Introduction

There are some major changes coming to the World of Hyatt, and they’re pretty positive!

Starting on January 1st, 2024, Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards will be adding four central themes to help bolster their customer’s experience with the Hyatt brand. Based on their release, they will be focused on:

Sharing: you can share your milestone rewards with others
Choice: you can have more opportunities to select what you want
Perks: more rewards for frequent guests
Ease: usable online without having to call

All awards like upgrades and free night will become transferable and more benefit choices are added as members stay every 10 nights. This is quite a positive twist for the Hyatt program.

Hyatt Milestone Reward Changes

Beginning in 2024, the World of Hyatt Milestone program will go up to 150 nights per year, compared to the 100 elite nights per year. In addition, there are now additional benefits and perks for spending and capturing new nights via the milestone awards:

The Guest of Honor Program for Globalists will become a milestone reward after 40 nights, rather than an unlimited perk. I fined this to be acceptable, as it’s very rare that Globalists are consistently sharing their nights with others. Additionally, the giver will receive elite night(s) upon completion of the stay. Those who have Globalist status in 2023 or Lifetime Globalist will start with 5 Guest of Honors Award starting in 2024, and 5 for those with Lifetime. Furthermore, you can also use this to book via cash stays, which is fantastic for some properties that aren’t just worth your points.
An Ultimate Free Night Award: this is earned at 150 nights, good for any category 1-8 hotel, category A-F for all-inclusive or Miraval resorts. Honestly if you’re spending 150 nights (half a year at Hyatts) you can stay anywhere you want.
2,000 Hyatt points: earn 2K bonus points on your next stay with any Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Caption by Hyatt or UrCove Hotels within 180 days of selecting this type of award.
Online Usability: starting January 1st, you can easily gift milestone perks to other members online, with more functionality like the suite upgrade award.
Shareable: you can easily share club access awards with friends.

I’ve attached the chart below showcasing the perks and changes with the new milestone benefits.

Thoughts

Frequent Miler has some great key takeaways that I thought resonated with me as well. The two biggest ones are honestly the 40 Elite Nights and the gifting purpose. I’ll explain why:

40 Elite Nights is a win: once you hit this number, you will receive both a Guest of Honor Award AND the suite upgrade award. Previously, this was only given at the 50 night mark, so this is a fantastic way to get more value out of your stays earlier on. In addition, this also means you’re have enough points ahead of time to book some aspirational properties and place the suite upgrade on top.
Guest of Honor Gifting: now that you can be super flexible with the guest of honor program, you can easily apply it to your friend and family on either points or cash booking, and get the elite night. This is super great if you’re trying to accumulate as many nights as possible. You can gift your concierge relationship, suite upgrades, club access and make their experience a welcome one.
If you hit 100 nights…I doubt I’ll hit 100 nights next year at all, but the perks and awards onwards is quite fantastic and very lucrative.
Expanded Choices every 10 Nights: given that Globalist members automatically receive club lounge access, this is great as we can select other choices that make it more useable for us. The 2K Next Stay benefit is something I believe a lot of us will opt for, as 2,000 Hyatt points add up towards a future stay.

What’s Giftable?

Guest of Honor Awarsd
Club Lounge Access Award
Suite Upgrade Award
Category 1-4 Free Night
Category 1-7 Free Night
Miraval Free Night
Ultimate Free Night

Given my situation, I’lll probably hit 50-60 nights as usual. Based on that, I would be getting:

Four Club Access Awards
My Hyatt Concierge
1x Category 1-7 Free Night
1x Category 1-4 Free Night
3x Guest of Honor Bookings
5x Suite Upgrade Awards

I’d consider this to be pretty positive and one that I can on applying to future travel trips down the road in 2024. Considering that most of my stays are with Hyatt, this is super useful when I’m traveling with family and friends, as I can easily apply this to their stay and have a fantastic stay with them. The are positive and bold changes that I think will benefit those loyal to Hyatt.

World of Hyatt’s Direction

Hyatt’s Chief of Commercial Officer Mark Vondrasek shared that World of Hyatt’s membership program has 4x’d within 5 years, grown their portfolio to reflect the demand towards luxury rooms, resort rooms and lifestyle rooms. There is a huge shift away from their mid-tier hotels towards the luxury and upscale hotels. As other programs are tightening or making their programs harder to utilize, he describes that Hyatt needs to focus on the customer experience in the trust of their loyalty program.

With the upcoming addition of the Mr. and Mrs. Smith brand, similar to the SLH partnership, Hyatt will continue to provide unique and luxury experiences that are towards their customer’s interests. This is something that I think is clearly reflective of the milestone rewards changes and one that I think will benefit their customer base in the long term.

Conclusion

The World of Hyatt’s milestone program is making changes and they’re quite positive. Instead of devaluing and removing perks, they’re bolstering and evolving it to make it more lucrative for customers to stay at Hyatt brands. The increased flexibility of the Guest of Honor programs, along with the ability to gift is a massive win already. The additional benefits with each 10 nights is also a plus. Once you hit 40 nights, it accelerates your perks.

There are still some things that Hyatt can improve on, but as they continue to add value to members, this is a great sign for things to come.