But there has to be some limit. Otherwise people will spent two nights at HP for $120 total earn a FFN and redeem at PH taking revenue space. In the age of FT, FatWallet and blogs everyone and their grandmother will be doing this.
It's simply not sustainable.
I actually don't mind some capacity controls but with more active inventory management.

I too really hope that this does not happen. As others have said it would devalue the points. The reason GP is such a great program is that its points are very valuable, because they represent true customer loyalty and spending at Hyatt hotels.

I always thought there wasnt much advantage to being Plat?
Are there really suite upgrades for Plats?

As of today, the following chains are offering some version of free nights for summer stays:

1). SPG -- the first to do so;

2). Holiday Inn/Intercontinental hotels; and now

3). Marriott family of hotels!

Still to be heard;

Hilton family and Hyatt family!

Marriott's promo is utterly useless. Only for new members and one free night (cat 4) after three stays. Cat 4 = Fairfield Inn or whatever their motel brand is.

Although I don't necessarily agree with you concerning the above, SPG just made theirs even better -- see my latest post on the announcement thread of the bonus.

Hell is likely to freeze over before Hilton offers anything. I haven't seen a meaningful promo from them since 2005.

They had a good promo in summer 2007 (or was it 2006), but you had to sneak your way into it. If you snuck in properly though, you could get triple points and 1 free night every 5 stays. Immediately after that promo though, HH promos went down the drain.....

hyatt palce manger told me today that they will have a great new promotion involving having options given to the guest, where the guest chooses from a range of options. but the manager would not give me any mor than that , no matter how i tried to get some info

Sounds like the FT effect.

Sounds good and exciting

That is so funny because the SPG promotion is essentially a Hyatt FFN promotion, and the usual SPG quarterly promotion allows one to pick from a range of options for their particular bonus!

So SPG copies Hyatt, and it appears that Hyatt is copying SPG!

I am somewhat unclear on what Hyatt means by "no capacity controls"

Dummy bookings in the future at PHT and some of my other usual properties show no change from before. Some nights are available at the Standard award level, while all other nights are available at the "Passport Plus" level.

"No capacity controls" would suggest to me that every night that a hotel is not fully booked, one can redeem a standard award.

"Passport Plus" in my view, has always been a redemption option without 'capacity controls,' just like airlines offer unrestricted award tickets without capacity controls for a large point premium (usually double miles).

I find it hard to believe that Hyatt would do something as stupid as to eliminate capacity controls on award nights, in the sense that one could redeem a standard points award, say at PH Milan in the middle of fashion week, knowing fully well that they would stand a 100% chance of selling that room for over $800 USD to someone willing to pay cash.

I highly doubt that they are really doing away with capacity controls entirely.

No capacity controls means just that...............no capacity controls!! Obviously there must be an error with the PH Tokyo, and maybe the reason that other poster in the "Free Nights" thread was unable to book his award at PH Tokyo as well. I would bet that putting a call into a GP supervisor would get you an award at PH Tokyo, as I don't think I recall them exempting any properties from the capacity control eliminations. And you are correct that if they are still offering Passport Plus awards, then something is DEFINITELY WRONG. Those should all be gone now.

And you may find it hard to believe that they would do it, but that's what SPG has done for years and Hilton and Marriott recently matched. So I'm sure there was some competitive pressure for Hyatt to match their competitors in this area.

In that case I just hope that Hyatt can pull this off without devaluing the Points.

It sounds like something we can enjoy for the time being, but I am skeptical about this change. The capacity controls existed to protect revenues, so it looks like point devaluation (redemption rate increases) will be inevitable in the future as a result of this.

I am curious as to how this has affected SPG and other hotel programs. The only one I use is Hyatt, so I really don`t know.