My wife received 10,000 points for an expired Hyatt annual credit card night less than a year ago. When did the policy change?

The timing of Hotel Bristol's category change could be perfect for me. I was planning on booking a 7-night award stay in Vienna for later this year anyway, so the change to a 35,000 point per night rate is the clincher for me to stay there. I have 2 Category 5 certificates sitting in my account (which I could now use for Hotel Bristol in a couple of days time) and since you can get 5 award nights for the price of 4, I can turn all of that into 7 nights for only 140,000 points. The average cost per night for a standard room for the dates I'm looking at is currently 390 EUR (589 CAD), so I'm loving the value that I can get out of those 140,000 points (+2 certificates). Now I just have to hope that 1 award night remains available for all 7 nights for the next 2 days! :D

Does this mean my free night certificate (valid for 40k points) can now be used for "Category 6 - off peak" redemptions? How do i find out when that property considers it as "off-peak" ? Thanks.

A 40K point certificate would be valid for such hotels, but peak and off-peak pricing isn't yet available. We've just been told that it will launch sometime this year. Until then we have no idea when peak and off peak dates will be, though I suspect that when it does launch, we'll just have to search for awards and see what price pops up (unlike with the old SPG Cats 5-7 peak pricing, where there was a central list of the applicable dates at each property).

I get the feeling peak is going to be common and off peak is going to be rare (pointsavers anyone?), and when it does occur, cash rates will be low enough that points redemptions don't make much sense. Hope I am wrong.

My reservations made prior to 5th March now all show the increased Cat 8 rate rather than the Cat 7... is this something that I can call up and rectify or will this stick?

What time zone are they using for the 5th of March? All hotels now show up with the old pricing initially but once you click to book the new higher pricing is charged in points....even for hotels that are located in a time zone e.g. US West Coast where it is still not the 5th of March?

Lucky me...
 

My MegaBonus brands got manually posted after 2 phone calls, and my AMEX free night cert showed up in my account on the 4th, so was able to get the lower points rates at my reservations I held.

An agent just told me PA booking are subjected to new category and original booking points rate were not guaranteed. My suggestion is keep trying with different agent.

well the above really does not fill me with confidence...