be to make award stays more expensive.

Perhaps "trending towards", but nowhere nearly as dire in absolute value. Just the other day I checked a random Marriott, the base room was going for something like 180k/night. A bunch of Hiltons are at 200k+ now (with the highest being 250k). Both are more than 2x of Hyatt's new highest peak, and both are significant award price hikes over the last 1-2 years. So I would say Hyatt is following the trend of dramatic award price increases, but I expect the value relative to Marriott and Hilton should remain about the same (e.g. worth 2x Marriott, 3.5x Hilton by my valuation), b/c those programs have been doing the same (and got a head start).

I won't quote all the posts for brevity - but yes, I was talking about full-service properties as those are the majority of my stays. Indeed, Marriott is more complicated at the limited-service level - however, in many places, a Marriott limited-service beats a non-existent Hyatt of any service level (Bosnia, North Macedonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, to name a few)...my apologies for not considering the limited-service angle.

Fingers crossed... one can hope this doesn't go the way of Marriott/Hilton.
Valuation can be difficult because Hyatt has such a small footprint relative to those two chains.

I took the question to Gemini and they sugguested Alila Bali, PH Kyoto,PH Sydney, The two Maldives properties to target (I asked for non US destinations as I didnt fancy going through the immigration hassle of going into the US)

Other than those listed I’m looking at Park Hyatt Paris Vendome (only one of the palace hotels available on points, though it might be the worst?) and Miraval Tucson (allegedly it’s the best of the three). Albeit I’ve been to neither. Ventana looks like the only US Alila worth trying. I do want to go to the Alila in Oman but the cash rates aren’t bad.

I believe WA Maldives is the best points property in the Maldives if you’re willing to withstand the inflation

There's also Hôtel du Palais Biarritz, which is a Palace hotel on Hyatt.

In general, I'm most concerned about the high-cpp hotels that could easily justify the upper bands of their tier. I'm thinking of these for speculative reservations:
- PH Milan
- PH Buenos Aires
- PH NY
- PH Paris
- PH Zurich
- PH Vienna
- PH Kyoto
- PH Tokyo
- PH Maldives
- PH Niseko
- PH Cabo
- PH St Kitts
- Hotel du Louvre
- Alilia Ventana Big Sur
- Alila Maldives
- Alila Napa
- Alila Uluwatu
- Andaz Maui
- Andaz Tokyo
- Andaz Papagayao
- Andaz NYC
- GH Kauai
- Miraval Arizona
- Miraval Berkshire
- Thompson Palm Springs
- Thompson Madrid
- Thompson NYC (both)

Many are nice enough hotels but are trend towards points farm types. I’ve stayed at most of these and while nice they are not worth the cash rates and tend to be overrun with elites trying to maximize their CPP.

Some are though a bit hard to book now. I don’t see any availability of PH Kyoto. Others I can’t get suites…. I guess people started to book whatever hotels with points… non-globs might use their points to book suites before those getting expensive…

Another big difference is that Bonvoy gives me 75% elite bonus points (lifetime titanium) while with Hyatt, it's only 30% as a Globalist.