A few days ago World of Hyatt launched a new cash+points redemption which pretty much took away all the value out of these redemptions, making the cash component variable. Some more news may be right around the corner as Hyatt looks to be ready to introduce a new Category 8.

World of Hyatt (nee Hyatt Gold Passport) has had a stable run for the past five years, with the last round of significant category changes happening in 2014. Currently, you have seven categories where redemption rates range from 5,000 points – 30,000 points per night. Hyatt will be soon adding category 8 to this list, something they inadvertently let out, where an award night would set you back by 40,000 points/night. For a brief period, you could even see this category popping up (though inactive) on Hyatt’s website. The new category has now been removed. Mommy Points first found this over at The Points Guy.

Hyatt was swift with their defence, saying that Category 8 has been introduced for some hotels from the SLH conglomerate. Furthermore, they made it clear no recategorization of existing properties is on the cards. Here is their statement:

Thank you for flagging! Let me first assure that we have no plans for any Hyatt-branded hotels or resorts to move to a new Category 8.

As you know, we have been working toward launching an alliance with Small Luxury Hotels of the World that will allow members to earn and redeem World of Hyatt points at participating SLH properties in the future. Given the diversity and caliber of the SLH portfolio, we anticipate that some SLH properties will fall into a new eighth category on our award chart. We look forward to sharing more details when the alliance officially launches.

Bottomline

Hyatt’s move to introduce a new category is going to be a significant one. There is a new category coming for sure, but we don’t know about who all will be affected. No need to panic just yet is all I would say!

What do you think is going to be Hyatt’s next move on World of Hyatt?