My Hyatt Award Change Game Plan - Panic Booking and Diversifying

In today's episode, we're chatting about

• Hyatt is moving from 3 pricing tiers → 5 tiers (and yes… it’s a big deal)
• Why luxury redemptions (Category 7–8) are getting hit the hardest
• The exact bookings I made before the changes hit (and why)
• A simple trick to lock in lower rates even if your plans aren’t set
• The underrated Globalist benefit most people aren’t using right now
• I’m officially diversifying into Marriott, Hilton, and IHG
• The truth: Hyatt isn’t dead… but your strategy needs to change

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👋 Hi! I'm Michele!

A points and miles expert, using points for family vacations to Japan, Hawaii, Thailand, Greece, Italy, Spain, theme parks and so much more. 

I don't believe in spending more to earn more points. The key is knowing how to earn the best points and getting massive value from them. 

With a teenager in competitive sports & public school, traveling during the busiest of times is our family's norm. I'll show you my best tips & strategies to use points for making incredible family travel happen. 

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Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

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Information was correct to the best of my knowledge at time of recording. Always double check/verify information about cards and or bookings. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Points and Miles Travel Chats Podcast. I'm Michelle from Fancy Travel Pointers, and I believe your everyday spend is a secret to extraordinary travel. If you've ever worried that points are too complicated or wondered if a busy family with public school attendance and competitive sports could really travel with points, I'm here to show you it's absolutely possible. Here's what I know for sure: it's not about spending more. And keeping my credit score sky high, that is always front and center. I'll give you actionable steps, teach real repeatable strategies that transform the way you earn points and the value you get from them. Thanks for being here and let's get to it. Welcome back to Points and Miles Travel Chats Podcast. I'm Michelle from Fancy Travel Pointers, and today we are chatting all about Hyatt, the recent news that they're changing their categories. None of us are happy about it, but I've gotten so many questions like what am I doing going forward? What do we think is gonna happen? Is the world ending? And so we're gonna talk all about what those changes are, what I'm personally doing, and what I recommend others should think about doing. Before we get to that, I wanted to make sure you knew that my online course has moved locations. So in my show notes, it is updated and it is the correct course location. I have a free course. It's 100% free. Actually, all of my information is 100% free, but I created this course on a platform less than a year ago, and I quickly grew to over 2,000 students. It is a fantastic course. My course has over 20 modules, so 20 chapters, has over 100 lessons, and has tons and tons of videos and graphics and images. Anyways, if you haven't checked it out, I have it in the show notes. And if you have registered, you will have to register on the new platform. Oh, I should say that. So I built this course as a free online course. I quickly, quickly glue to over 2,000 students. And then the course platform, Teachable, said, Hey, you have too many students. We are changing the way we price things. We now want you to pay us almost$4,000. Remember, I said it's a free course. And that was just too much. I couldn't pay$4,000 to host the course. So I've moved it over to a different platform, ThinkTic. It's the same great course. I've actually gone in and updated it and I continue to update it on a normal basis. If you have registered over on Teachable, you will have to uh register again on ThinkTific. I love that so many of you have loved the course. And for me, it was a non-negotiable. Just because the prices were raised, I wasn't gonna take my course away. So I did spend a lot of hours moving that course over. It's linked in the show notes. I hope you enjoy it. I'm gonna do something a little different on this podcast and we'll see how it goes going forward. I'm gonna take a few questions that I get from Instagram every week that I think are really good questions. And I think a lot of people probably have the same questions and answer them here before we get into the main topic. One of the questions I got is someone said, Why do you recommend earning built points or the other credit card points via rackutin instead of getting cash back? Why would I not want to get cash back? And I think that's a super excellent question. And it's not that you don't want to get cash back. I mean, cash back is awesome. But if points are your goal and travel is your goal, then the points make more sense. And I just want to do a quick explanation because this is what I told this person as well. This is a specific example. We're earning built points on Ragutin. Built points transfer to Alaska Airlines. We were able to book Condor business class via Alaska from Frankfurt to JFK over the Christmas markets over Thanksgiving for 55,000 points per person. 