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Hilton did it. Marriott did it. IHG hasn’t bothered with an award chart for ages. So it’s no real surprise that World of Hyatt is going to change its award chart in March 2020 and bring in peak date pricing.

Hyatt is going to keep its current 8 award categories, however each award category will add a peak and off-peak price.  The new award chart will look like this:

It is unclear at this stage which dates will fall under off-peak, standard and peak, but Hyatt has promised :

A new online calendar will help you plan (coming soon).

I doubt that Hyatt plans to publish peak and off-peak calendars in advance for every single hotel, but instead is planning to introduce a calendar view function to its booking engine.  So yes… dynamic pricing in the exact same way that Marriott do it, until we hear otherwise…

You can find a few more details of these changes by clicking here, along with the pricing for Hyatt’s other award options such as suites, etc.

To Hyatt’s credit, they have provided a reasonable amount of advance warning, and you can book award stays well into the future, as long as you do it before an exact date yet to be announced for March 2020.

The Bottom Line

I have long thought that hotel loyalty programmes offer the highest value for those interested in miles and points.  Spend your points when room rates are high… pay the cash rates when they are low…  Alas, it seems that Hyatt is also joining the rest of the industry in taking away as much of that outsized value as possible…

This is rather a shame, since Hyatt’s smaller footprint means that it is hard to remain loyal and should really be working harder to keep those engaged customers it already has.