YOU CANNOT BOOK CATEGORY 5-7 HYATT HOTELS WITH THE ANNIVERSARY FREE NIGHT CERTIFICATE – SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION AND CLICKBAIT-SOUNDING TITLE
(Hat Tip to the Travel Hacking 101 Facebook Group)
Good morning everyone. Yesterday, I was in my World of Hyatt account and I wanted to see when my Chase Hyatt Credit Card Anniversary Free Night Certificate was set to expire. To see when you certificate will expire, log into your Hyatt account, click the My Account header, and click on My Awards. My certificate will expire on November 9, 2017, and I have to complete my stay by that date. While I was looking for hotels to use my certificate at, I discovered a glitch where the certificate will show up as a payment option when it is not supposed to.
Here are the complete terms and conditions of the Chase Hyatt Credit Card Anniversary Free Night Certificate. As you can see, the free night is only available for category 1-4 Hyatt hotels, with a few exceptions.
Since the Chase Hyatt Credit Card Anniversary Free Night Certificates can only be used for category 1-4 Hyatt hotels, you need to find a hotel that is priced at 15,000 Hyatt points or less.
But for some reason, when I searched for hotels that are higher than category 4, like the Park Hyatt Maldives, which is a category 6 hotel, costing 25,000 Hyatt points a night, the Hyatt website said that I could redeem my Chase Hyatt Credit Card Anniversary Free Night Certificate. Also, I searched for a hotel night way past my certificate expiration date.
To see if this happened with other Hyatt hotels, I picked the nicest Hyatt hotel I have ever stayed at, the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, which is a category 7 hotel, costing 30,000 Hyatt points a night.
Unfortunately, when you go through the booking process, you get the following hotel availability error message. I tried a few different category 5-7 Hyatt hotels for a few different dates and got the same error message every time. Bummer!
I googled this error message and stumbled onto this Reddit post: Hyatt anniversary bonus nights glitch? Here were 2 useful comments on that post:
- merakik said: There have been reports where you ended up having to pay at the hotel, with points, and if you don’t have enough, BAR rates using $. I wouldn’t risk it.
- itzchauATL said: Hyatt will catch up. A few days before your stay the manager at the hotel will let you know that your free night certificate is ineligible so you can either pay by points or standard rate to keep your reservation.
Long story short, if you see this glitch on Hyatt, the system will block you from redeeming your certificate for an ineligible stay, or if it does go through, your reservation will be cancelled unless you pay the Hyatt points price or the best available rate (BAR). This is a bummer since I was really looking forward to using my certificate at a really nice Hyatt hotel. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Sucked us in. Low, very low
Sorry for the confusion, let me update the title to make it a little clearer.
Agreed. Clickbait.
That was not my intention, but I can see how the title does sound like clickbait. I updated the title to make it more clear. Have a great day.
This happened last summer as well. Any rooms booked with it had been contacted by the hotel and informed of the mistake and that the options were cancellation or paying the regular rate/points. Must be a summer promo that they don’t want to run but keeps popping up!
Haha, I guess so. Maybe one of these summers they will fix their promotion :)
It has been doing this for over a month now. I was it when I tried to book the Park Hyatt Vienna and Mallorca at the beginning of May
Good to know, I guess Hyatt isn’t in a hurry to fix this glitch.
Pingback: Bank Bonuses, Renting Timeshares, Tibet Travel Guide, Travel Influencers Without Credibility - TravelBloggerBuzz
“World of Hurt”
I like that nickname :)
Hi Grant — I was noticing the same thing just yesterday (and remembering this also from last year), when contemplating options for various Hyatt properties inside Washington DC….. I have until July 10th (next month) to use a “free night”. To my surprise, the “Free Night” was showing up as available for the Cat. 5 Park Hyatt — even as I’m more inclined to stick with the Cat 4 Grand Hyatt.
Second apparent glitch: I then checked to see if the free night would be available for nights after July 10th — and it appears to be so — as far as I went. (I stopped at the screen saying, “Complete your reservation.”
Under Summary of Charges, it reads, “Free Night redeemed at time of check-in.”
(which is worrisome in contemplating that even if it lets me place the reservation now, I might be told “then” — after the July 10th — that the “Free Night” had expired — even though the system might have made the reservation with that very award… (Again, didn’t go that last step — yet wondering if I’ve somehow misunderstood this award…. I thought it had to be reserved & consumed by expiration date…. not just reserved?)
Any experience out there with this?
I believe you need to complete your stay by the date the anniversary free night expires, so based on your logic, you would not be able to redeem a certificate if your stay is after the date the certificate expires.
Been like this for many many months. I think I first spotted this glitch last fall. Kind of annoying and should have been fixed a long time ago.
I guess I don’t book enough Hyatt stays or I would have spotted this months ago too.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hyatt-world-hyatt/1775374-goldpassport-com-well-new-worldofhyatt-new-issues-website-problems-thread-18.html#post27728656
Get your 10k points like I did for Hyatt baiting people with this trick for years and maybe they will stop it after everyone keeps getting free courtesy points for the trouble . Check my post under user “scwam”