55,000 points, if you were like getting that cash back equivalent at Racketton, is$550. There is nothing wrong with$550. I would love somebody to give me$550 right now. So I get that, and I'm not saying that. But those$55,000 points we were able to use to fly that route business class over Thanksgiving break, like one of the peak times, that flight was thousands of dollars. You don't have to do this with a business class example. There are plenty of economy ones. I'm just using that because that's a specific one we used with Alaska Airlines and built points transfer to Alaska. We have found getting points via Rackettin instead of cash, when you know how to use your points, when you can capitalize on those, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty incredible. So taking the time to learn how to get big value from those points, I mean, here's another thing because we're talking about Hyatt today, right? Built points transfer to Hyatt, right? And so let's say you want to stay at like the Anaheim Hyatt House, it's 12,000 points. That hotel often goes for over$300 a night. 12,000 points, the equivalent to that in cash back, is$120. So even for hotels, for airlines, for economy, for business, if you understand how to transfer your points and get value, you definitely want to be earning points via Rackettin instead of cash back. That's my opinion. Another question I got, and this is an excellent question, is what card should I be using at Costco? Let's say you're using a Costco card at Costco, right, for your purchases. That card is earning you 2% back on your Costco purchases, not on your gas, but on your Costco purchases. Well, you're gonna get 2% back in the cash form. And it's basically what I just talked about with the whole built Raccoutin thing. I would rather use my Capital One venture rewards card and get two miles back on every single dollar that's unlimited for my Costco purchases. Why? Same thing. I can take those two miles per dollar that I'm earning and I can transfer them to airlines, I can transfer them to hotels, I can get massive value from them that way. It is not, of course, that there's anything wrong with the Costco card. There's not anything wrong with that card, and there's nothing wrong with cashback. But when you get into the mindset of points are so valuable when I know how to transfer them, then earning points via racketin makes total sense. Going to Costco and not swiping that Costco card at the register makes sense, right? Because we want to earn transferable points. All right, so let's talk about Hyatt, how they are breaking our hearts. Hyatt has been our go-to for a really, really long time for incredibly outsized value, time and time again. So let me give you a little bit of background. I think that would be important. Hyatt is the last hotel program that works not in variable pricing. When I say variable award pricing, I mean like sometimes that Marriott Night might be 50,000 and sometimes it might be 75,000 or 60,000 or 67,000. There's no chart that says it can only be between X and Y necessarily. But Hyatt wasn't doing that. Hyatt was saying, okay, guys, for our standard resorts and hotels, we have eight categories. And so one being the most budget and eight being the most bougie. Within those categories, we have three tiers. At the time, and still currently, this is changing in May, I should say that. These changes don't take place till May, and we don't know exactly when, but we know they're coming. And the tiers currently and have been for so long, which has been really nice, were just off peak, that's the cheapest, standard, that's the baseline, and peak. And so you knew if you were booking a category eight, that the absolute most you were gonna pay for that room, even on Christmas Day, if they had availability for award nights, was 45,000 points. That's pretty amazing. It was not going to be past that because it was a category eight and it was peak, and that is where it topped out at. Now they are saying, hey guys, we still have this, you know, we still have this award chart. We are not going into variable pricing. But most of us think this looks a lot like variable pricing because those three tiers are now five tiers, and the pricing within each tier is severe. So now instead of just being those three tiers, peak, off peak and standard, we have lowest, low, moderate, upper, and top. That's a lot, right? And what they're doing within each of those tiers is really stretching that points cap. Where this hurts the most is in the luxury hotels. Like in the category eights is where you're gonna feel the pain. Because, like I said, remember, if we went to a category eight, even on Christmas Day, the most we were gonna use in points was 45,000 points. They have now stretched that to 75,000 points. Category one, two, and three, their difference between lowest and top is not this severe. But when you get up to like category seven and eight, if you are staying somewhere and it is designated a top night, it's just a lot more points out of your pocket. And that is a massive bummer. But in saying that, I want to say a couple things. We do not know until May when this rolls out, and I think even beyond that, really how horrifically it will play out. I read somewhere, and I do not know if this is true, and I read a lot of stuff on Reddit, so you should take this with an absolute grain of salt, that Hyatt is saying, hey, we cannot make too many nights that top night, but I'll believe it when I see it. So in my head, I'm thinking, okay, they've added these