Hyatt Suite Upgrade Award Issues
One of the more beloved perks of the World of Hyatt status program, and their Milestone Rewards, are the Hyatt suite upgrade awards. These allow you to upgrade a room, booked via points or cash, to the base level suite whenever one is available. It can even unlock award space that wasn't there before. On my most recent booking I ran into some Hyatt suite upgrade award issues, and it could have cost me 10,000 points if I hadn't been paying attention.
How To Earn Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards
When World of Hyatt revamped their program in January of this year, the Milestone Awards were a big part of that. I actually like the additions and added value for the super users of the program. There are a few different ways to earn elite nights:
- Get 5 elite nights every year for carrying the World of Hyatt credit card
- You can earn a night for every paid / award stay
- Sometimes promos will allow you to earn double elite nights etc.
- Earn elite nights via spend with the World of Hyatt credit card and the World of Hyatt Business card.
- Remember that the way these track are different between the two cards.
Those are the ways you can rack up enough elite nights to be able to choose Hyatt suite upgrade awards as your milestone selection. As you can see from the chart above, these are the elite nights milestones where suite upgrade awards are an option:
- 40 nights – 1 Hyatt suite upgrade award
- 50 nights – 2 suite upgrade awards
- 60 nights – 2 suite upgrade awards
- 70 – 150 nights (every 10 nights) – 1 Hyatt suite upgrade award
You do have to actually select this as your perk at each one of those intervals. That may not always be the best choice available to you, but these are the intervals where you can select them should you choose to.
Rules Of These Awards
There are a few things that need to be in place for you to use your Hyatt suite upgrade award. The first part is that a standard suite needs to be showing as available when searching hotels. Sometimes this is difficult to tell, since properties will have many different types of suites. If the suite award price is showing as double the regular room rate, then you should be good. At times, it is also notated which kind of suite it is in the room description. In those instances it will say this is a standard suite etc. If it says something like “this is a premium suite” then you are out of luck. You can also reach out to the helpful Hyatt Concierge team on Twitter / X should you have questions about a specific property and date.
The next thing that needs to be working in your favor is that you have to be booking a points, points & cash or cash stay to use your award. For some unknown reason the suite upgrade awards can not be paired with a free night certificate. That is true whether it is a category 1-4, category 1-7 or the new Ultimate Free Night Award certificate. I should also note that you can not stack Hyatt suite night awards with Guest of Honor bookings either.
Hyatt Suite Upgrade Award Issues On My Most Recent Booking
I had booked a room at the Thompson Chicago before Hyatt's most recent category changes for a stay later this year. It is one of our favorite US Hyatt hotels, and it was my favorite category 1-4 free night certificate booking options. At the time of booking there were no suites available, so I locked in a standard room with points. Luckily it was off peak and only cost 12,000 points a night, or 24,000 World of Hyatt points in total.
I checked every month or so to see if any suites opened up to use my last Hyatt suite upgrade award. It kept coming up snake eyes, until a few days ago, when I finally struck gold. I immediately opened Twitter and asked if their super helpful team could assist applying my suite upgrade award to my reservation. They responded within a few minutes, even though it was almost midnight, and said I was good to go and that I should receive an email shortly.
The next morning I woke up pretty pleased with myself and noticed the email was there confirming the suite reserved for our trip. A few hours later I logged into my World of Hyatt account to check something else, and that is when I noticed my points balance was 10,000 points lower than expected. This is where my Hyatt suite upgrade award issues came into play.
What Happened?
It looks like there is a little bit of a flaw in World of Hyatt's system when they apply suite upgrade awards. Instead of attaching them to your reservation they essentially cancel your booking and then rebook you again using the award this time around.
Most of the time this won't be a problem, since the off peak, standard and peak pricing doesn't change once the calendar is out. But, since a category change happened at the Thompson Chicago after I booked my stay, the price was now 5,000 points a night more expensive. Maybe some Hyatt agents would notice this when applying the Hyatt suite upgrade award, but I would guess many don't. What I do know is that Hyatt's system opens them up to these suite upgrade award issues.
Luckily, I noticed the discrepancy, otherwise this likely would have gone through without an issue being raised. That would have cost me $150 – $200 worth of points.
How I Got It Fixed
Anyway, I decided to reach out again to my friends at Hyatt Twitter. After a little back and forth the agent understood what happened and deposited the 10,000 points back in my account without issue. So, the good news is the fix should be somewhat painless. The bad news is that the World of Hyatt system / set up allows this to happen.
Hyatt Suite Upgrade Award Issues: ToP Thoughts
Hopefully these Hyatt suite upgrade award issues are not widespread. I would have to imagine the amount of people affected is on the smaller side, but it is something to be aware of for sure. Do I think people have lost tens of thousands of points for bookings over the years because of this? Yes. Solely because not everyone pays as much attention to their accounts and balances like we do.
Plus, Hyatt's system doesn't really show what happened in the activity log either. My original Thompson Chicago booking vanished from my activity all together. There was no adding 24,000 points to my account and then subtracting 34,000 etc. It just showed the new booking at 34,000 World of Hyatt points.
Let me know if you have ever run into a similar issue with World of Hyatt suite upgrade awards in the ToP Facebook Group.
