leontief

https://awardwallet.com/blog/hyatt-m...h-partnership/

A couple quick searches (on the website, not the app) are turning up what looks to be dynamic pricing. You have to click "view rates" to see points pricing. 81.5k points for The Estate Yountville in Napa for May 15 to 16 is less than one cent per point.

norcalfiend

A good selection of upscale properties in Hyatt weak spots (e.g., SE Asia (e.g., Chiang Mai), Italy, Greece, etc.), but interestingly a ton of ultra-luxe properties that have never been available on points: Dunton Hot Springs in Colorado, the Explora, Tierra, and Awasi properties in South America, Chable Yucatan, Hermitage Bay, Mashpi Lodge, numerous Chedis (Montenegro, Egypt, etc.), the Zannier hotels in Namibia, Shinta Mani in SE Asia, Ananda in India, the Azerais in Vietnam, Longitude 131 in Australia, and a bunch of Relais & Chateaux, LHW, and ultra-luxe boutique properties in Europe (e.g., The Retreat at Blue Lagoon and Deplar Farm in Iceland, JK Place in Capri, LeFay Resort in the Dolomites, etc.).

Many of those hotels go for ~$1.5k+ per night (or even per person per night for some of the SA properties) so makes sense Hyatt isn't imposing its award chart since they're more upscale than any Park Hyatt / Alila and in many geos the best of the best. At the same time w/ dynamic pricing I think there will be no great value for redemptions - it may be beneficial to those who have a ton of points to burn or those who were going to book a cash stay at these spots anyways and now can get night and a ton of points credit.

leontief

Yup, this looks alright from a points earn perspective although Hyatt needs to integrate their booking platforms and normalize prices with direct bookings.

Massive downgrade from SLH from a points redeem perspective though.

Mileometer

Beware of this (from the FAQs):

Hopefully this isn't a permanent state of affairs but I have a feeling that it may be.

john_ft

Agreed -- completely worthless for point redemptions and very disappointing downgrade from SLH. Even if I had a massive number of points, I would never burn for 1 cent a night.

Any sense how the prices through Hyatt compare vs. direct? That was always the problem I noticed with SLH - whenever I compared, there was always a price premium to book through Hyatt, negating the benefit of the points.

outgoing

More importantly, for the few properties I checked, the price appears to be the same via Hyatt and via Mr & Mrs Smith web page. This is a major gain over previous SLH relationship. I'm very excited about this.

john_ft

Did you compare with direct booking price? For the couple of tests I did, there seemed to be about a 3% price increase over the direct hotel price. Anyone else seeing that? If true, you're paying $0.03 to buy points by booking through Hyatt and only getting $0.01 to redeem.

Also Mr. and Mrs. Smith using comes with an extra perk or two over direct booking -- anyone seeing any of those perks on Hyatt because I have not in the couple of tests I've run.

outgoing

I did not look at direct booking with hotel rather just Mr & Mrs Smith. Still it's better that what the SLH deal was where often prices were like 20+% higher on Hyatt. Well, even if I lose $0.02 vs direct booking it gives me other perks like status accumulation and milestones; so I'm pretty sure I recoup this loss one way or another.

But I just checked some hotels in Norway and the price direct and via Hyatt is the same.

antonius66

If straight through hyatt pricing is identical to best price through other channels then this will be useful even with the other significant reductions compared to staying at true Hyatt properties, just for the added location options. If it is slh level pricing premium, it'll be dead as Dillinger especially given the useless award pricing, which was the only theoretically useful part of the slh deal, which was already terrible overall. I could accept this as a useful option with the right pricing but we'll see. Not at all surprised at the utter lack of any other beneficial aspect like award pricing, benefits etc and it's exactly as I predicted it would be.

MarkOK

Hmm, I don't know, I think I like what I am seeing. And we get night credit, pts credit towards lifetime, get my standard point earning (minus WOH Chase CC bonus, which is a bummer), and a lot these hotels look pretty darn nice for the price. I always felt like the the SLHs were so laughably expensive for what they were (through the WOH website anyways) that I considered that partnership worthless.

And sure, I am not likely going to redeem pts here (though, appreciate that they offer the option). I always burn pts easily at good rates that I don't need this outlet for it. And, as far as redeeming goes, a lot of the SLHs were cat 7s and 8s and so were pretty darn expensive on pts anyways.

antonius66

Sure. Bottom line is if pricing is in line with other channels and your aren't paying an absurd premium to get Hyatt credit and points beyond the value of those things like with slh, then it will be worth something for the new options and locations.

islandguy84

Not quite standard as you only get points for room rates, not any on property spend, which might be large amounts for some of these properties.

That is same as SLH but still a bummer, especially when combined with the lack of WOH CC bonus earn, which you did get with SLH.

kevinjm

Sounds like our benefits are limited to base/bonus pts earnings, and room upgrade (if glob). Here's the link to the terms.

Sophoclefr

For the 2 searches I did (Lyon and Puglia) it’s not true that you can book with points all rooms available for cash…
And redemption rate is 1-1.4ct/pt not amazing

skydelt

Dynamic award pricing, higher cash pricing, basically no extra benefits like with SLH, and a very slow trickle of hotels into WOH....I'm not feeling like this was the close to equal substitute for SLH that people were hoping for when this was announced

Hyatt has some real work to do, especially in non-Urban Europe, to restore their value prop there