Thank You, Hyatt Gold Passport!

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: February 28, 2017

27 comments

Tomorrow is March 1, which is the official launch of the World of Hyatt program. This is replacing Hyatt Gold Passport as Hyatt’s loyalty program. The program is no doubt a mixed bag, and how you feel about it probably depends on how much you stay with Hyatt. For those who stay 60 or more nights per year with Hyatt, the new program could be good news. For others, not so much.

world-of-hyatt-1

So while we’ve written about the new World of Hyatt program quite a bit on OMAAT, I wanted to take a second to acknowledge and reflect on what an incredible loyalty program Gold Passport has been. Hyatt Gold Passport was the program that got me hooked on hotel loyalty programs, but they delivered more than that.

This post isn’t intended to be a comparison of the old and new program, but rather just intended to focus on the positive and say thanks to Jeff Zidell and his team for their innovation and for a heck of a run. Let’s take a short trip down memory lane…

How I got hooked on hotel loyalty programs

I first got hooked on hotel loyalty programs almost a decade ago. Gosh, time flies. During the recession Hyatt introduced the “Faster Free Nights” promotion, which to this day is the most generous hotel promotion I’ve ever seen.

The premise of Faster Free Nights was that you got a free stay at any Hyatt hotel in the world after every two stays at any Hyatt hotel in the world. At the time I was in college in Florida, and the Grand Hyatt Tampa was consistently priced at under $100 per night.

Grand-Hyatt-Tampa-01 Grand Hyatt Tampa

In other words, two $100 stays got me a free night at the Park Hyatt Sydney, Park Hyatt Seoul, Park Hyatt Washington DC, Park Hyatt Tokyo, etc. These were hotels that retailed for up to $1,000 per night.

But it got better than that. Boy, did it ever. On top of getting a free night after every two stays, I did much better than that:

The Grand Hyatt Tampa closed their club lounges on the weekends, and when a hotel has a closed club lounge, you get 2,500 bonus points; I’d typically check-in twice each weekend, on Friday and Sunday night
Back in the day Hyatt offered”G” bonuses valid at certain properties; the Grand Hyatt Tampa had “G3” bonuses, which offered an extra 1,500 bonus points per stay
As a Diamond member I received a 1,000 point Diamond welcome amenity
I ordinarily earned 6.5 points per dollar as a Diamond member, meaning my $100 stay earned me 650 points
At the time, Costco was selling Hyatt gift cards for 20% off

Grand-Hyatt-Tampa-39 Grand Hyatt Tampa club lounge (which I rarely saw, since it was usually closed) 😉

So to do the math differently, two Hyatt stays cost me $160 (after the 20% discount). For that I received a free night at any Hyatt in the world plus 11,300 Hyatt Gold Passport points. I should also mention that at the time Hyatt’s most expensive hotels cost 18,000 points per night. So every two stays earned me roughly 1.6 free nights at any Hyatt in the world.

Of course the promotion wasn’t sustainable, and we haven’t seen anything like that in several years. But when the promotion was offered, it sure got heads into beds, or perhaps more accurately, heads to the front desk with credit cards, and then unoccupied rooms for the night. 😉

I don’t think the hotel industry will ever again see a promotion that motivates people to check into hotels so much. What a run that was, and to think that Hyatt offered that promotion several times…

Hyatt has mastered hotel elite recognition

Reflecting on Gold Passport, there are two things that have impressed me most about the execution of the program:

How consistent Hyatt is with the delivery of elite benefits; there’s not a more consistent hotel chain, and I find that they’ve done a great job of under promising and over delivering
How they’ve lead the industry when it comes to innovating with certain benefits, like confirmed suite upgrades, full breakfast, etc.

I think it’s easy to take certain aspects of elite programs for granted, but let’s not forget that the hotel chains don’t own most of their properties, but rather just have management contracts for them. I can’t even imagine what kind of phone calls Jeff Zidell made to individual hotels to get them onboard with his confirmed suite upgrade plan. It’s one thing to offer suite upgrades based on availability at check-in (when the suites would otherwise go empty), but confirming suite upgrades at the time of booking without capacity controls is totally different.

