Travel hackers have been hit with a one-two punch in 2024 already. First we learned the SLH is leaving Hyatt and not too long after that, Hyatt announced what seems to be their annual revaluation (which is mostly a devaluation). While this is all bad news, the good news is that travel hackers have some time to lock in some of this award space but they have to act quickly. I’ll walk you through what’s happening and how to handle it.
SLH is leaving Hyatt
Most people outside of the travel industry have never heard of SLH which is an abbreviation for the company Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Each of the hotels that make up SLH are small, independent luxury hotels. Not being part of a chain leads to a number of challenges so SLH seeks to allow these hotels to be part of an organization to help them with various operation issues while still being independent. Hyatt didn’t own SLH but they patterned with SLH so you could earn and redeem points at most SLH properties. This opened up some amazing hotels to travel hackers.
Hyatt recently acquired a similar company called Mr. and Mrs. Smith and at some point, all of those properties will be brought into the Hyatt system. This likely led SLH to terminate their partnership with Hyatt to join Hilton. While it’s been a few weeks since this was announced, details as to when all of this is going to take place have been scarce. Many travel hackers with existing bookings were concerned that they would have their reservations canceled. While Hyatt has indicated that this will not happen, there has been no other information released as to when SLH properties will disappear from the Hyatt system. As a result, these properties can still be booked today. Since Hyatt can come out tomorrow and announce that these properties are no longer bookable, travel hackers should book immediately.
I don’t suggest that you book anything that far out since we don’t know what Hyatt is going to do. If you must book anything more than six months out, I suggest that you don’t book flights or make sure that they are refundable (i.e. with miles). You don’t want to find out a few months from now that your reservation is canceled and now you’re stuck with non-refundable flights.
To search for these hotels, you should first go to the SLH website at: slh.com
Then, search around until you find five hotels that you’re interested in. I say five because not every hotel partners with Hyatt and some of these hotels might be booked up already. Thus, if you have something like five hotels, you won’t have to keep going back. I think five is a good number but feel free to pick as many as you like.
A few properties that you may want to consider are:
Rawah Ranch, a dude ranch in Colorado, Grand Hotel Villa Castagnola, a villa on Lake Lugano, Switzerland and The Gray, a boutique hotel in Milan, Italy. Each hotel has their own website where you can get more information. The websites for the hotels I mentioned are as follows:
Rawah Ranch | Small Luxury Hotels (hyatt.com)
Grand Hotel Villa Castagnola | Small Luxury Hotels (hyatt.com)
The Gray | Small Luxury Hotels (hyatt.com)
Once you select the hotels you are interested in, go to Hyatt’s website and type in the name of the hotel in the search bar. Then select your dates. If the hotel doesn’t come up, it usually means that the hotel did not partner with Hyatt. You can double check by searching the town. The three hotels I mentioned partnered with Hyatt so if you run into an issue, you can search those hotels to see how it works. Select your dates and then hit “find hotels”. If you can’t find dates that are available, keep searching. Remember, travel hacking is not about what is convenient for you. You have to be flexible.
If you are lucky enough to book something, be sure to take a screenshot of the booking confirmation. My reservations have not been deleted but I did see one or two people mention that their reservations disappeared. Without any proof that they made a reservation, Hyatt didn’t want to help them. After that, keep up to speed with the SLH news at least once a month. As I said previously, you don’t want to book flights, tours, car rentals and other related things only to find out that this reservation was canceled. There’s no magic date as to when reservations will be safe but I would book them as soon as possible whether that is next month or four months from now.
Hyatt Devaluation 2024
I guess we can expect this every March, but Hyatt has once again devalued a lot of hotels. They look at their portfolio and change the category for each hotel. The categories set the range for award space redemptions. This is important because if you were looking to stay at a hotel that was 12,000 points but it is now 20,000 points (just an example), then your points are essentially worth less at least as it relates to that hotel. To make matters worth, a hotel that goes from category 4 to 5 puts that hotel out of reach for those with free night certificates (FNCs).
But wait, there’s more. A number of category 1 hotels in the U.S. were changed to category 2. This is important because there aren’t a lot of category 1 hotels in the first place. In fact, many people (such as myself) don’t even live near a category 1. You can stay in a category 1 for as little as 3,500 points so if you need a few nights to hit a status level such as globalist, doing a mattress run at a category 1 could be a great way to spend a few points to get a lot more in value. For example, I spent 10,000 points to do a mattress run in order to get a FNC which I then used on a category 4 hotel. This saved me 8,000 points. With several of these category 1 hotels gone, this becomes more difficult.
There is a tiny bit of good news here. First, you have until March 26 to book hotels at the old rate. The Hyatt award space goes out for 13 months so that gives you a lot of time to book something. Check the cancellation policy but you should be able to cancel without penalty until right before the booking. This means that you can make speculative bookings and cancel later if needed. The second bit of good news is that a handful of hotels actually dropped a category. This may only pertain to a few people that were interested in those hotels but at least its something.
I strongly suggest you check out the list which you can do by going here. If you have or expect to have a FNC and you were planning on using it at a category 4 (which is what you should be doing), I suggest you look at all of the hotels that are going from 4 to 5. Book those right away with your FNC. The Thompson Chicago, Hyatt Regency Washington, Hyatt Centric Waikiki Beach and the Manchester Grand San Diego jump out at me. For those of you with a category 1 – 7 FNC, you’ll want to look at the hotels moving up to category 8.
The other hotels you really want to focus on are the all inclusive hotels. They use letters instead of numbers but the premise is the same. Nine all inclusive hotels in the Caribbean and Mexico are going up. Many of them are increasing by about 10,000 points per night. That’s rough but what’s really bad is the new Secrets Tulum. I’ve told members of the Facebook group to book that hotel because the new hotels usually have lower categories that get raised fairly quickly and this is no exception. Secrets Tulum is moving from category B to D, the only double increase that I can see. This is also an increase in 10,000 points per night. In other words, a 5 night stay for next year booked prior to March 26th will be just 100,000 points. That exact same stay booked on or after March 26th will be 150,000 points! So like I said, be sure to book these hotels right away to really save your points.
Again, there are some hotels going down in category and a lot of them are in China so that won’t apply to 99% of travel hackers. Perhaps the best decrease is the Secrets St Martin which is going from D to C or 30,000 points to 25,000 points. Not really a huge deal but if you were planning on going there, be sure to wait until March 26th to book it. Same goes for all other hotels that are going down in category.
As far as Europe goes, eight category one hotels are going to category two. Four category four hotels are moving to five and one category five is moving to four. The Magma Resort in Santorini is actually going down from seven to six. That’s an interesting hotel to consider if you plan on gong to Santorini. A category five in France moves to four and an all inclusive hotel in Spain moves down one as well. The rest are all increases.
Conclusion
While not nearly as bad as last year, this is overall bad news especially if you were thinking of staying at any of these hotels. The biggest takeaways are as follows: 1) book category 1 hotels now for the end of the year if you think you might need them to hit a milestone reward or a status level, 2) book a hotel going from four to five (or seven to eight) with a FNC now, 3) book Secrets Tulum as that provides incredible value as a category B and 4) go through the entire list to see if there’s anything else you want to book now or if there are some hotels going down in category that will make sense to book on or after March 26th.
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