How to Earn & Redeem Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards
If you frequently stay at Hyatt properties or engage with the Hyatt brand through credit card spending, you’ll be rewarded with a number of benefits. These include World of Hyatt points and Milestone Rewards, which then give you access to Suite Upgrade Awards.
Suite Upgrade Awards can be used to upgrade to a better room, including standard suites, in advance of your stay. Better yet, you only need one Suite Upgrade Award for a stay of up to seven nights.
Let’s take a closer look at Hyatt’s Suite Upgrade Awards, including how to earn them, how to redeem them, and other tricks and tips to be aware of before your next Hyatt stay.
What Are Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards?
Hyatt’s Suite Upgrade Awards are online certificates that allow you to upgrade your room to a standard suite.
Exactly what constitutes a standard suite depends on the Hyatt property you’re staying at. Furthermore, the type of suite you can upgrade to also differs from hotel to hotel, but they all tend to be larger than base-level rooms.
By applying a Suite Upgrade Award to your stay, you’ll most likely have a separate living room and bedroom area. If you’re lucky, you may even get a suite with multiple bathrooms and a balcony.
Whether you’re travelling for work, celebrating a special occasion, or simply in need of a place to stay, getting upgraded to a suite can greatly enhance a trip.
Unlike other similar certificates such as Marriott Bonvoy’s Suite Night Awards, Hyatt’s Suite Upgrade Awards allow you to guarantee a suite as soon as you book your room, thus removing the “luck” factor that often plays a role when it comes to suite upgrades.
What’s more, also unlike Marriott’s Suite Night Awards, only one certificate is needed to upgrade you to a suite for an entire stay of up to seven nights – making Hyatt’s Suite Upgrade Awards exceedingly powerful.
How to Earn Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards
There are two ways to earn Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards:
- Through Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards
- By being a World of Hyatt lifetime Globalist member
Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards program provides additional incentives for Hyatt members to continuously engage with the World of Hyatt loyalty program.
World of Hyatt members earn Milestone Rewards in one of two ways:.
- Earning a certain amount of qualifying nights either by staying at Hyatt properties or by spending money on Chase’s co-branded World of Hyatt cards
- Earning a certain amount of base points, which are earned at a rate of five base points per $1 (USD) spent at Hyatt properties
You’ll earn two Suite Upgrade Awards by earning either 50 qualifying nights or 80,000 base points.
To earn the nights, you’ll have to either stay 50 nights in a year, or rack them up through credit card spending:
- With the World of Hyatt Credit Card by Chase, you earn two qualifying nights for every $5,000 (USD) spent on eligible purchases
- With the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card by Chase, you’ll earn five qualifying nights for every $10,000 (USD) spent on eligible purchases
Meanwhile, base points are earned by spending money at Hyatt hotels. Earning 80,000 base points is the equivalent of spending $16,000 (USD) at Hyatt properties.
You’ll earn another two Suite Upgrade Awards by earning either 60 qualifying nights or 100,000 base points, which is the equivalent of spending $20,000 USD at Hyatt properties.
After earning over 60 qualifying nights, which will also give you Hyatt Globalist status, you’ll then have a choice of reward once you’ve earned 70, 80, 90, and 100 qualifying nights. At each tier, the choice is either 10,000 World of Hyatt points or one Suite Upgrade Award.
Indeed, at the 60-night threshold, you’ll have a total of four Suite Upgrade Awards at your disposal, which can then be used to upgrade you to a suite for a maximum of 28 nights at Hyatt hotels.
Lastly, if you manage to earn 1,000,000 Hyatt base points, which is the equivalent of spending $200,000 (USD) at Hyatt properties, you’ll automatically earn lifetime Globalist status, which then comes with four Suite Upgrade Awards annually.
In summary, the easiest way to earn Suite Upgrade Awards is by earning 50 qualifying nights by either staying with Hyatt, spending on co-branded credit cards, or a combination of the two. This gives you a set of two Suite Upgrade Awards.
Once you’ve hit 50 qualifying nights in a year, it’s only 10 more nights until 60, which grants you a second set of two Suite Upgrade Awards and the coveted Hyatt Globalist status as well.
