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Hyatt's new Peak/Off-Peak pricing is officially live, but is it better or worse than we hoped for? And how can one actually find which dates fall under a certain season? Fortunately, Hyatt now publishes an award calendar that makes finding peak and off-peak pricing simple. As for the results, they are definitely mixed.
Hyatt Award Calendar Tips
Just a few things to keep in mind as we delve into this:
- Just because the calendar shows an off-peak night, that does not actually mean there is availability.
- You can search for award nights 13 months in advance.
- Results on pricing are mixed and there isn't much rhyme or reason to why a certain date is peak, standard or off-peak pricing.
How to Access the Hyatt Award Calendar
Hyatt makes it incredibly easy to find the points cost of the new seasonal pricing system. To do so, first head over to Hyatt.com and fill in the information for the property you are interested in in the search bar. You can log in, as well, but it's not necessary to access the calendar.
I opted to check out the Hyatt Centric Murano Venice because it's a great property in a very popular destination, so I wanted to see what I could find.
Once you initiate your search, select the property you want. You'll be taken to a new page. On this specific page, you can now access the points calendar. The photo below shows where on the page you will see the option. Click on the link and the calendar will pop up.
New Pricing Winners
Continuing with the Hyatt Centric Murano example: as a category 3 property, this hotel runs 12,000 points a night for a standard night. According to Hyatt's new model, peak pricing runs at 15,000 points per night, and off-peak is 9,000 points per night.
If you can snag an off-peak award, saving 3,000 points is pretty huge. At the same time, if your dates are not flexible and you are stuck with a peak award, you'll have to shell out an extra 3,000 points per night.
The above example shows that in March, a slower time in Venice, you can find a significant number of off-peak priced award nights. In fact, more than half of the month is priced at 9,000 points per night and only 2 nights are pricing at peak rates. So, for this specific property, I'd call this an overall win.
New Pricing Losers
Unfortunately, I'm not finding nearly as many off-peak nights for popular properties I've searched. In fact, the Hyatt Centric Murano's off-peak options seem to be somewhat of a baby unicorn.
Take the very popular Hyatt Vendome located in Paris. This category 7 property runs 30,000 points per night. In June of 2022, nearly the entire month is priced at peak season, so you'll pay 35,000 points a night — 5,000 more per night than standard award pricing. That's a big increase, especially if you are staying several nights.
I guess this shouldn't be surprising, as Paris is a very popular destination in the summer. In fact, according to a quick Google search, France is the most visited country in the world year after year, with Paris being the most visited city in France. But deep down, I had hoped for at least a few standard room nights thrown in there.
How to Earn World of Hyatt Points
Between the two Hyatt branded credit cards now available, plus the ability to transfer points from Chase Ultimate Rewards earning cards to World of Hyatt, it's relatively easy to load up on Hyatt points for free nights. And yes, there are now two Hyatt cards as Hyatt just announced an all-new World of Hyatt Business Credit Card. And the welcome offer isn't too shabby, either:
- World of Hyatt Business Credit Card: Earn up to 75,000 Bonus Points. Earn 60,000 Bonus Points after you spend $5,000 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. Earn an additional 15,000 Bonus Points after you spend $12,000 within the first 6 months of account opening. $199 annual fee.
- The World of Hyatt Credit Card: Earn 30,000 Bonus Points after you spend $3,000 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. Plus, up to 30,000 More Bonus Points by earning 2 Bonus Points total per $1 spent in the first 6 months from account opening on purchases that normally earn 1 Bonus Point, on up to $15,000 spent. $95 annual fee.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the Hyatt award pricing calendar works just like you would expect, for the most part — if you travel during an off season, your chances of finding off-peak pricing to standard pricing are good. If you travel at a busy time, expect to pay peak pricing.
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Good that they actually made it easier to search for what I want. Lately, it seems that all changes in every program have been negetive.
Thanks. I checked out a destination Hyatt I would like to try out and found the chart to be very helpful. As Hyatt is the chain where I have the fewest points, I can play around with dates and get even more value based on the chart.
This is definitely going to help as I can afford to stay based on pricing most times.
At least Hyatt has not implemented dynamic pricing – yet – like Hilton and Marriott….but it seems inevitable and probably sooner than we think they’ll get there too….time to burn those Hyatt points on some solid off peak deals I guess.
I was worried that peak pricing would be plentiful and off-peak would be non-existent. 🙁
This is very helpful and I’ll be using it for future travels. It’s too bad that this is not available for other hotel chains or airlines.
I think that all major players should follow
The award calendar is a useful feature, but I didn’t expect the results I saw. I anticipated that peak pricing would apply over certain time periods – eg, ski season for the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek – and would apply to all days that fell within. Instead, it appears that they’ve bumped up weekend rates, sometimes even in “non-peak” periods, as well as rates in “peak” periods, thus making it harder to avoid or work around.
I am all for transparency. If they actually made it easier to search on their site then kudos to them.
Looks like a useful calendar for making award reservations.
I like award calendars, I can usually adjust vacation plans to fit the best deals.