Daraius at MillionMileSecrets.com is giving away three prizes of 22,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points for people who leave an answer on his blog or Facebook wall to the question “What do you like best about Hyatt?”

Comments are accepted through 11:59pm CST Saturday, February 25.

I have to say that I like the full breakfast benefit of Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond elite best of all. The 2,500 bonus points when a Regency Club lounge is closed is another great benefit for Diamond members, but I haven’t had the opportunity to receive that bonus too many times.

Diamond elite Free Breakfast saved $30 at Park Hyatt Chicago.

Update Feb 23: UnRoadWarrior, a BoardingArea blogger also has two prizes of 22,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points to giveaway. Leave a comment on that blog by midnight eastern time,  Sunday March 4.

Loyalty Traveler Note - Wed. Feb 22, 5:30pm Pacific: Seeing all the comments on this post has me concerned some people might be confused about the Million Mile Secrets blog sweepstakes. Loyalty Traveler is not giving away any Hyatt points. You must comment on millionmilesecrets.com to be entered into the Hyatt points giveaway.

Hyatt Gold Passport promotion registration is open for the 16 nights earn 44,000 points promotion running February 1 to April 30, 2012.

Registration is required by March 31.

Hyatt nights completed during the promotion period and prior to registration count as long as member registers by March 31.

Don’t delay. Sign up now!

Read More…

Hyatt Gold Passport informally announced its next loyalty promotion to the attendees of the Oneworld MegaDo in Dallas, Texas last night according to several attendees like ThePointsGuy. The promotion earns bonus points at 4-night increments, up to 16 nights. The nights do not need to be consecutive.

There is even a 25% bonus for stays paid with the Hyatt Visa credit card members. [update: Jan27, 4:00pm Pacific - Gold Passport Concierge posted on FlyerTalk that all Hyatt Visa card members earn bonus. There is no need to pay for the hotel stays with the Hyatt Visa.]

Register by March 31 for Hyatt Promotion.

• after 4 nights = 4,000 bonus points (1,000 more points if Hyatt Visa payment).
• after 8 nights = 8,000 more bonus points for 12,000 points total (2,000 more bonus points with Hyatt Visa).
• after 12 nights = 12,000 more bonus points for 24,000 points total (3,000 more bonus points with Hyatt Visa).
• after 16 nights = 20,000 more bonus points for 44,000 points total (5,000 more bonus points with Hyatt Visa).

This promotion offers the potential of earning 44,000 bonus points after 16 nights or 55,000 bonus points for Hyatt Visa card members.

Read More…

Last year I made a trip to southern California and stayed at three Hyatt Hotels in Santa Barbara, Westlake Village and Irvine. Recently Brian Kelly, The Points Guy, posted about his Thanksgiving stay at Hyatt Santa Barbara. Reading his review reminded me I never actually wrote a post about my Hotel Mar Monte stay Thanksgiving week 2010. The hotel is now called Hyatt Santa Barbara.

Highway 1 runs by my house in Monterey and becomes the Big Sur coast road just about five miles south once past Carmel. Highway 1 Big Sur driving can be 100 miles of highway bliss or hell, mostly depending on the weather. Read More…

Hyatt Hotels currently has a 48 hour sale ending 11:59pm, Wednesday November 16 for 89 hotels. There are hotels from each Hyatt brand including Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, Hyatt Place, Summerfield Suites, Andaz and Park Hyatt hotels in the U.S., Canada and Caribbean.

Use Special Offer code C48H11 to search for discounts from 15% to 30% at participating hotels. These are prepaid and nonrefundable rates.

Each hotel has its own set of dates for stays using these sale rates. The hotel with the earliest availability appears to be November 27 (Lake Tahoe, California) and the latest stay date through February 29 (several hotels). Some hotels have as small as a two week window for stays at these discount rates.

Some hotels offering only 15% or 20% off Best Available Rate will likely be a small savings over a refundable AAA rate that generally offers 10% off.

Here is one randomly selected example of the Hyatt sale rate compared to AAA rate.

Hyatt Westlake Plaza, Thousand Oaks, California

48-hour sale rate is 20% off Best Available Rate for this property based on $139 BAR.