So it’s amazing Jeff found a way to make that happen, because I’m sure it was no easy feat. “Hey, Hyatt in ______, we want to start giving your suites away to Diamond members at the time of booking as a way of rewarding our loyal members. How do you guys feel about that?”

park-hyatt-vienna-suite-4
Park Hyatt Vienna Park Suite thanks to confirmed suite upgrades

Bottom line

Today is the last day where Hyatt Gold Passport is Hyatt’s loyalty program, and I can’t help but reflect on what a cool ride it has been. Before Gold Passport I didn’t care about hotel loyalty programs. While promotions like Faster Free Nights aren’t sustainable, they got a countless number of us hooked, and we’ve stuck around for the ride ever since.

I also think Hyatt deserves a lot of credit for their innovation and consistent delivery of elite benefits.

It has been a very fun ride, Hyatt Gold Passport! This chapter is closing, and now another one is opening…

Anyone else remember Faster Free Nights, or get hooked on hotel loyalty programs thanks to Hyatt?

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J Wright Guest

February 28, 2017, 9:19 pm

Rest in peace Gold Passport. It was fun. Goodbye Hyatt.

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DCS Diamond

February 28, 2017, 7:46 pm

"After OFFERING the more valuable unlimited complimentary suite upgrades..."

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DCS Diamond

February 28, 2017, 7:43 pm

@Thomas -- After the more valuable unlimited complimentary suite upgrades, Hyatt could not just get rid of DSUs without catching brutal flak for it. So, they've come up with a way of letting DSUs just die a slow death. You astutely pointed out one way under your item (1). The second way is that Globalists will actually clear more complimentary suite upgrades at check-in than DSUs at booking. That's the intent because at check-in a property will be sure that it won't be losing any revenue for upgrading a Globalist to a suite that would have gone unoccupied anyway. On the other hand, clearing DSUs way ahead of time when a property does not know if a suite could be fetch real money is problematic. So, the answer will be to just claim that no suites are available for upgrading with DSUs, which would then go the of SPG's SNAs -- i.e., they'd become useless. Mission accomplished

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Thomas Guest

February 28, 2017, 2:06 pm

Hi Ben! You said this should not be a post about the pros and cons about the new WoT program. But as it comes into effect tomorrow, many including me may now be looking in depths at the changes. I noticed a couple of interesting things: 1.) The 4 annual suite upgrade voucher are NOT anymore a feature of the status but specificially bound to reaching 60 nights annually. A Hyatt representative wrote me "I am very sorry for any confusion. Suite upgrades are no longer tied to the tier. Suite upgrades are a benefit for staying 60 nights. As I did say previously you will receive the 4 suite ugprades on March 1st as a courtesy. " That means that while you can requalify with "just" 55 nights, you then won't get any suite upgrade voucher - which is in my view a major devaluation of the program. Ironically they say the upgrades are no longer tied to the tier - they then not leave them at a level of 50 consequently? This has an interesting consequence: if you were Lifetime Diamond or now Lifetime Diamond and you do let's say 20 nights annually, you will then NOT get the suite upgrade vouchers every year as it's currently the case. 2.) I tought that all the negative aspects of the new program might be balanced out by the fact that we now have access to suites. But I think this will only exists on paper as the FAQ on https://goldpassport.hyatt.com/content/world/en/faqs.html define that "...Specialty, Premier, Presidential, Diplomatic, and other suites other than standard suites are not included in this benefit". This is then again a blackbox like currently with the DSU. The hotel can offer lots of suites for sale but just say that they are all not "standard". For example, just trying to use a DSU at the Andaz Maui - they say the DSU should only be valid for the standard suite type for which they only have three at all. Given that it's then exactly the same suites which are available for confirmed suite upgrades and that's already tough to get, I don't have too much hope to be upgraded at check-in. There is also not any public list what "standard suite type" means per hotel. 3.) It's worth noting that all current Diamons really need to get 60 nights in 2017, while at the beginning of the announcements I thought that Diamond gets to Globalist on March 1st automatically, then therefore can requalify by just having 55 nights in 2017. However, that's specifically excluded in the FAQ. Maybe all of this has been discussed multiple times, but I just realized the consequences of the above and for me they matter much more than for example the limitation of breakfast benefits to 2 adults. Best regards Thomas

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Joe Diamond

February 28, 2017, 12:56 pm

You know, I for one am quite happy about the changes. Now there will finally be some merit to DCS' claims about Hilton vs Hyatt. I won't need to argue about it anymore.

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