Guest Of Honor Milestone Awards
At the beginning of this year World of Hyatt made some changes to their program, most notably their Milestone Rewards lineup. One of the larger changes was to the Guest of Honor perk (our full guide), which turned them into a Milestone Reward. That came with some improvements to its usefulness and ease of booking, but it came with a new built in cap each year. Or, did it? ToP team member Ben Gold was doing some digging in the World of Hyatt terms and noticed something interesting in the Guest of Honor terms on World of Hyatt's site. It appears that they are not so limited in 2024 after all.
What Changed With The Guest Of Honor Awards?
First off, we should discuss what actually changed back in January with these Guest of Honor awards. Originally Guest of Honor bookings were a perk of having Globalist status. They were not a part of the Milestone Rewards program, but rather a perk of just having the status. There was no limit to the amount of Guest of Honor bookings you could do, but they were only allowed for award stays. This would give your friends and family access to your status perks essentially, like upgrades and free breakfast.
The problem was a lot of people were selling access to this status and making tons of Guest of Honor bookings. World of Hyatt noticed this and decided to close that loophole. They did, however, add some improvements to the program while turning off the Guest of Honor spigot.
Here are a few things that changed this year for the better with World of Hyatt Guest of Honor awards:
- You could now book Guest of Honor awards online (our guide on how to do that)
- Guest of Honor bookings now work on cash stays too – not just award stays
- The person booking the Guest of Honor award would now earn one elite night credit for each booking (regardless of the number of nights)
I think overall that the good outweighs the bad with these changes. However, with Ben's find we get our cake and get to eat it too (in 2024 at least).
The Terms For 2024
Here is what Ben noticed in the World of Hyatt terms & conditions for the 2024 calendar year (bolding is mine):
(b) Should a such Member whose Globalist status expires February 28, 2025, or later apply to reservations or transfer via gift all of their Guest of Honor Awards, they may still make use of the legacy Globalist Guest of Honor benefit described below until February 28, 2025 (or, for any such Member who has Globalist status that – as of December 31, 2023 – expires later than February 28, 2025, until February 28, 2026).
That means that if you use your 5 gifted Guest of Honor bookings this year you can still book more the old way. That is if you have Globalist status through the end of the status year, or longer. I am guessing this was a legal add in to cover their butt for anyone who earned Globalist under the old program rules last year. It should also be noticed that this means the old way only works on award stays.
I did some searching on this topic and noticed it talked about months ago on Reddit, but didn't see it covered much anywhere else. If it was and I missed it, I apologize, but this was news to me so I thought I would share Ben's find with all of you.
Guest Of Honor Milestone Awards: ToP Thoughts
I love when there is some overlap between old and new program terms. It usually allows us to take a part of the best of both worlds. I would call the overall changes to Guest of Honor Milestone Awards positive ones, but there were some left behind with the new cap. This find by Ben allows people that were bummed out with the new restrictions to still take advantage of the old rules too, for a few more months at least.
Let me know if this is will be helpful to you over in the ToP Facebook Group.
