Hyatt has two credit cards issued by chase, the personal card and the business card. For Hyatt loyalists, the personal card is an absolute must. In addition to the SUB and the other features, it features a Cat 1-4 free night award each year after the first year. Since that FNA is worth up to $360, this feature alone makes it a keeper. Unfortunately, the business card doesn’t have this feature and the AF is higher. As a result, a lot of people seem to dismiss this card. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an incredible card for most people. Some people should never get it while others can get it just for the SUB. However, for some people, there can be a lot of value if it is used right. I’ll break everything down for you so you can decide what makes sense for your situation. For more information on the personal card, see this course.
Note: although this card does not count towards your 5/24 status, you need to be under 5/24 to get it.
SUB and AF
The SUB is decent for people that can handle $5,000 worth of spend in 3 months. You’ll earn the same amount as the personal card but for $1,000 less spend although you have only 3 months to do that instead of 6. The AF is also $199 which is annoying. Since this is a business card, it doesn’t count towards your 5/24 status. Most people value WoH points at 2cpp so 60,000 points would be worth $1,200. Subtracting the AF and you’ll net $1001 worth of points. That’s pretty good. Just keep in mind that these points are only good at Hyatt so you need to at least plan on some sort of Hyatt stay to get value out of this.
As long as you plan on staying at Hyatt, I think this card should be part of your plan at some point. Unfortunately, the SUB doesn’t really seem to change much so there’s no real rush on this. The Ink trifecta should be your first priority. After that, you can jump on any other limited time opportunities. However, when there’s nothing jumping out at you and you’re under 5/24, you should get this.
P2 strategy – SUB only
I’m going to tackle the P2 strategy in two different ways: one year vs keeper. The keeper I’ll address at the end. As far as a one year card, this is a great card for anyone in a two player strategy. For one, you can get 10,000 bonus points for referring someone to the Hyatt business card. So that’s great. You can also share points and awards so even if everything is going on one person’s account, P2 can send their points to you. See this link for more information on that.
Is this card a long-term hold?
This is where things get a little more complicated. There is no way to PC this card so after the first year, you’ll have to either keep the card or close it. For a lot of people, it may not make sense to keep the card after that first year. This part of the course will break down the value that some people can unlock by holding this card each year. You’ll then have to determine if it makes sense for you.
Let’s look at the benefits beyond the SUB compared to the personal card.
-Spending
Bonus points for Hyatt stays is the same. There is no reason to really use this card for anything else in my opinion. There are better cards that you should already have for all of those categories. So as far as spending goes, the business card provides no value.
-Other benefits
I suppose if you have employees that you want to give Discoverist status to, there is some value here but I doubt this really applies to very many people. I’ll assign zero value to that. Gonna skip down to Hyatt Leverage. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this but this program does not require you to have this card. So this seems to be a phantom benefit. You can learn more about Hyatt Leverage by clicking this link. I’m going to assign zero value to that as well.
The $100 in Hyatt credit each year helps to bring down the AF to a more reasonable $99 assuming of course you fully utilize the benefit. Since holding this card only makes sense for people that use Hyatt often, this should apply to anyone thinking about holding this card for the long term. This is easy to value, it’s $100. Problem is, does it still make sense to hold this card for a net cost of $99 each year? So far, no.
Going to skip around again. Spend $50,000 and receive 10% of the points you redeem back for the rest of the year (emphasize “rest of the year) is a variable benefit that will only apply to a small group of people. For the average person, this has zero value. For those of you that choose this card over all others to put heavy spend on, the value is going to vary depending on how many points you get back. If you don’t spend $50,000 until December 1st, you only have the rest of the month to get 10% of your points back. If you spend that by February 1st, you’ll obviously have 11 months to use this benefit. Let’s assume you use 50,000 points once this is triggered. You’ll get back 5,000. That’s worth $100. Meh. Maybe there is someone out there that can make a lot of use out of this benefit especially if you’re going to spend your way to status but I’m not seeing it.
That leaves us with “Earn 5 Tier-Qualifying night credits toward status for every $10,000 you spend in a calendar year”. This is where real value can be unlocked for the right person. (I’ll assume that you can easily manage this spend and that it wouldn’t otherwise go towards SUBs from other cards.) Your first thought might be, “can I achieve Globlalist through spend?”. Let’s check the terms.
