stephem

I just came across this promo at Hyatt.com and was not sure if it is new or something that has been announced for a while.

Each stay booked at Hyatt.com under rate HYCARD and paid with AMEX gets you a $50 gift card. The terms state that the gift card can be usedThe terms and conditions say that the card does not expire. The terms suggest you can use this after checkout at another property and there is nothing in the terms to suggest you cant use the card to pay room charges for a later stay.

If you are doing an end of year status run, you could seemingly use a gift card on your sucessive stays to cut the price of each successive stay. For anyone with local property with a $100 hyatt.com rate, this could cut your mattress run price to $50 per stay. If you staggered your stays to check in Fri, check out Saturday, check back in Sun, etc. it seems like you could really take advantage of this promo.

Anyone have a different reading of this promo?

limo

It appears the only problem for me is the inability to get my corp rate along with the HYCARD code. If I enter both my corp rate code and the HYCARD promo code, my corp rate won't show up. Anyone else having luck on this?

Otherwise this promo is execellent for people who usually pay Hyatt.com or the prevailing rate. Thanks for the find!

gregorygrady

Wow, great find by the OP!! ^
This is a great deal, however I'm somewhat surprised that M/C allows Hyatt to do things like this. The day after the M/C promo ends.....BAM....an AMEX promo starts. Especially if Hyatt is considering offering a co-branded M/C soon, this seems like a slap in the face to M/C. Oh well, I for one don't care, the more promos the better as far as I'm concerned. And yes, great thinking about using this to lower the cost of requalifying. For example, DTC is $59 on Christmas Day. This brings the price down to $9 for a stay on that day, AND you get the G2 bonus as well. Can't beat that one. Although my guess is that this promo will actually require one to physically check-in to the hotel to get the $50 Gift Card. So seems like a great deal if you live near a cheap Hyatt and you need a few stays to requalify.

My guess is that this is the standard flakiness associated with booking certain rates on hyatt.com while trying to add a promo code into the reservation. Hyatt.com has been notoriously flaky in these cases over the past several months. Just make your standard reservation and then call GP CS to have them add the code. Kind of a PITA, but what else can you do until Hyatt fixes their website glitches?

limo

Truly a PITA, took quite a while but all reservations made successfully. This is what I had to do:
1. Book online using the HYCARD code with whatever non prepaid rate
2. Call GP CS to add the corp code to my reservations

This 2 step thing is not as painful as it appears, but I actually had to speak with the Diamond reservation desk to explain the situation, then have them talk to GP CS, then have GP CS open a case for me on this issue. Quite a PITA. The GP CS rep said he informed the entire group via email of this situation so they should know what to do next time.

Now that this hard work is done, my fellow FTers can enjoy this excellent promotion with minimal work. Cheers!

gregorygrady

It probably would have been much easier to just book your corporate rate and then call GP CS and have them simply add the "HYCARD" promo code to your reservation (thus no rate change, back and forth bewteen GP departments, etc), but whatever works................

limo

Thought and asked about that, since it would have saved me all the hassle of rebooking. Since the T&C specifically said the reservations must be booked online along with the HYCARD code, the method you suggested may pose a risk. In fact, the 2 GP CS reps I talked didn't think it would be safe either. FWIW.

peteropny

OK - I hate to ask this question, but are we SURE that adding this code to your reservations WILL still earn you a stay credit - especially important for people who need more stays for requalification. It is really ridiculous that we need to keep this in mind. Doesn't affect me since I'm done for the year.

limo

I am in the same boat as I am also done for this year in terms of status. However, I am curious why would you think that they may not give proper stay credit in this situation?

pdb

Also, I'm not so sure you can get both the HYCARD and G2 promtions simultaneously--you certainly cannot request both online.

peteropny

Because it requires you enter the HYCARD promo code - and we know how it is with adding promo codes

limo

Very good point, will need to test it out. My hope is that since G codes and 1W can co-exist, maybe, just maybe, HYCARD can live happily with others too. We have learned that there are many things Hyatt.com can't do while a human agent can.

limo

I guess the only real way to find out is to test. My first December stay would be Dec 2-3 and I will report my experience.

Have you been burned before on not getting stay credit by adding a promo code ? Care to share your experience so we can learn from it?

peteropny

I haven't gotten personally burned by adding a promo code - although a year or so ago they tried to say AAA rate wasn't eligible - but that's now been fixed - now its just the general paranoia about eligible rates.

I think that this is probably combinable with the Gx codes, but just not at reservation online.

OnePassLover

I guess this will eliminate the "When is the next FFN?" post on 12/01/05. If there's another FFN, it would be after 02/28/06....

thezipper

... now the real question is... do we have to be present to pick up our gift card? or is this gonna be mailed to us?