extra ones. It's not gonna be pretty, but maybe it won't be as devastating as it could be. I am not outright panicking and saying I'm not gonna stay at Hyatt's anymore, but I am kind of panicking. And I don't think everyone should do this. I think it is up to you. I think it depends on how you travel about locking in Hyatt nights now. And I think this only should be like for the more luxury ones. If it's a category seven or a category eight, then I would really think about can you book this now before May, before these three tiers become five tiers? And that's what I did. I already had several really wonderful Hyattes booked for the year. And I just sat down and thought, okay, if these category eights were going to be 75,000 points, which then makes them to me basically not bookable. So I thought to myself, well, what would you book? Or what would you want to stay at right now that you wouldn't book later? And there was a couple things. There's a new park Hyatt Cabo that I have seen incredible reviews on. And so I booked a few nights there. And then the other one I booked, this one is one of my favorite, all-time favorite Hyattes is the Onda's Maui. It's a category eight. We've already stayed there two times. So it's not like we have to stay there again, but for me, it's just a treat and it's really a treat as globalist. That's the other thing I want to chat about. We have been Hyatt Globalists. That's Hyatt's top-tier status since 2023. So three, four, five, six, that's four years. Like we've had it, and it has been phenomenal. I do not know that I will go for Hyatt Globalist status next year because I think we're really, really gonna diversify. So that's the other thing. In my head, I'm thinking, what are the higher-end hotels that I really want to book in? And where does it really, really pay off to have globalist? And Hawaii is for sure one of those places. The Ondas breakfast is truly one of my favorite breakfasts of all hotel breakfasts. We always have a car when we're in Maui, and the parking is outrageous in Maui at the hotels. And so that kind of made me want to book that on Daz one more time because of 75,000 points. It's not happening. I'm not gonna do it. So those were the two that I locked in. The other thing, this is like doom and gloom, right? The other thing that Hyatt does every single year. This usually happens in March, but this year it's happening in April, I believe, is every single year they look at all their hotels and the hotels category. Now we talk about cataru. We're just talking about the one through eight, not the tiers within. They look at every single hotel and they say, Does this tier still make sense? You guys, let me tell you something crazy. The onda's papagayo, the onda's that everyone's like obsessed with in Costa Rica, used to be a category four. Like not that long ago, only a couple years ago. And now, just a few years later, it's a category eight. So every year, Hyatt does this thing where they're like, okay, guys, what properties should go up a category and down a category? And let me tell you, a lot more go up than go down. It's so nice when something goes down, but it's rare. But okay, I just said that, but I want to point out one that did go down last year. The Hyatt Regency Maui actually went down. It used to be a category seven and now it's category six. So you will see some wins when they do this, and you will have time. They announce this, and then usually those changes don't take place for a few weeks. And so everybody rush books things that are going up and down. But this happens every single year. So that actually has nothing to do with these other changes, but they're all gonna kind of sort of ish take place around the same time. I'm recording this in March of 2026, and these changes to the tiers within the categories was announced a few weeks ago. In April, they're supposed to tell us which hotels are going up a category, which hotels are going down a category, and then in May, the tiers, the from three tiers to five tiers within each category, that is going to take place. Here's what I would say: in April, when they announce those category changes, when things move up to a seven or an eight, definitely take a look at those and make decisions then about anything you would want to possibly book. There's two tips I want to share with you about booking now for these hotels later on in the year or in 2027. Hyatt usually releases or opens up their hotel bookings 13 months ahead. That's hard because maybe the airline hasn't opened up their bookings, or maybe you're not exactly sure what your school schedule is gonna be. And so you're nervous about picking those dates. But then again, you have to lock in the dates before this award pricing goes up, right? Two things. If you are a Hyatt Globalist, there is this thing called a points advanced booking. And you can contact your concierge or you can just contact the globalist line, whatever it is, and ask to do a points advance booking. I actually went ahead and did this for one hotel. I don't have any more points because did I fail to mention this? I transferred all of my transferable bank points over to Hyatt to book the Park Hyatt Cabo, to book the On Daznaui. And for the other bookings I already have this year with Hyatt. They're all from like those transferable points. So I didn't have any more, and there was another hotel I kind of want to stay at. So I contacted