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Yesterday, I shared some example rates available at hotels participating in Hyatt’s Great Relocate promotion. The prices are genuinely fantastic (70%+ off in some cases), but the downside is you have to book for at least 29 nights.
Today, I want to look at why these deals might be even better than they first seem.
Basic details
Packages are available for stays through December 31, 2021 with a minimum stay of 29 nights when you book by December 3, 2021.
- Housekeeping twice a week
- Complimentary gym access
- Airport or train station pickup
- Up to three hours of complimentary board meeting room usage per month
- IT concierge to help smooth out any tech issues
- 25% off food & beverage**
- 25% off laundry services
- For World of Hyatt members, standard in-hotel benefits including earning points and having nights count toward elite-tier status.
As you can see, there are some nice little perks there in addition to the excellent rates. Things like an airport transfer or 25% off (usually overpriced) hotel food, don’t really move the dial much though. The really important bit is that normal World of Hyatt member benefits apply, meaning you will earn redeemable points and accrue status nights.
Deal stacking!
Hyatt’s current global promotion, ‘Bonus Journeys’, ends on 28th February 2021 and it is no longer possible to register. However, I think it is reasonable to assume that it will be replaced with something very similar (and potentially even more generous). Travel is not about to bounce rapidly back, competition amongst the big hotel groups is fierce, and it’s simply easier to run variations of the same promotion rather than come up with new ideas (and the IT infrastructure required) all the time.
So, for illustrative purposes only, let’s say that the Hyatt promotions during the rest of 2021 will be the same as the current one (in reality, they will be slightly different, but probably broadly similar), and see how many points and other perks you could earn.
Normally, World of Hyatt members without any elite status earn 5 base points per US dollar spent, and those points are worth roughly 1.6-1.8 US cents each. With the 3x bonus promotion, that means members would earn 15 points per dollar – an effective rebate of ~25%.
The other main feature of the current promotion is that you earn 2 status night credits for every night you stay. This means that if you stayed for 30 nights (as well as more than earning top-level Globalist status, which requires 30 status nights in 2021, so 15 actual nights) you would trigger a wide range of ‘milestone benefits’:
As Globalist status provides club lounge access anyway, the relevant benefits after 60 status nights are as follows:
- 1 x Category 1-4 Free Night Award (worth up to 15,000 Points if used for a Category 4 hotel. 15,000 point are worth ~$250, but certificates are less flexible, so let’s give it a value of $200.
- $100 Hyatt Gift Card (gift cards are worth less than cash, so let’s say it’s worth $90)
- 4 x Suite Upgrade Awards (each of these can be applied at time of booking for stays of up to 7 consecutive nights. The value you will get will vary massively depending on personal circumstances, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to value each of these at less than $150, so $600 in total. That is based on being prepared to pay just $50 per night for a suite upgrade and only using each award for 3 nights rather than the maximum 7. If you would be happy to pay $100 for a suite upgrade and used all 4 for the full 7 nights per award, the value you get would be more like $2,800!).
- 1 x Category 1-7 Free Night Award (worth up to 30,000 Points if used for a Category 7 hotel. 30,000 point are worth ~$500, but certificates are less flexible, so let’s give it a value of $400.
Add up all the milestone awards, and you will have received ~$1,290 (~£930) worth of benefits. You will also have secured Globalist status until February 2023, which comes with a variety of valuable perks.
Amex rebates & credit card points/miles
Amex sometimes offers rebates for Hyatt spend to cardholders. Last year we saw at least one £100 off £300 spend at many of Hyatt’s properties in Europe.
The terms of the Great Relocate promotion state that a deposit (for 29 nights) is taken at the time of booking, so you could probably only potentially benefit from one Amex rebate. If you got to know some members of staff during your long stay though, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind splitting the bill onto a few different cards for you…
You would also earn ~1% of your total spend back just from the credit card points/miles too.
Put it all together…
A 30-night stay at one of the hotels in Amsterdam (pictured earlier) will serve as our example. If you didn’t have any elite status with Hyatt before you went, here is what you could expect to earn, if Hyatt extended its current promotion exactly as it is now.
101 Euros is about $120 US dollars, multiplied by 30 nights is $3,600. You would earn 15 Hyatt Points per dollar, so ~54,000 points in total, worth ~$900.
You would also receive ~$1,290 in benefits from the milestone awards, plus Globalist status.
In addition, you would get ~$35 back in credit card points and maybe ~$135 (or multiples of that) back as Amex statement credit rebates.
Add that all together, and you could be looking at a rebate and benefits worth something like $2,260 in total, meaning that your ‘real cost’ for a month living at a great hotel in a wonderful city would be around $1,340 (~£970).
£970 divided by the 30 nights works out at just a little over £32 per night (and you would have Globalist status until Feb 2023 too)!
Cheaper hotels are available in places like Manchester (from ~£55) and Dublin (etc) too, so you could do even better. If you already have Globalist status, you would earn even more points, breakfast, and enjoy food and drinks at the Club Lounge if the hotel had one.
Bottom line
As I hope I made clear at the start, this is just an illustrative article, intended to show the sort of value that might be possible. Until we see the details of the next Hyatt promo, there’s no way to know for sure what the reality is. However, there are good reasons to believe the next Hyatt promo will be similar to the current one, which the article is based on.
Assigning values to the various benefits is very subjective too, but I’ve tried to be fairly conservative – it is certainly possible to get substantially more out of them. I haven’t even put a number on having Globalist status.
Given that you can book Great Relocation stays now and cancel up to 72 hours before for free, I see little harm in doing so and then waiting to see what the relevant promotions look like nearer the time of your stay. You might well end up securing one of the best travel deals (and months) of your life…
If I put in a 30-night stay for something like Dubai HR Creek (eg for Oct-Nov), I don’t see the appropriate rate for this Relocate package – it just shows standard rates over 30 nights. So no breakfast discount etc.
How do you get to see the Relocate rates?
If it’s available it should come up automatically.The terms do mention the possibility of black out dates and that rooms at those prices are limited, so it’s possible it’s sold out for the dates you want. It might still be worth giving hyatt and/or the hotel itself a ring though just to see if they can do anything – I suspect quite a large proportion of bookings will cancel nearer the time, so a smart rev manager would make allowances for that.
I have my doubts that hotel chains will run double elite credit promos all year long, especially since they have also relaxed the requirements for earning status.
But if they do, I’m sure I’ll find my way to a Hyatt hotel for a month, probably not Manchester though… 😀
I agree it seems mad, but in a sense it’s actually a free (today) thing that has genuine value for customers. Remember, it only really costs something if people then go on and stay with that chain later this year and next year – and that’s exactly the behaviour they want to encourage. It’s better for the bottom line than a straight status match (and I think we’ll probably see plenty of them too in time).
Manchester is a genuinely great city (in normal times)! And I’m across the Pennines, so naturally biased against. Depending on how you value the various aspects, you could end up with a stay at negative net cost.