A massive devaluation, cat 1-4 / 1-7 FNA has more value now.

Hyatt must be receiving a lot of complaints about points redemptions from owners. To put it mildly, this is customer unfriendly.

It’s too soon to tell just how bad this will be, though I am not optimistic.

I plan to hit Globalist again in 2026. That will change in future years if they gut the program.

I went free agent a few years ago on airlines and it has worked well.

Yikes your points just devalued by 67% if you prefer to redeem at high end properties.

Five levels within each category seems to let them approximate dynamic award pricing without calling it that.

Time to work on some plans for my UR stash.

It's far too soon to tell whether this actually meaningfully impacts the 2 cent per point valuation - though, it seems likely that it will impact the extremely high valuations that were possible at some properties with obscene cash rates. If the vast majority of dates become "Upper" or "Top" - that's not great - but we don't have any data to back that up beyond cynicism.

The random set of category changes announced today are making me chuckle, though, as the hotels they announced are quite random.

I would like to see Hyatt start forcing properties to open up a reasonable amount of standard room redemptions without night minimums - even at the "Upper" or "Top" rates - looking at you, Park Hyatt Kyoto.

Brutual! Can we please just get last week's fake changes back instead?

-FlyerBeek

I would be okay with these changes if it were set that hotels can have xx room nights at each level so as to fairly allocate plenty of nights into all these classes for instance in BKK hotels I recall seeing 1 night at a cat 1 for 3500pts even in their low season...

Just booked Ventana, will book PH Milan, Paris & Kyoto before changing. It's still discount time...:star:

I was just thinking the same thing. Give us category 9-10 and keep three tiers per category.

This is going to be a total bloodbath for people using their points primarily at PH and high end GH/HR properties.

These changes would seem to infer some change on the earn side. A 67% annual increase in a stable system shouldn’t be necessary, unless someone got their modeling badly badly wrong. So an announcement of a new CC offer would explain why these are needed…

The frequent myler team asked Hyatt and they said that there is no limit to the number of dates in any sub-category. I wish they would have at least committed to an equal or higher number of rooms in Lowest vs Top and Low vs High/Peak nights in a calendar year at any given hotel.

Interesting that this is normally the week that Hyatt will announce their annual category changes for implementation in March. Waiting until April makes me think that they want to see how negatively this is taken and impacts direct bookings before finalizing the category changes.

If there is a big backlash and a material reduction in complaints and direct bookings In the next few months, I would fully expect them to have a fairly neutral category change this year. If travel patterns aren't showing any real change, I fully expect a decent devaluation in the category changes as well.

https://frequentmiler.com/mayday-hya...t-in-may-2026/

Apparently according to Frequent Miler there is no required to have any set number of nights at any level. So most hotels will never used Lowest/Low. Expect most good hotels to move between Moderate/Upper/Top like they move between now.

It’s the monkey’s paw granting “I wish FNAs would be more valuable”.

with no limits this may very well kill the hyatt value proposition for me personally, at hyatt you earn very few points and since credit cards are mainly available in the US it makes the program less appealing if redemption are not deals anymore... I will see this year out and make a decision next year