Major changes were made to the World of Hyatt program as of 2024, whereby the Milestone Rewards program and Guest of Honor perk were totally overhauled. Most significant of all is that so many perks can now be shared freely with others. You can share everything from suite upgrade awards, to club access awards, to free night awards, all with the click of a button directly out of your account.
Given the issues we’ve seen with fraud at other programs, I can’t help but raise the question of if/how Hyatt will combat this?
Loyalty programs have big issues with fraud
Travel loyalty programs are a multi-billion dollar industry, and they’ve had increasingly wide appeal in recent years, not just in the United States, but also in other markets (particularly in China and India, given the large populations of the countries).
While many airline and hotel loyalty programs will let you redeem your rewards for others, they almost all have policies in place to minimize potential fraud. Virtually every loyalty program has a policy against bartering awards. While you can sometimes share rewards with friends and family, the goal is to stop the mileage and points broker industry, which is huge underground business.
Programs go about this in a variety of ways. For example, some frequent flyer programs limit your ability to freely redeem points for others (by requiring you to designate certain nominees), or to redeem for awards at the last minute in select regions, while some hotel programs limit the ability to transfer points to others.
For the most part, we’ve seen more restrictions put in place in recent years, rather than fewer restrictions. World of Hyatt is countering the trend with its recent changes, so let’s talk a bit more about that.
How will World of Hyatt combat award fraud?
World of Hyatt now makes it possible to transfer all kinds of awards to others, just by having the last name and World of Hyatt number of the person you want to transfer awards to. It has never been so easy to transfer awards to others.
Now, I’d encourage everyone to play by the rules. I certainly do, because any risks just aren’t worth it, and I also believe in acting in good faith when a program chooses to be generous.
However, I think it’s inevitable that there’s going to be a huge online market of people buying and selling all kinds of Hyatt awards. After all, they can be transferred so easily, and some of these perks could be worth many hundreds of dollars. The process of making a transfer is also quite anonymous, as you don’t even see the name or World of Hyatt number of the person who transferred you an award.
Now, I don’t necessarily have a strong take on this one way or another, though I’m curious for how long awards can be gifted so easily without some changes being implemented. Personally, I hope that World of Hyatt is simply aggressive with auditing people with suspicious account activity, or that Hyatt even actively monitors websites where awards could be traded or sold.
If Hyatt does find that there are issues with fraud and wants to cut down on it, I have one idea — make these transfers a bit less anonymous. If someone transfers you an award, Hyatt should send an email saying “[full name] has gifted you [an award].” Maybe even include part of their World of Hyatt number.
That would certainly increase the risk for those choosing to barter these awards. And if you are genuinely using these awards for family or close friends (as the intent is) then you should have no issues with them having your full name, of course.
Or who knows, maybe fraud won’t be a major issue. After all, earning Milestone Rewards requires quite a few stays or a lot of credit card spending, so perhaps the market won’t be as big as it is for some other things.
Bottom line
While many loyalty programs have added restrictions on sharing some benefits to combat fraud, World of Hyatt is going the opposite direction, and is making it easier than ever before to share awards with others. Personally I love this change, because historically Hyatt has lagged when it comes to being able to perform some functions online.
Given the general industry trend, I can’t help but wonder how all of this will evolve when it comes to preventing fraud from members. After all, the loyalty program bartering industry is a pretty big one…
What’s your take on this — do you think Hyatt will have to make some updates to combat fraud, or how do you see this playing out?
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