Questions and Answers

Hi Everyone,

My wife has a conference in LA in 3rd week of April and we were thinking of visiting Maui while we are in LA. I have already applied for the Hyatt credit card and have been approved.

My question is, can I book a standard room at this time and later use my free nights (after meeting the $1000 threshold) once they are posted to my account? Once I use my free nights certificate, I am then hoping to use points to upgrade to a suite.

My concern with waiting until the free nights to post is that there may not be rooms available at that time. Would Hyatt allow me to block a room now and later redeem it using my free nights certificate?

Thank you all very much for the help!

– Vish

Your concern is valid, and it goes both ways — hotels often oversell space, and you won’t be able to just “trade” your reservation from money to free nights. You’ll have to cancel your reservation entirely, and there’s always a chance standard rooms will no longer be available.

Thanks Tiffany. I guess that puts a dent in using the free nights. Hoping that there is at least one standard room available by the end of the next month.

Has anyone had any luck in “trading” a reservation for free nights? I have sent Hyatt an email to see if they would allow such a thing to happen.

Try emailing the property explaining that you are “scheduled” to get the free nights certs in 4 weeks and if they can accommodate a “trade”. Never hurts to ask.
Then expedite the 1000$ spend and request chase to send the free night certs asap.

Thanks. I got a response back from Hyatt stating that the free night credits will be posted after I have made $1000 in purchase but they didn’t clarify if I can use those for an existing reservation or not. I have sent an email back asking them to clarify.

In the meantime, I have requested Chase to expedite the delivery of my card. From what I have read, April doesn’t seem to be a peak season in Hawaii and I should be able to book a standard room. Hoping that Hyatt will allow me to swap out an existing reservation and utilize my free nights. 🙂

Thanks again for both of you in helping me out with this.

Update…received an email back from Hyatt and looks they will honor the free nights credit as long as the redemption is available on the same dates. Here’s their response:

[I]”Please note to redeem a Free Night Award the redemption is subject to availability. If your existing reservation is booked under an eligible rate plan and the redemption is available on those stay dates we shall process your request. Kindly, get back to us with your reservation number so that we can assist you further.”[/I]

From what I can understand, sounds like I can book a standard room now and as long as there is redemption option available for those dates, I can apply them to an existing reservation. Please let me know if any of you are understanding it differently.

Yep, that’s what I’d said originally — the risk is that if a standard room isn’t available, then an award redemption won’t be available either.

Hi everyone,

I have the 2 free night credits showing on my Hyatt account (met the spend last Friday and it showed up on my account this morning – so that was a quick turnaround over the weekend).

Now…

We will be staying at Andaz Maui in April and we are planning a trip to Paris in October and we will be staying at Vendome (4 nights). Do you see it prudent to use my 2 free nights and my wife’s 2 free nights for the Paris trip or utilize one of our 2 free nights at Maui and the other at Vendome?

If I do a 2/2 split between Maui and Paris, I will utilize my UR points to transfer to account for the other 2 nights. My only concern is am I utilizing the UR points and the free nights credit the best possible way?

Well, the Andaz Maui is category 6, and the Vendome is 7. Seems like the best use of the certificates is in Paris so you save points in Hawaii.