Terms and Conditions of this sale require full hotel stay prepayment. You lose the entire cost of the hotel stay if you need to change or cancel the reservation. This is not so bad on a $111 rate, but could be a significant loss if you book a $1,000 vacation getaway hotel stay.

Hyatt 48-hour sale rate terms for Hyatt Westlake Plaza.

Compare rates carefully. AAA rate for Hyatt Westlake Plaza is $125.10, or only $13.90 more per night. The AAA breakfast rate is only a 10% discount on BAR,  compared to 20% discount for Hyatt 48-hour sale rate.

The AAA rate includes breakfast for two.

Personally I try to avoid prepaid nonrefundable rates at hotels. I have a strong risk aversion to losing my entire deposit.

In this example the AAA rate includes breakfast for two, but I already get that benefit as a Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond member. I’ll gladly pay the extra $14 though to have a no penalty cancellation policy up to 3pm day before arrival for the Hyatt Westlake.

Compare the Hyatt 48 hour sale rates to other available rates. There might be a hotel rate savings deal with this Hyatt sale that falls within your risk tolerance.

Hyatt 48 hour sale link.

There was a live chat between Randy Petersen and Jeff Zidell, head of Hyatt Gold Passport loyalty program on MilePoint last night. This is the first MilePoint chat I have logged into and I was unaware the format is a computer version of a radio style chat, except no voices and limited audience participation .

First, let me sincerely give thanks to Jeff Zidell and Randy Petersen and the folks at the House of Miles for giving Hyatt Gold Passport members an opportunity to get some first-hand insight into Hyatt Gold Passport.

I don’t want to shoot the messengers – just the messaging system.

I should probably keep my critical comments to a minimum, but I am acting bipolar this week and I seem incapable of shutting my blog mouth. This past week I have ragged on Carlson Hotels, the J.W. Marriott L.A. and city of Los Angeles and now I’ll take on Hyatt and MilePoint.

Engagement with the Audience

While the MilePoint chat format was a window into a conversation, there was little opportunity for engagement as an audience member tuning in for the hour. I felt like I was being waterboarded with words dripping slowly onto the computer screen one sentence at a time. A question would be raised and then dead space for a couple of minutes until the next statement appeared.

I assume Randy Petersen was able to see what comments people were submitting to the chat during the hour. I don’t know if Jeff Zidell was getting a feed of comments.

As an audience member I was surprised to find the entire conversation filtered. I made comments and submitted questions during the hour, but nothing I wrote came up in the chat. This also happened to BoardingArea blogger MommyPoints who submitted a question during the chat.  Consider yourself fortunate if you were not sitting in front of your computer for the entire 60+ minutes of the live broadcast as you can read the entire chat transcript in ten minutes.

Jeff Zidell was good humored and opened up with a joke about MilePointers having the opportunity to “Occupy Hyatt Gold Passport” for an hour. The thing about the Occupy movement is the audience has a voice and opportunity to give immediate feedback to the speakers. There was little opportunity for audience participation here.

Here is my 3 minute summary of the topics covered:

1. Hyatt restaurants have rolled out a new hamburger bun – softer and richer.

2. Hyatt has about 125 hotels in development around the globe.

3. Cash & Points and Discount Award Nights are on Hyatt’s radar.

4. Faster Free Nights, the periodic promotion Hyatt Gold Passport ran every year until 2011 for a free hotel night after every two stays, does not seem to be on Hyatt’s radar now.

5. Jeff Zidell has been with Hyatt Gold Passport for 3.5 years. One year after he arrived Gold Passport made major changes in April 2009 to elite membership: complimentary Internet for our elite tiers, full breakfast for Diamond members, 72/48-hour guaranteed availability for Platinum/Diamond and four confirmed Diamond Suite Upgrades. This year additional Diamond member enhancements include 4pm late checkout and enhanced welcome amenities at Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites.

6. Earn points and redeem points for Food & Beverage and Spa services when not staying at the Hyatt property are being beta tested now. Expect more availability in 2012.