“There is no limit to the number of World of Hyatt Tier-Qualifying Night credits that you can earn. … World of Hyatt Tier-Qualifying Night credits will be credited to the calendar year in which the qualifying spend occurred and on January 1 each year your spend total will reset to $0. World of Hyatt Tier-Qualifying Night credits will apply to achieving World of Hyatt status and milestone benefits applicable to Tier-Qualifying Night requirements (as outlined in the program terms). Please allow up to 8 weeks from the last day of the calendar month when you qualify for World of Hyatt Tier-Qualifying Night credits to be added to your World of Hyatt account.” (emphasis added)
So yes, you can spend your way to Globalist. I don’t think it would make sense to go from zero to Globalist by spending $120,000 on this card in a year. However, spending $10,000 on the card to achieve a status or a milestone benefit (or both) could make a ton of sense. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can stack the benefits with the personal card. So by holding the personal card, you already have 5 TQNs each year. For purpose of this discussion, I’ll assume that the $10,000 you are spending would otherwise go on a card that will earn you 1.5x such as the CFU. I’ll also assume that you’ll be earning 1x on this card. So we are losing .5x by using this card instead of the CFU or 5,000 points. As we know, 5,000 points is worth $100. The net annual fee is $99. Can we unlock $199 in value here?
Well the answer to that will depend on what you’re trying to hit. I’ll walk through Milestone rewards, Explorist and Globalist. Milestone Rewards start at 20 nights and continue every 10 nights thereafter. Explorist is 40 nights while Globalist is 60 nights. If you’re 5 nights or less away from an award or status, it may make sense to use this card to bridge the gap.
20 nights – the best reward here is a 2k night award. 2,000 points is worth $40. Doesn’t make sense.
30 nights – The best reward here is another 2k night award. However, it also comes with a FNA. As we’ve already discussed, this is worth $360. That’s a total of $400 in value. Perfect? No. Better than our goal of $199 in value. Yes. Kinda meh but you’ll technically come out ahead.
40 nights – now this is where some real value gets to be unlocked. For one thing, you’ll get Explorist status. Some people don’t say you get much out of it but I think there is at least some value there. It’s hard to put an actual value on that versus Discoverist but a number of people have received some nice upgrades with Explorist. I’m not going to try to put a dollar value on it since that’s a personal decision but if you plan on staying at a decent amount of Hyatts (especially nicer ones) the added benefits will be nice. I think this alone is worth it but there’s more to it.
In addition to Explorist status, you’ll also get a milestone reward. You have a few choices here. Some people prefer the Suite Upgrade Award (SUA) while others prefer the 5,000 bonus points. At the very least, this is worth $100. You’ll also get a Guest of Honor award. This is valuable as you can give yourself or someone else Globalist status for a stay up to 7 nights. If you plan on staying at nice hotel, this could be very valuable if you get an upgrade and all the other benefits that come with Globalist such as free breakfast. Some of these breakfasts can cost $25 (or more) a person so on a 7 day stay, that benefit alone is worth $350.
No matter how you look at it, you should be able to get several hundred dollars in value out of this if not more. Certainly worth it for a lot of people.
50 nights – You have a choice here of 5,000 bonus points or 2 SUAs. The 5,000 bonus points won’t make sense. However, the 2 SUAs could be useful if you plan to actually use them. The exact value will vary but usually suites cost a lot more than regular rooms. Even just using one will net you way more than $199 in value. The key is actually being able to use them though. For those with the right stays coming up, this could get you a ton of value.
60 nights – This is where it’s at. At 60 nights, you receive Globalist status which is awesome. It’s what all Hyatt loyalists strive for. The red carpet gets rolled out for you. Discussing all of the benefits of Globalist is beyond the scope of this course but it alone is worth way more than $199.
Hyatt isn’t done there. You’ll also get the following:
Thee GOHs might not make sense for you at this point since you already have Globalist status but you can trade them for FNCs with other people. If you can do that, then the value is whatever you get for them. The My Hyatt Concierge is a “nice to have” but I don’t think I can put a dollar figure on it. The Cat 7 FNA is really nice and the value will depend on how you use it. Worth up to $700. We’ve already discussed the SUAs. You can use them or trade them. Needless to say, there’s extreme value here.
70/80/90 nights – You’ll get a GOH which we’ve already discussed and either 10,000 points or a SUA. At this point, I don’t think it really makes any sense. Yeah, you’ll break even with the points but I think at this point you’re not getting good value.