my concierge at Hyatt and I said I want to do a points advanced booking. And I gave her the exact room, the exact dates, the people in the room. And so that is booked, and I would have to put those points in my Hyatt account seven days before my stay. So I have it booked and we'll see what happens. But if you are a globalist, that is a very, very unique thing that is part of the globalist benefits. And it's really cool, and now would be a really good time to do that. If you are not a globalist, and this is in a different tip category, and I did this too, actually did this with Ondas Maui, I don't know exactly what day we can fly in and fly out. So I booked day by day by day by day. I know that is a huge pain because I booked four nights, so I have four different reservations at the Ondas. However, here's what will happen. If I had booked all those four nights together and we need to fly in a day later or fly out a day later, or whatever it is, once these points changes happen, you cancel and rebook. You're rebooking at whatever that higher rate is. To lock in the lower rate right now, I book day by day by day. So those are my two tips. If you're a globalist, you could do a points advanced booking. And for everyone, globalist, non-globalist, whoever, you can do night by night by night. If the, you know, airline calendar hasn't come out, your school schedule's not really set. That'd be my advice to you because we just want to make sure that we're getting the most for our points and things are unfortunately changing. So what else am I doing besides panic booking, very expensive hyatt? I'm diversifying. And I've I said this before, I've said it a lot on Instagram, I think I've said it on the podcast. We are really, really diversifying. And even this year, we had already started to diversify. We have a lot of Marriott and Hilton's days this year, and I think we'll have more next year as well. So Hilton, Marriott, IHG, they all have pros, they all have cons. But all three of those hotel brands have some kind of, hey, you're staying three nights, get the four night, hey, you're staying four nights, get the fifth night. And so that's really helpful. And there's just more Hilton's, Marriott's, and IHGs all over the world than there are Hyattes. When we were in Bora Bora, there's not a single Hyatt in Bora Bora. But there's a Hilton, there's two Marriottes, and I think there's even two IHGs in Bora Bora, maybe one. But then they're also in Tahiti. And again, no Hyatt. So diversifying. And yes, when you look at a Marriott or a Hilton, and it can be a lot of points, they can sometimes be easier to earn, whether it's on their credit cards, whether it's with transfer bonuses. So is Hyatt dead? No, I don't think Hyatt is dead. I absolutely don't think Hyatt is dead. I am hoping these changes are not as devastating as they could be. I'm hoping they'll hold back and not make so many nights top or even the upper category, but we won't know until May. And so until then, my advice is think about what you would book, think about how you could book it. These changes don't go into effect until May. And like I said, you can book 12 to 13 months from now at most Hyatt properties. But also, we're going to have to think about diversifying. I don't think we're gonna be as Hyatt crazy as we've been the last few years. I think we're going to just juggle. We're gonna juggle our stays. And I think that can be really good. There's a lot of properties that I'm excited about staying at a married or Hilton that I didn't even look at before because Hyatt was just such a good deal. I'm like, it's a no-brainer. I'm booking Hyatt. And now they're just gonna really be more on the same playing field. Hyatt's not dead. It's just evolving, it's just changing, and points and miles are always, always changing. I've been doing this for a really long time now, and it will continue to change. It's not dead. There's still so much value. I mean, getting a free night is still better than paying$1,000 for it or$500 for it or whatever it is. Still tons of value. But we will definitely be chatting about this more in the future when we see the changes to the categories for specific hotels in April, and then when these five tiers within each category go into effect in May. So we'll be chatting about it more than two. But for now, I would say just kind of get your game plan together, think about what you want to do, and be open to other hotel options. It's been super fun chatting with you today. I have really enjoyed it. And if you haven't signed up for my free course, I've got that linked in the show notes for you. And if you like this episode, please leave a review or share with a friend. Thanks so much. We'll chat next time. Thank you for listening to the Points and Miles Travel Chats podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review, give it a like, and share it with a friend that loves to travel. In the show notes, you'll find all the links and resources we talked about today. And if you're ready to take those next steps, don't miss my free PDF guide. It's been downloaded over 17,000 times. I also launched an online, self paced, free course. If you want to go, you can join the over 1,800 students who are loving this resource. Of course, be sure to sign up for the weekly newsletter, and you'll never miss the latest strategies, stories, and offers. Until next time, here's to seeing the world on points.