7. Hyatt Reservations system improvements are coming in 2012.

8. Hyatt Gold Passport Lifetime Diamond membership requirements are ten years as a Hyatt Gold Passport (no need to be Diamond) and 1,000,000 base points earned (equivalent to $200,000 hotel spend).

9. Jeff Zidell stated Hyatt wants to create “true loyalty, not operate a profit center.” He commented the credit card has increased loyalty. “In addition, we want to maintain a very compelling and competitive award chart, which comes under pressure if you flood the market with a lot of additional points.”

- My Loyalty Traveler reply is Hyatt had the leading edge competitive award chart prior to the creation of Category 6 hotel rewards and the hotel shift upwards in the system. The program is still competitive compared to most others in terms of the distribution of hotels with most hotels in the lower half of the reward categories. At the upper end the program is losing ground in terms of the cost for a Category 5 or 6 hotel reward based on the rate points are earned for hotel spend.

I take Jeff’s response to indicate a Hyatt Gold Passport shopping portal is not in the works.

10. Property level specific bonuses, so-called “G Bonuses” since the promo code started with the letter G, do not appear to be too big on Hyatt’s radar either.

Loyalty Traveler comment – I think I broke the story of G bonuses going by the wayside from a chat I had with Jeff Zidell in March 2011. At that time he stated they might be coming back in July. I guess not!

11. Why are Hyatt properties shortchanging the number of points posted from stays?

Jeff said this was unacceptable.

This is another issue I raised on Loyalty Traveler in December 2010 and my post even prompted a few back and forth emails with Jeff and Hyatt. This July-August 2011 thread on FlyerTalk suggests the issue is widespread and apparently has still not been resolved.

12. Are there additional benefits for Gold Passport members who spend 75 or 100+ nights per year? Are there benefits for reaching 2 million, 3 million and more points?

Loyalty Traveler comment – At this point, 40 minutes into the chat I had to get snarky and submit my question “Are we whale hunting with Jeff Zidell?” referring to the term whales used by casinos for the really big money spenders. Hyatt already has an uber-elite level called Courtesy Card. Here is a Loyalty Traveler post on Courtesy Card.

13. When asked if Hyatt is considering award stays for elite qualification, Jeff responded, “We are looking into this, but we don’t think that it would impact very many members.”

Then Jeff followed up with a question, “Would you stay more frequently with us if this option were part of the program? Again, feel free to Tweet us using the hashtag #HyattGP.”

I jumped on Twitter and found BoardingArea blogger Mommy_Points posted a tweet at the same time in response to this question.

I realized we could actually have a real time audience conversation on Twitter around the MilePoint chat as it was happening. But I think Mommy_Points and I were the only two using that media outlet for that purpose at the time.

14. Complimentary Internet – wired or wireless is up to the hotel. I wrote an article about that last year.

15. Stays Count Double Promotions – Promotions for double elite credit, like FFN, were another annual promotion offer from Hyatt Gold Passport until this year. Looks like we won’t be seeing these come back in the near future.

Jeff’s response: “This is something that we are always looking at, but we have found that these types of promotions undermine the integrity of our tiers. We hear from many of our members that tier integrity is really important.”

My response: Looks like all the Hyatt Gold Passport fast-tracking to elite status went from 60mph to 0. You can still possibly pull in a Gold Passport Diamond Stay Challenge if you are acceptable.

16. Diamond Breakfast – Will Hyatt Gold Passport standardize the complimentary breakfast benefit for Diamond members? Yes!

Hyatt Gold Passport Takeaways

My takeaways from the conversation is Hyatt is pulling back on the high value promotions that attracted many of us to the program over the past decade. The company went public, partnered with a bank for a co-branded credit card, gave top elite status for 18 months to anyone who asked prior to the credit card launch and since then has added a new top tier hotel category, shifted a large portion of hotels upward in category, and made Diamond elite a more beneficial status level, but removed the avenues to reach this level without 25 paid stays or 50 paid hotel nights a year.

Hyatt Gold Passport is still among the most generous hotel loyalty programs in my opinion, but reaching and maintaining top-tier Diamond elite is going to require more hotel spend and the free nights earned are likely to be less than in years past for many of us Gold Passport members.

