Good afternoon everyone. In the conclusion of my recent post, I stated that if I had to keep only 5 credit cards with annual fees, I would sadly have to close my hotel credit cards. After I wrote that post, I decided that I would rather downgrade my hotel credit cards to no annual fee credit cards like the Marriott Bold or American Express Hilton. I was curious if every hotel chain had a no annual fee credit card, so I decided to create this table showing the hotel brand, no annual fee credit card and the annual fee credit card. Some hotel brands have several credit cards with different annual fees, so I chose to show credit cards with annual fees in the $75-$95 range. A few things stood out to me… Hyatt was missing a no annual fee credit card.
| Hotel Brand | No Annual Fee Credit Card | Annual Fee Credit Card |
| Choice | Barclays Choice Privileges Visa Signature Credit Card | N/A |
| Hilton | American Express Hilton Honors Credit Card | American Express Hilton Honors Surpass Credit Card ($95) |
| Hyatt | N/A | Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card ($95) |
| IHG | Chase IHG Rewards Club Traveler Credit Card | Chase IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card ($89) |
| Marriott | Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold Credit Card | Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card ($95) |
| Radisson | US Bank Radisson Rewards Visa Credit Card | US Bank Radisson Rewards Premier Visa Signature Credit Card ($75) |
| Wyndham | Barclays Wyndham Rewards Visa Credit Card | Barclays Wyndham Rewards Visa Credit Card ($75) |
Since the no annual fee Hyatt credit card does not exist, I thought it would be fun to predict the earning structure and card benefits. I still have the old Chase Hyatt Credit Card that comes with a $75 annual fee. Every few weeks, Chase sends me an email telling me I should upgrade to the new Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card. In the email, there is a long table comparing the 2 credit cards. I will use the top section of this table as a starting point for constructing the no annual fee Hyatt credit card. The no annual fee card would earn 2x at Hyatt and 1x everywhere else with no bonus categories. The free night certificate would also be excluded. That doesn’t sound too exciting, but that earning structure is very similar to other no annual fee hotel credit cards.
There are 2 other interesting things from the table at the top of this post:
- Choice does not have a credit card with an annual fee – they only have a no annual fee version. Seems like they are missing out on having a “premium” hotel credit card.
- Wyndham calls their no annual fee and annual fee credit cards the exact same card – I could not find any differences in their names.
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- Barclays Wyndham Rewards Visa Credit Card with no annual fee
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- Barclays Wyndham Rewards Visa Credit Card with $75 annual fee
Who knows if Chase and Hyatt will ever introduce a no annual fee credit card, but there is definitely room for this credit card in the market. What do you think? If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
P.S. Speaking of Hyatt, there is a Hyatt buy points promo currently running through February 29. You can get 25% off Hyatt points when you purchase more than 5,000 World of Hyatt Points.
Interesting. Never gave it any thought.
That’s me… thinking WAY out of the box :)
Grant, I am sorry to say I think you are woefully uniformed on this one. The Chase people told me the Hyatt card is simply not a very big card in their portfolio. You’d never guess that the way the travelbloggers talk about it.
I seriously doubt Hyatt is driving enough credit card sign ups to justify a second offering from Chase.
I’m very surprised to hear that, but I guess Hyatt’s hotel footprint is much smaller than Marriott and IHG, so that makes sense. I would also love to see a super premium Hyatt CC, but that seems equally unlikely too.