8 Reasons We Love to Book Hyatt on Points

Hyatt is our favorite hotel loyalty program. Hyatt on points is our favorite way to book. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you if you’ve been following Katie’s Travel Tricks. From the family friendly Hyatt Place brand to the all inclusive, adults only Hyatt Zilara brand, Hyatt has something for everyone.

Here are 8 reasons we love Hyatt, along with some tips and tricks for finding and booking an award stay at a Hyatt.

Easy to earn points

You can earn Hyatt points from a Hyatt credit card. There are two, a business and personal version.

However, the best way to earn Hyatt points is actually by earning Chase Ultimate Rewards® points. Chase Ultimate Rewards® transfer to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. That means if you earn a 60,000 point bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you can transfer those to Hyatt and have 60,000 Hyatt points.

Lucky for us, Chase Ultimate Rewards® are pretty easy to earn. These points can be earned with Chase Sapphire cards, Chase Ink cards, and Chase Freedom cards.

If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card, or Chase Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, your Chase Ultimate Rewards® can be transferred to Hyatt. If one spouse has one of these cards but the other doesn’t, you can link the accounts so that they can all be transferred.

Combine all these opportunities to earn card bonuses with the ability to re-earn bonuses on the same Chase cards, and you will find Hyatt points are among the easiest hotel points to earn.

Hotel rooms that sleep 5-6

Hyatt has several brands that make sleeping a family more comfortable.

Our favorite is Hyatt Place. In the U.S., the standard Hyatt Place room typically includes up to two queen beds plus a sofa sleeper. This means you can sleep a family of 6 in one room!

Hyatt Place hotels also have free breakfast, which is another reason this brand is a great option for families. You can even find them in beach locations (like Waikiki or Florida), ski destinations (like Keystone), and by national parks (like Arches in Moab).

Hyatt House hotels sometimes have standard rooms that comfortably sleep 6. You can also count on them to have a kitchen in most rooms as well as free breakfast.

No resort fees on award nights

When you book pretty much any hotel in a touristy location, it’s typical that hotels and resorts add a resort/destination/amenity fee. These fees are charged at the hotel and are not included when you calculate the room rate.

Resort fees typically exceed $30 per night. This can really add to your vacation cost! Fortunately, when you book your hotel on points at any Hyatt, the resort fee is waived so your Hyatt booking on points is truly free.

Great amenities

Beautiful beaches, pools, water slides, cultural classes, fitness classes. Many Hyatt resorts offer great family amenities! The resort properties are going to get you more amenities, but they’re also going to cost you more.

Stay at a U.S. Hyatt Place or Hyatt House and breakfast is included (a big bonus when you’re traveling, especially with kids). Hyatt House and Hyatt Residence have kitchenettes. Many Hyatt hotels have pools.

All inclusive options

Hyatt has the most all-inclusive options to book on points of any hotel chain! You can learn more about booking all-inclusive resorts on points, and get a searchable map, here.

Dependable quality

Booking hotels on a budget can be iffy. The pictures may look good, but when you get there the furniture is over worn, there is hair in the shower, and the room smells mildewy.

While there are always exceptions, we find Hyatt to have pretty standard quality across its brands. And the best part is you’re getting great quality for FREE with points.

Award availability

Searching for award night availability with most hotel chains is a tricky process. The award night pricing can vary significantly from night to night. Plus, since many hotel chains cap or restrict award availability, you may find standard rooms available to book with cash but not with points.

Unlike other hotel chains, Hyatt does not cap the number of award rooms available. Their policy is that “World of Hyatt Standard-Room Free Night Awards are available when hotels have standard rooms available at the Standard Rate.” This means that if there are standard rooms available at a hotel for your dates, you will be able to book those rooms with points.

For popular hotels and resorts, standard rooms can fill up quickly and you still need to book far in advance. But for many hotels, you will still be able to find award availability up until the last minute.

In addition, Hyatt is transparent about their award night pricing. You can find an award night calendar on each hotel’s booking site that will let you know how many points a given night will cost, based on peak, off peak, or standard season.

Good value

We are always looking to get the best value with our points. Hyatt assigns its non all inclusive to categories (1-8) and has a fixed award chart based on category and season (off peak, standard, peak).

There are more than 140 category 1 hotels in the United States; off-peak, category 1 hotels are just 3,500 points per night! You can’t beat that value with any other hotel loyalty program.

As I write this, I’m at Hyatt Place Santa Fe, a category 2 hotel. We paid 8,000 points for our room (standard season pricing). The room rate for tonight is more than $250 dollars. That’s good value!

Because of their award night pricing structure, it’s not uncommon to get a redemption value of more than 2 cents per point when you transfer your points to Hyatt.

In most cases, you’ll get the best value booking Hyatt with points directly through Hyatt rather than through a travel portal.

Here’s a screenshot of the number of points to book the Hyatt Regency Maui through Chase’s portal with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. You’ll get a fixed value of 1.25 cents per point and one night would cost 62,996 points.

Here’s the same booking using your points directly through Hyatt – at 25k points your points are worth 3.15 cents per point! You can use those same Chase Ultimate Rewards® points but get more value just by transferring them over to Hyatt before booking.

Hyatt booking tips

Finding award availability

Hyatt does not have an easy way to find available award nights short of searching for specific dates. However, there are a couple of websites that have made looking for Hyatt award availability simpler. You can even set up alerts to notify you when things become available.

Note that some popular resorts have a minimum night award stay. This is especially common with the Hawaiian Hyatt properties.

You may not be able to find award availability if you are searching for a 2 night stay because, even though there are standard rooms available, they have a minimum night stay requirement of 5-7 nights. If you are determined, you can try this to get around minimum night stay requirements.

Max My Point

Max My Point tracks availability of award nights at Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt. You can search for your desired hotel and see a calendar view showing what nights are available to book with points as well as rate information.

Start by searching for your desired hotel. Find the dates you want to travel. When there is availability, you will see the award rate and lowest cash rate. Click on an available date and Max My Point will take you directly to Hyatt’s site for booking.

If there is no availability, you can click the bell icon to set an alert. Set your parameters and you will be notified if something becomes available.

Stay With Points

Stay With Points has similar functionality as Max My Point. It pulls award availability information from Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott. As with Max My Point, you can search your desired hotel, see award night availability, and set alerts.

Award pricing calendar

If you are on a computer, you can find the award pricing calendar for any Hyatt hotel on their website. This calendar will show you how many points any night will cost. It does not, however, indicate room availability.

Occupancy tips

If you are searching for a room for your family, you may find that your search results turn up no availability when you put in your family size.

Hyatt properties in the U.S. and all-inclusive properties in Mexico may have a higher occupancy than will turn up when you do a search. If you are not turning up any search results, you may want to adjust down the number of people to 2 (for all inclusives) or 4 (for standard hotels).

For example, Hyatt Place hotels sleep 6, but, in my experience, no award availability will show up if I do a search of more than 4 people. Typically, mainland U.S. hotels are not strict about exceeding occupancy, but if it makes you uncomfortable you can reach out to the hotel and check with them.

Hawaiian hotels are known to have stricter occupancy limits due to fire code. Europe is also very strict about occupancy, and rooms often only hold 2-3 people, making Hyatt not a great option for families traveling to Europe. If you are in doubt about occupancy and are traveling abroad, you should always check directly with the hotel.

Hyatt all-inclusive properties typically do not show award availability if you search for more than 2 people. If you have children with you, you will book a room for 2 and then contact Hyatt to add the children for a fee, within the occupancy limits of the room.

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