Hyatt Gold Passport offers a two month promotion period to earn 5,000 points every three nights, up to 30,000 points for hotel stays September 15 through November 15, 2011. These are cumulative nights stayed so this nights based incentive rewards both one night stay guests and extended stay guests. This is a simple promotion with all hotels participating globally.

Promotion registration is required. Registration page will go live on September 15, 2011 at www.goldpassport.com/possibilities.

At the time of this post members will only see the following page stating “This promotion has ended” when clicking on the web address above.

The maximum bonus points a member may earn for the Sep 15-Nov 15 offer is 30,000 points after 18 nights.

• 3 nights = 5,000 bonus points
• 6 nights = 10,000 cumulative bonus points
• 9 nights = 15,000 cumulative bonus points
• 12 nights = 20,000 cumulative bonus points
• 15 nights = 25,000 cumulative bonus points
• 18 nights = 30,000 cumulative bonus points
• Bonus points are earned even if account preference is set to earn miles.
• Bonus points will be awarded for only one room per stay even if more than one room is booked by member.

Hyatt allows a member to earn base points on up to three rooms per stay when one of the rooms is occupied by the Gold Passport member and all three rooms are paid by the member, however, only one room per night is eligible to earn the 5,000 bonus points from this promotion. In contrast, the concurrently running Starwood double and triple points promotion allows SPG members to earn bonus points for up to three rooms with its promotion.

Second verse, same as the first

One annoying aspect of this offer is the promotion and terms were announced Thursday, August 25 on FlyerTalk and MilePoint social forums and there is not even a live webpage yet to accompany the promotion announcement.

Personally, I find it inconvenient to announce a loyalty promotion three weeks before the promotion registration page is available. This offer requires members to register in order to earn the bonus points, yet there is not even a promotion web page posted on the Gold Passport website where a member can at least request an email reminder to register once the page is available.

It is not like Hyatt needs to design a new promotion webpage since this offer is exactly the same promotion terms as a targeted offer provided to some members earlier this month for 5,000 bonus points per three nights during stays from August 5 to September 30. I wrote about this targeted offer earlier this month in my post “Damn you Hyatt I’m not targeted, but give me the points anyway!”

I wonder if the members who were targeted for this earlier offer will receive 10,000 points for three nights during the overlapping period of Sep 15-30?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

The short promotion period of two months seems odd to me and also gives some encouragement that Hyatt Gold Passport may follow up this promotion with an end-of-year “stays count double” offer. The consensus on FlyerTalk is Hyatt Gold Passport has put its marketing efforts firmly behind its co-branded Visa credit card while pulling back on its hotel stay promotions. The backlash being expressed over several mediocre promotions in 2011 seems like it might motivate Hyatt to offer an end-of-year promotion to boost member stays and provide an incentive for members to maintain elite Diamond status.

Then again, Hyatt may have a different strategy in mind by focusing on its credit card and the lure of Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond elite benefits like free breakfast and confirmed suite upgrades as its primary avenue for attracting higher spending Diamond elites.

Honestly, I have been telling readers since mid-2009 that the high value hotel loyalty promotions were unprecedented and get what you can while you can. The past two quarters of hotel industry financial data reveals most major hotel chains bragging about their positive growth and enhanced revenue. Business travel has picked up significantly, even as indicators continue to show a lagging leisure travel market, except for foreigners coming to major U.S. cities where travel is a bargain for many visitors due to our low value U.S. dollar in the global marketplace.

Combining 5K Possibilities promotion with concurrent Miles Bonus Offers

There are bonus miles offers currently available to Gold Passport members. These offers may be combined with the 5,000 bonus points every 3 nights during the overlapping promotion periods as stated in the FAQ posted on FlyerTalk by Gold Passport Concierge, Hyatt’s company representative August 25.

Earn 1,000 British Airways miles per night, up to 30,000 miles for stays from August 1 – October 31, 2011. Registration required.

2,500 Aeroplan miles per Hyatt stay July 1-September 30. Maximum bonus is 25,000 miles after 10 stays.

