World of Hyatt members can potentially earn quite a few free night certificates annually:
- If you have the World of Hyatt Credit Card, you get an annual Category 1-4 free night certificate (valid for 12 months)
- For staying 30 qualifying nights or earning 50,000 base points per year, you get an annual Category 1-4 free night certificate (valid for 180 days)
- For staying 60 qualifying nights or earning 100,000 base points per year, you get an annual Category 1-7 free night certificate (valid for 180 days)
- While this can only be earned once, World of Hyatt members get one Category 1-4 free night certificate after trying five different Hyatt brands, and another Category 1-4 certificate after trying another five Hyatt brands (valid for 12 months)
At the moment I have three free night certificates in my account — two are valid at Category 1-4 properties, and one is valid at Category 1-7 properties.
A couple of days ago I was trying to redeem my two Category 1-4 free night certificates for a stay at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne (which retailed for $300+ per night for my nights — a heck of a deal using the certificates), and tried to make the booking online.
Hyatt’s bad IT is nothing new, though this reminded me of an issue with these certificates — specifically, if you have multiple Hyatt free night certificates and try to redeem them online, the eligible certificate expiring soonest will be pulled first.
What this meant is that even though I tried to use my Category 1-4 certificate expiring in August (and specifically clicked on that one), it pulled my Category 1-7 certificate expiring in April. Fortunately there’s an easy enough way around this — if you call World of Hyatt, they can make the booking and pull the correct certificate. However, when I’ve done this, it’s clear that some sort of a workaround is required, so it’s not even that straightforward for them.
I’ll add better online redemptions of World of Hyatt certificates to my (very long) wish list for Hyatt’s IT department. I can’t even imagine how many people accidentally redeem the wrong certificates for stays, and don’t find out until it’s too late, given that this isn’t made clear at the time of booking. Besides, having to call to book isn’t exactly the best use of resources for the World of Hyatt call center agents.
So if you have multiple Hyatt free night certificates and don’t want to redeem the one expiring soonest, be sure you call Hyatt to make your booking, or else you may find yourself disappointed.
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