How to Redeem Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards
The only way to use your Suite Upgrade Award is through Hyatt customer support, either by calling World of Hyatt customer service or contacting @HyattConcierge on Twitter. If you happen to be a Hyatt Globalist member, you can also reach out to your My Hyatt Concierge.
Hyatt’s Suite Upgrade Awards can only be used on bookings made with cash, World of Hyatt points, or a combination of points and cash. Unfortunately, nights booked by using a Hyatt Free Night Award are not eligible for Suite Upgrade Award redemptions.
Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards will only get you upgraded to standard suites. Any upgrades to higher suites, such as premium suites, are up to the discretion of the individual hotels.
You’ll also want to make sure that the hotel you’re staying at actually has standard suites available. You can easily find this by searching online at the Hyatt website or app.
When using your Suite Upgrade Award, there are a couple more limitations you should be aware of.
Suite Upgrade Awards come with expiration dates, which refer to the “travel by” date, not the “book by” date. This means that if your Suite Upgrade Award expires on February 29, 2024, you must use it for a stay that’s completed by that date.
Furthermore, there are some properties that won’t accept Suite Upgrade Awards at all. Be sure to check out the full list on the Hyatt website.
Lastly, new Hyatt properties that are taking reservations but have yet to open won’t accept Suite Upgrade Awards. Hyatt is constantly expanding their global footprint, so while this may be a rare occurrence, it’s still helpful to be aware of this rule if you’re looking to redeem your Suite Upgrade Award.
How to Maximize Suite Upgrade Awards
Suite Upgrade Awards are an amazing way to secure a suite and greatly enhance your trip, so you’ll want to make sure you’re using them to their fullest potential.
One way to do this is to save your Suite Upgrade Awards for stays at more expensive Hyatt properties.
If you’re booking your stay with points, Hyatt actually lets you use points to book a standard suite directly. At a lower-category Hyatt hotel, the difference in points between a standard room and a standard suite is anywhere from 3,000 to 8,000 points.
On the other hand, at a higher-end Category 7 Hyatt hotel, you’d be required to spend an extra 18,000 Hyatt points per night in order to secure a standard suite.
If you’d like a suite upgrade at a Category 1 Hyatt hotel, it may make more sense to spend an extra 3,000 points per night. It’s likely more valuable to save your Suite Upgrade Award for another stay at a more aspirational property instead.
You also want to save your Suite Upgrade Awards for longer stays. Since they can be used for up to seven consecutive nights, you won’t get as much value from a one- or two-night stay as you would from a full week.
Lastly, if you’re a World of Hyatt Globalist member, then you’re already eligible to receive an upgrade, including standard suites, at check-in for all of your Hyatt stays. While this benefit isn’t guaranteed, I’ve found suite upgrades to be given fairly frequently.
Therefore, it would be most valuable to use your Suite Upgrade Awards for stays where you want to be absolutely certain of getting a suite ahead of time, rather than leaving it up to availability upon check-in (for example, if you’re celebrating a special occasion, or staying with additional travel companions and would need some extra space).
(Indeed, my understanding is that Suite Upgrade Awards are often the only way to lock in suite upgrades at popular properties with very few suites available, such as the Park Hyatt Shanghai.)
Of course, you’d also have the option of applying your Suite Upgrade Award at the time of booking, and then as it gets closer to the check-in date, checking to see if it seems like suites are readily available.
If there are, you can easily cancel the Suite Upgrade Award, having it credited back to your World of Hyatt account immediately, and instead take the chance that you’ll get the suite upgrade anyways.
Conclusion
World of Hyatt is known of offering amazing value and benefits to its members, and Suite Upgrade Awards are a central part of what makes the World of Hyatt hotel loyalty program so competitive.
What’s best about Hyatt’s Suite Upgrade Awards is that you only need one certificate to upgrade an entire stay of up to seven days, and they can be used to guarantee an upgrade at the time of booking. This can result in huge savings if you would’ve otherwise had to spend extra points or cash to get the same suite.
Hyatt’s upgrade instruments are significantly more powerful than those offered by rival hotel chains like Marriott, so it’s another reason to consider maintaining some loyalty to Hyatt along your travels.
The post How to Earn & Redeem Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards appeared first on Prince of Travel by Ricky Zhang.
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