Gary Leff posted information from Milepoint.com yesterday on Hyatt changes that apparently sent Hyatt Gold Passport into PR damage control mode. Turns out to be mostly positive changes with new elite benefits, a Park Hyatt promotion and some hotel reward category adjustments.

No need to panic.

Here is a rundown of the information I received from Hyatt regarding the changes. Apparently members will be updated with this information by email beginning today. The list of hotel reward category changes was provided to me by a Hyatt Gold Passport Public Relations manager and is not available yet to view online at Hyatt Gold Passport. I reorganized the data in a spreadsheet to display changes by geographic location and color coded to show 25 hotels going up in award category and 18 hotels going down.

Benefit Change # 1 for Diamond Elites

-Extend Your Stay with Late Checkout to 4pm-

Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond members will now be able to enjoy a 4:00pm late checkout rather than a 2:00pm late checkout. Please note that the late checkout is subject to availability at resorts and casino hotels.

Benefit Change # 2 for Diamond Elites

Receive a Nightly Room Refresh – Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond members will receive a nightly room refresh to ensure that their stay is as comfortable and luxurious as possible. This includes light housekeeping and bedroom turndown service. This service has previously been offered to Diamond members during their stay, but it is now being communicated as an additional benefit of this membership tier.

Benefit Change # 3 for Diamond Elites

Enjoy a New Welcome Amenity – Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond members can now enjoy a new welcome amenity at Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites hotels. Diamond members can now enjoy a complimentary beverage (including alcohol except where prohibited by law) at Hyatt Place and a USD$5 credit at the Guest Market at Hyatt Summerfield Suites hotels, or, members can continue to choose 500 Hyatt Gold Passport bonus points as their amenity for stays at either brand.

Reminder of 2011 Hyatt Gold Passport Program Change for Buying Points

Members can now purchase up to 40,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points per year for themselves, and they can also now purchase Hyatt Gold Passport points for others. Program participants can purchase Hyatt Gold Passport points by visiting the following link: http://bit.ly/nYBrHe.

New Park Hyatt Gold Passport offer for special rate package: 

2,000 Hyatt Gold Passport bonus points at all Park Hyatt hotels when rooms are reserved with offer code PMPGP for stays through September 10, 2011. The special offer includes accommodation, complimentary breakfast for two, and
the choice of a dining or spa credit worth up to USD$150.

Hyatt Gold Passport Reward Category Changes Effective September 1, 2011

Hyatt Gold Passport Hotel Award Category Reassignment effective Spetember 1, 2011

Andaz Wall Street in New York and Hotel Victor Miami Beach each go up by 4,000 points per night. Get your reservations in now for the lower 18,000 points rate while these hotels are still category 5.

Personally this affects one of the greatest bargain hotels at Hyatt Place Fremont/Silicon Valley where 5,000 points could save $150 or more midweek. Now the savings will cost 8,000 points.

Some of the changes are for hotels in countries your average tourist has no intention of visiting on vacation so a drop in award category for the Hyatt Regency Bishkek in the Kyrgyz Republic probably doesn’t mean much unless you are U.S. government subcontractor hanging out for a little R&R on your own points.

Hotels in Australia increasing award category is to be expected as the Australian Dollar has run past the US Dollar in value like Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes.

All in all, not too much to fret over with these changes. You have plenty of advance notice to book the lower category cost for upcoming stays before changes take effect September 1.

A change in policy discontinues elite status matches for Starwood Preferred Guest effective April 1. The policy to match comparable top elite levels from competing frequent guest programs like Hilton HHonors, Hyatt Gold Passport and Marriott Rewards is replaced by a SPG Stay Challenge.

Members seeking a fast-track to SPG Gold (normally 10 stays or 25 nights in calendar year) or SPG Platinum status (normally stays or 50 nights in a calendar year) need to email a request for consideration of a “Stay Challenge” to platinum.liaison@starwoodhotels .

The SPG Platinum “Stay Challenge” criteria reported by several members indicate 15 nights in 90 days to earn SPG Platinum elite. Earning Platinum elite status in 2011 through a Stay Challenge or normal stays/nights qualification will provide elite benefits through February 2013.