100 nights – You’ll get a Cat7 FNA which we’ve already discussed. But you’ll also get a choice of 10,000 points or a FNA for a Miraval resort. If you are planning on going to Miraval, this could save you a ton of money as those hotels start at 40,000 points. That’s $800 more in value right there. This is worth it for the Cat 7 FNA (assuming you’ll use it) but that Miraval FNA is really nice (again if you use it). For the right person, this is a no-brainer.
110, 120, 130 and 140 nights – you’ll get:
Same as before, the Miraval ENA has a ton of value. I doubt anyone is really going there for one night so this would essentially function like a FNA. The only thing to note here is that you don’t get the resort credit for ENAs so they are a little less valuable than the FNA. But again, if you were gonna go to a Miraval anyway, you’ll be saving a lot of money.
150 nights – This is the same as the previous award except that instead of getting a GOH, you get the Ultimate FNA which can be used anywhere. I doubt anyone reading this will be in a position to hit 150 nights one way or another but I figured I’d be comprehensive. This is obviously worth a ton.
As you can see, this isn’t going to make sense for every target but for quite a few of them, it makes a lot of sense to use this card to get there.
P2 strategy – after year one
I don’t really see a situation where it makes sense for P2 to keep this card after getting the SUB. Get the SUB, transfer the points and close out the card after a year. Splitting up the spend on two different cards doesn’t really accomplish anything.
Mattress runs
Some people use mattress runs to bridge the gap instead of spending so I thought I’d discuss that here as an alternative to see what makes sense. For those of you that don’t know, a mattress run is when you stay (or check in) to a hotel for the sole purpose of achieving status or some other goal. A lot of people doing mattress runs don’t even stay at the hotel. For example, I was 2 nights short so I spent 3,500 a night for 2 nights at a hotel. That’s $140 worth of points and I was able to get more than $140 out of it. I checked in, went to the room and pulled back the sheets so it looked like I was there. I put a do not disturb sign on the door and left. A few days later, the tier nights hit my account. You could also use cash at hotels if you want as there are some hotels that charge $100 a night or less.
What makes more sense to you will depend on a few factors. The first is that whether you’ll even be able to find a cheap enough hotel with either a cash stay or points stay. There’s only a handful of 3,500 a night hotels out there. We live in Florida and there’s none here so this isn’t always an easy option for us. When I did one, I happened to be staying in an area that had a Cat 1 hotel. So that was just luck. If you don’t have easy access to a Cat 1 hotel, this isn’t even going to be a good option.
Another issue is how far you are away from the next goal. If it’s just one night, perhaps spending more cash or points on a Cat 2 or 3 hotel to bridge the gap might be better. The problem with the card is that you’re getting 5 nights or nothing. $9,999 gets you nothing. $10,000 gets you 5 nights. You also don’t get anything for going over that award by a few nights. For example, you get nothing at 61 to 69 nights. So if you’re just trying to get 1 or 2 additional nights, a mattress run might make more sense for some people.
At 3 nights, you need at least 10,500 points. You might think that 10,500 to make Globalist makes a lot of sense. Perhaps there’s a few others. Those points are worth $210. So about even with using the card.
At 4 or 5 nights, the scales tip more towards the card. Doing one mattress run longer than 3 nights is risky especially since a lot of hotels will enter the room after a certain amount of time regardless of the do not disturb sign. You could do more than one mattress run but again, that gets more difficult for people to do. It will also require more points which will cost more than the cost of the card.
Conclusion
For the right person, this card is can provide a lot of value. A lot will depend on what milestone (and status) you are trying to achieve and how far away you are from getting there. It will also depend on whether or not you want to and/or can do a mattress run. Another X factor is whether or not you could get more value for your spend. For example, we get 5x for a lot of our spend so that would change the equation a lot. However, we have some bills such as tax bills where we can’t achieve that type of return. In those situations, the best we could get is 2x when we are not trying for a SUB.
The purpose of this course is not to convince you that you need this card. Instead, I want you to properly analyze the card to determine what makes sense to you instead of just writing off the card like a lot of people do. If you find yourself constantly a few nights short of Globalist or some other goal, then this card could be perfect. I think its a great way to help maintain your Globalist status especially if you can just do 50 nights. The 5 nights from the personal card and the 5 nights from putting $10,000 on this card will get you there every year. That will allow you to also use points to stay at other brands if you don’t want to be stuck with just staying at Hyatts all the time.
To discuss further, join our Facebook group. Let us know what you think about this card and how you use it.