Fondly Remembering Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights Promotion…

Time flies. I remember being a teenager who was obsessed with miles & points like it was yesterday. 15+ years later (I’m now 34 years old), my interests haven’t changed a whole lot, but just about everything else about this “hobby” has.

In this post I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane, and share what was no doubt my favorite promotion we’ve ever seen from a loyalty program, and what lessons we can learn from it.

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Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights promo was one-of-a-kind

A couple of days ago I was flying out of Tampa Airport, seated on the right side of the aircraft. As we took off, I saw the Grand Hyatt Tampa off the right wing, which always brings back fond memories. I grew up in Tampa, and in 2008-2010, the Grand Hyatt Tampa was the hotel I stayed at the most often, and it became my second home. Why? Well, Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights promotion…

Faster Free Nights was a promotion that Hyatt Gold Passport (Hyatt’s loyalty program, before World of Hyatt was created in 2017) ran at least once per year in 2008 through 2010 (and maybe even before that, though that was before my time being into hotel loyalty programs).

Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights promotion was simple — for every two hotel stays you completed at any Hyatt property during the promotion period, you received one free night certificate you could use at any Hyatt property. I’d argue that this is the single most lucrative repeated promotion we’ve ever seen from any travel loyalty program.

Now, I imagine the idea was that a business traveler who stays in hotels four consecutive nights per week would take advantage of this, meaning they’d get one free night after every eight nights (since the promotion was based on completing two stays, not two nights). However, for those of us into this hobby, we’d stay two separate nights at our closest, cheapest Hyatt hotel, and then we’d use our free night awards at Hyatt’s top properties, like the Park Hyatt Tokyo, Park Hyatt Paris, etc.

The earnings potential here was even more generous than this, though. For example, the Grand Hyatt Tampa was my go-to property for this promotion. It consistently cost around $100 per night. First of all, at the time, Costco sold Hyatt gift certificates for 20% off, so that would lower my real cost to around $80 per night.

But then I’d earn a bunch of additional rewards:

• At the time, Hyatt offered 2,500 points per stay if you were a Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond member staying at a property with a closed club lounge (in addition to complimentary restaurant breakfast); the Grand Hyatt Tampa club lounge was closed Fridays through Mondays
• At the time, Hyatt had a “G3 bonus,” as it was called, whereby you’d get an extra 1,500 points per stay (you just had to include the code, but it was combinable with basically any rate)
• At the time, Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond members received a welcome amenity, and could select 1,000 points per stay as this, in lieu of a food and beverage item
• At the time, Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond members earned 5x base points on spending, plus a 30% points bonus, meaning the $100 rate earned 650 points

So I’d typically check-in at the Grand Hyatt on Friday, check out on Saturday, and then check-in again on Sunday, before checking out on Monday. Each weekend would cost me $160, and I’d earn a free night award plus 11,300 Gold Passport points.

That might not sound like a lot of points now, but at the time, Hyatt’s most expensive properties went for 18,000 points per night (compared to 45,000 points now).

Let me of course emphasize that while plenty of people took advantage of this offer, I was ridiculously lucky to live near a hotel with a closed club lounge on weekends, plus a hotel eligible for the G3 bonus, as most people taking advantage of this offer weren’t getting that many bonus points.

What Hyatt’s generous promotion taught us about loyalty

Nowadays we don’t see many loyalty programs offering high-value promotions that are in some ways “too good to be true.” Rather, most programs nowadays have promotions that are quite modest.

I can appreciate wanting to control expenses, but in some cases I can’t help but wonder if these offers even move the needle in terms of consumer behavior, or if programs are basically just giving something away without getting much in return.

So I think it’s interesting to consider how Hyatt Gold Passport’s Faster Free Nights promotion was both incredibly lucrative, and also worked out for Hyatt, as I think there are some lessons to be learned:

• Faster Free Nights was at a time when Hyatt was growing at a fast pace, and was way smaller than competitors; while Hyatt is still among the smaller hotel groups and it’s still growing, the scale was different at the time, so Hyatt needed to do something to really differentiate itself
• This promotion was largely during a major recession, when a lot of hotel rooms were empty, and this offer got heads into beds; keep in mind that when hotels aren’t full, reimbursement for award stays is typically quite low
• Faster Free Nights is a promotion that worked incredibly well to foster long term loyalty and engagement, even when the generous promotions stopped; many of us have had top-tier status with Hyatt ever since Faster Free Nights, and I’ve even earned lifetime Globalist status now
• The way information is shared has changed over the years, so while there was a lot of interest at the time, I can understand how risky a promotion like this would be in the age of rampant social media; that’s probably why we don’t see many promotions like this nowadays

Jeff Zidell was the head of Hyatt Gold Passport back at the time, and to this day, he’s one of the loyalty program executives I most respect. He understood the concept of delivering value and consistency to members in a way that many others don’t. Between Zidell and Starwood Preferred Guest’s Chris Holdren, it was a great time for hotel loyalty…

Times have changed, but it’s not all bad

I’m not writing about this promotion because I’m trying to suggest that the best of times in miles & points are entirely behind us, and that there’s no point in playing this game anymore. Quite to the contrary, there’s still a ton of value to be had, it’s just that the methods have changed.

15 years ago, the best way to earn miles & points was to take advantage of airline and hotel promotions. Mattress running and mileage running were both very much a thing, and made sense. But loyalty programs have evolved, and aren’t rewarding in the same way.

But there are so many new opportunities to earn points nowadays. Look at the amazing credit card welcome offers we see on cards, as well as the points multiples for spending on many credit cards. Back then, the concept of a huge credit card welcome offer was basically unheard of, and savvy people were using their SPG Amex for all their spending, earning one Starpoint per dollar spent. The concept of 100K+ point bonuses and earning 3-5x points on credit card spending was unheard of.

So while award redemption values aren’t as good as they used to be, the opportunities to earn points are also much greater.

Bottom line

The miles & points world has changed a lot over the years, in some cases for the better, and in some cases for the worse. When I think of promotions from the past that really seemed too good to be true, Hyatt Gold Passport’s Faster Free Nights promotion comes to mind. What a time that was for hotel loyalty…

Any OMAAT readers fondly remember Hyatt Gold Passport’s Faster Free Nights promotion?