Many travel hackers consider Hyatt Globalist to the gold standard among top-tier hotel loyalty status tiers. Globalist members receive many valuable benefits when staying with the chain including:
- room upgrades including suites
- club lounge access and/or full breakfast including restaurant breakfast at many hotels
- bonus free night certificate upon hitting the qualifying night threshold
- resort fees waived
- Guest of Honor, which allows a Globalist to share their in-hotel benefits with other members
Hyatt tends to be remarkably good at consistently applying these benefits across brands, particularly in contrast to Marriott where you need to refer to pages of tables to understand which benefits apply to which brands.
With the ongoing pandemic, Hyatt announced a slew of promotions to make it easier to attain Globalist status back at the end of 2020. The most lucrative ones, which have all since expired, included:
- Bonus Journeys, which offered extra points and double elite qualifying nights on all stays through February 28.
- Qualifying thresholds for status tiers cut in half for 2021, meaning Globalist status only required 30 elite nights.
- Elite qualifying nights from December 2020 would also count towards 2021 member year status.
- New applicants for the Chase World of Hyatt credit card could receive five elite qualifying nights when approved (also doubled, so a total of ten nights).
- Smaller campaigns, such as bonus points and free parking that applied to many stays.
My Current Status Situation
For the last four years, I’ve been committed primarily to Marriott. I took advantage of Marriott Gold status when it was very valuable for about a year and a half after the SPG merger, then was grandfathered into Platinum status when my SPG and Marriott accounts merged, and achieved Titanium status in 2018, which I’ve requalified for each year since. Although Marriott can be confusing and inconsistent with wildly varying quality of properties, I wasn’t particularly upset with Marriott and, thanks to continuing promotions, I will likely requalify for Titanium again this year.
With that said, I’ve always been interested in the World of Hyatt program. I’ve stayed at a handful of outstanding Hyatt properties, including the Andaz Tokyo, Park Hyatt Vienna, Park Hyatt Seoul, and Hyatt Centric Chicago Loop. I have stayed with other Hyatt Globalists or been Guest of Honored on these stays, so I’ve seen the high quality of these hotels and excellent recognition of benefits.
But, the traditional 60 night threshold has been steep, especially considering the opportunity cost of staying at hotels with limited status while having Marriott Titanium during the qualification period. (Hyatt has not offered a status match for some time.)
But, with all of the promotions in place, I decided it was finally time to go for Globalist status.
How I Earned My Stays
My goal was to achieve Globalist status by the end of February. This would give me nearly two years (through January 2023) to enjoy the status, and, thanks to the Bonus Journeys promotion, would be the easiest period in which to qualify. With the decision made to go for it, here’s how the math broke down:
- Total Needed: 30 Nights
- World of Hyatt Credit Card Annual Renewal: 5 Nights
- World of Hyatt Credit Card Threshold Spending: 6 Nights (2 nights per $5k spent; $15k spent)
- Mattress Run to Kansas City: 4 Nights (doubled to 8)
- Work From Hyatt Office for a Day: 3 Nights (doubled to 6)
- Arizona Hiking Trip: 3 Nights (doubled to 6)
World of Hyatt Credit Card
At the time I decided to pursue Globalist status, I held the legacy Hyatt credit card. Although I had been targeted in the past to upgrade to the WOH card for 5k points, I had always declined because I held onto the card for the annual free night, and it didn’t seem especially worth it to pay more for that one benefit, which was unchanged from the old card. (The annual fee on the new card is nearly double that of the old card, which is no longer open to new applicants.) Chase converted all legacy Hyatt cards into the WOH card in early January.
Because I held a Hyatt card already, I was ineligible for apply for the WOH card and receive that bonus; however my 5 elite qualifying nights, an annual benefit of the new card, posted quickly and I was off and running already with five nights.
I moved credit from other Chase cards to increase my $1,000 credit limit and began spending. I managed to spend $15k on my WOH card, which awarded me six more elite night credits (2 for each $5k spent) and a Category 1-4 free night certificate. $15k is really the sweet spot to spend on this card annually.