I haven’t seen any information yet on the criteria for SPG Gold elite challenge.

Source: FlyerTalk – Starwood policy change related to Status Match Requests Beginning April 1, 2011

Hyatt Trial Diamond elite Offer

Hyatt gave away Gold Passport instant Platinum elite and Diamond elite status for most of 2009 and through mid-May 2010 to anyone who signed up in a series of elite promotions or asked for a status match from a competitor hotel loyalty program.

Hyatt eliminated its fast-track elite status promotion in May 2010, seven months earlier than posted for the promotion end-date. In November 2010 Hyatt stopped elite status matches from other programs.

Now Hyatt Gold Passport offers Hyatt Trial Diamond for members with mid-tier to upper-tier elite in Hilton (Gold/Diamond), Marriott (Gold/Platinum), Starwood (Platinum) and Priority Club (Platinum).

Hyatt Gold Passport requires 12 nights in 60 days after starting the Diamond Trial Challenge to maintain Diamond elite beyond the trial period. Normal qualification criteria for Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond is 25 stays or 50 nights in a calendar year.

The main difference with Hyatt’s challenge compared to Starwood’s Platinum Challenge is your status is bumped up to Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond elite during the 60 days of the trial offer and includes all the benefits and bonuses of Diamond membership.

Complete the 12 nights in 60 days and your Diamond elite membership qualification is met for 2011 and you will have Diamond elite status for all 2012 and through February 28, 2013. Members report receiving the four confirmed suite upgrades for Gold Passport Diamond elites during the Trial Diamond period.

An additional perk of the Diamond Trial offer is 1,000 bonus points per night on your first six nights of the Hyatt Diamond challenge.

Suite upgrades certainly make 12 paid nights at Hyatt Hotels more enjoyable while working to extend your Diamond membership beyond the trial 60 days.

Contact Hyatt Gold Passport customer service to request Gold Passport Diamond trial offer.

Related Links:

FlyerTalk – Hyatt Tier (Status) Matching Information

One of the benefits of top elite in several hotel programs is a welcome amenity gift offered at hotel check-in. Points are an option with programs like Starwood, Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton. Other choices depend on the hotel brand and program and may include extras like a free pay-for-view in-room movie, $5 or $10 mini-bar credit, cheese and wine plate, $10 room service credit, or local gift.

I generally take the points, but now and then a bottle of wine and cheese plate is more impressive and appreciated as a gift to share with friends at the hotel. My wife and I have stuffed animals from Starwood Hotels in Australia and assorted Delft pottery around the house from stays at various Starwood Hotels in the Netherlands. Gifts are more common at hotels outside the U.S.

Fruit, cheese, bread, hors d’oeuvre plates are typical welcome amenities at full service upscale hotels.

Points are generally my choice since I don’t care too much for cheese, hors d’oeuvre or wine. How about a 6-pack of Stella Artois beer?

So, generally I bring my own beer and take points, unless I have friends visiting in the room.

The Value of Amenity Points

SPG Platinum and Hyatt Diamond amenity points really add up over the course of the year.

Assume 25 stays in 2011 (minimum qualifying stays to earn annual SPG Platinum or Hyatt Diamond elite).

SPG Platinum = 500 points per stay (250 points at Aloft, Element and Four Points brands)

25 stays x 500 points per stay = 12,500 Platinum elite welcome amenity bonus points.

Here is how I perceive the value of 12,500 Starpoints.

SPG Cash & Points reward night at any category 4 hotel requires $60 + 4,000 points.

My experience assures me there is high potential to save over $200 at a Starwood Hotel using 4,000 points for a SPG Cash & Points award with a $240+ nightly room rate. My stay at the W Chicago Lakeshore saved more than $200. I only paid tax on the $60 cash portion of the SPG reward night rather than 15% Chicago tax on the full $280 room rate.

SPG Platinum amenity points will likely have $300 to $600+ cash savings redemption value if 12,500 points are earned by the Platinum member in 2011 from 25 hotel stays. This is a high value opportunity for earning bonus points simply by checking in and turning down food or hotel credit.