I noticed it posted to my activity in my WOH account with zero elite qualifying nights…
Work From Hyatt Office for a Day
One of Hyatt’s many pandemic promotions during the pandemic was called Work From Hyatt and offered significant discounts for long-term stays for folks to travel and work remotely or, conversely, single-day, non-overnight stays so the room could be used as an office from 7am to 7pm. In Minneapolis, hotels offered this rate for as cheap as $50, and that included an elite night credit which was doubled to two thanks to Bonus Journeys.
But this is where my troubles began.
First was the experience itself. Hyatt’s website and mobile app continuously suggested this was an overnight stay; the only reference of a day stay came in the fine print of the rate description. This made it confusing to ensure I had done everything correctly and, I can only imagine, deterred more casual members from taking advantage of the deal.
Furthermore, when I arrived at the hotel, the front desk suggested they were doing a huge favor for me by allowing me to check in at 9 or 10 am, when in fact the rate entitles me to use of the room from 7 am to 7 pm. I had to ask for the coffee I was entitled to with the rate, and the staff made me feel guilty for bringing it up before comping me a latte from the Starbucks machine. Although the hotel offered the rate, the front desk staff were clearly unfamiliar with it.
After that first Office for a Day stay, I noticed it posted to my activity in my WOH account with zero elite qualifying nights. Thankfully, Hyatt’s excellent Twitter support team was able to quickly fix this and the qualifying night, bonus points, and bonus night all posted to my account quickly. However, I had to repeat this process and tweet for help after every one of my three Office for a Day stays because none posted correctly, even at two different hotels.
Arizona Hiking Trip
During my hiking trip in Arizona, I stayed at two Hyatt properties: The Hyatt Place in Page was brand new and absolutely beautiful. The room was large and especially comfortable and the breakfast was filling. In fact, the only change to breakfast service in light of covid was the need to pre-reserve a time to eat. This was one of the best Hyatt Places I’ve ever stayed at, and everything posted quickly and correctly to my account.
On the other hand, our second hotel, the Hyatt Residence Club is Sedona, was less exemplary. Although Hyatt is very good at consistently applying benefits across their brands, apparently Residence Club is the one exempt brand; as an Explorist I wasn’t entitled to a room upgrade (even to just a room with a better view or two beds) and was unable to secure a checkout later than 10 am. We didn’t even get our bottles of water, guaranteed at other brands. I read the fine print and found that not even Globalists would get their benefits at this hotel.
But in this case, all I needed was a comfortable place to sleep and my elite nights.
The problem is that my elite nights never posted.
I waited until 72 hours after checkout, per Hyatt’s mandates, and asked the Twitter team for help. But whereas my Office For a Day stays had posted incorrectly, this stay hadn’t posted at all, so the Twitter team wasn’t able to help. I opened a request for missing credit, but after a week, I still hadn’t heard back.
I’m currently waiting for my stay to post, which will jet me into Globalist status. Until then, I can’t use my benefits at all.
Conclusion
So far, I’ve been very disappointed in Hyatt overall. I’ve experienced their excellent service firsthand in the past at many fantastic properties, and most of the employees I interacted with during this process were also great. The Twitter team was fantastic, friendly, and efficient. But ultimately, Hyatt disappointed me with the vigilance they required to ensure my stays posted correctly, the lack of knowledge of the employees around the Office for a Day rate, and the extremely long wait times for my Residence Club stay to post and jet me over 30 nights.
Update 3/15/21: I followed up with the Twitter team again for an update to my missing credit request and they informed me they could see the stay on their end though they still couldn’t add it to my record. They saw that my request was in progress and would be fulfilled within another seven days. If that happens, it will be just under a month since I checked out.
Update 3/22/21: At long last, my nights from my trip to Arizona posted, granting me Globalist status. I received a note from the customer relations department apologizing for the delay. I responded, going into more detail about how a promotion that should have excited me to engage with the brand for the first time instead frustrated me and I was disappointed to start out on this foot. He responded with another empty apology. I certainly hope that the rest of my experience as a Globalist goes more smoothly than the mattress running has.