Assume you take a $10 movie or mini-bar credit and you save $250 after 25 stays.

Points are generally worth more than the in-hotel amenity if you prefer earning free or discount reward nights from hotel stays.

Hyatt Diamond Amenity

Most Hyatt Hotels offer a choice of 1,000 points as a Diamond amenity. Hyatt Place and Summerfield Suites offer 500 points.

25 stays x 1,000 points = 25,000 bonus points

Hyatt category 6 hotel reward night is 22,000 points. Mid tier category 3 reward is 12,000 points.

25,000 points will likely have $400 redemption value.

Base points equivalent value shows the amenity points bonus is like having significant additional hotel spend on each hotel stay.

• SPG Platinum = 250 or 500 points ($125 or $250 base points equivalent value)
• Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond = 500 or 1,000 points ($100 to $200 base points equivalent value)
• Marriott Rewards Platinum = 1,000 points ($100 base points equivalent value)
• Hilton HHonors = 500 to 1,000 points ($50 to $100 base points equivalent value) 

Bottom line is top level amenity points are equivalent to spending an extra $100 to $250 for your hotel stay and the value of points can add around $300 to $600 in free room night rebate value to your annual hotel spend for top elite status with Hyatt or Starwood.  The value will likely be less for Marriott and Hilton members.

This piece requires some reader feedback to determine if there is a systemic problem with Gold Passport base point earnings or just my account posting incorrectly.

I have stayed at four different Hyatt Hotels in the past month. Looking over my account I notice that the base points posted for each hotel stay is slightly less than the expected 5 points per dollar awarded for base room rate I paid.  

My base points posted for my last four hotel stays are 4.85% less than what I calculate I should have received for the room rate I paid using the 5 base points per dollar earn rate for Hyatt Gold Passport.

I have questioned Hyatt Gold Passport about this issue twice. The response I received is the hotel is responsible for keying in the room rate used to calculate base points.

I can understand one hotel incorrectly keying in a room rate, but to have all four hotels I stayed at this past month incorrectly key in the room rate is highly unusual.

A discrepancy almost too small to detect with the naked eye

The difference in base points posted and what I estimate should have been posted is so small that it could easily go undetected. My account has been corrected after going through each hotel stay folio with a Gold Passport Diamond member customer service representative.

But I sure would like to know how widespread this issue is for Hyatt Gold Passport members. That is why I want you to check your accounts and provide some feedback.

Here are my actual numbers from my last four Hyatt hotel stays over the past month.

2,866 base points actually posted and I estimate 146 missing points for $602.80 in hotel rate base spend that should have earned 3,012 base points. I rounded down in all calculations and I am only considering the room rate before tax.

My account was short-changed 146 base points from 4 hotel stays on $602.80 in spend. Basically I was shorted $29 worth of base points which also affects my 30% Gold Passport elite bonus points by another 43 points. Missing 189 points after $600 in hotel spend is such a small discrepancy that I might have easily overlooked the difference.  

Overall, this is a 4.8% short-change in base points earned for my four hotel stays.

The reason I noticed the base points discrepancy is I did not receive 5,000 bonus points for two of my hotel stays booked with the Hyatt 5000GP rate for two-night stays in participating California hotels. The base points discrepancy caught my attention as I looked over the different hotel stay folios from the past month.

My real question for readers is “How widespread are these discrepancies between room rate paid and base points earned?”

15 Million Points would be a Big-Change Discrepancy

Multiply my short-changed account of 146 points on $602 in hotel spend by 100,000 Gold Passport members. Assume a nearly 5% shortfall in base points per person and you have a cumulative 15 million missing points from Gold Passport members’ accounts.

Now that would be a serious issue to be redressed for Hyatt Gold Passport members .

I am reminded of the movie “Office Space” where the software engineers who are about to be fired plant a virus in the computer system to siphon a fraction of a cent from each transaction and end up embezzling a large amount of money.

Please comment Hyatt Gold Passport members  so we can all see if base points short-changing is a common occurrence.

Is base points short-changing an anomaly specific to my Hyatt Gold Passport account or do others see a base points discrepancy with Hyatt Gold Passport earning on recent stays?