Welcome to a World of Hyatt! Hmmm... what's everyone's take?
World of Hurt.
No less than
four different agents - all in writing - and three phone agents (including a supervisor) told me within the last two weeks that transitioning Diamonds would
not receive a category 1-7 free night on 1 March. Yet numerous blogs had this as confirmed. Of course, come yesterday, a free 1-7 cert is in my account. I got on the phone to Hyatt in Australia today to use it and spoke with the same agent who sent me the email - three days before the introduction - who claimed simply that Hyatt must have changed their mind - in those last three days! It's ludicrous that
hours before the program was to launch multiple agents were providing the wrong information. It beggars belief.
Hyatt's atrocious IT system doesn't help.
The suite upgrade benefit for top tiers will not be enforced. The multiple sentences as part of the clause give hotels more than enough room to wiggle out of providing an entry level suite on check-in if available. Certainly, some hotels will. But it will not be enough to consider it a published benefit.
Hyatt has also stripped the 1W or welcome amenity. That will reduce some stays to triple digit earning instead of quadruple.
The breakfast amenity has essentially been halved.
And to top it all off Hyatt has the audacity to call the program World of Hyatt and the top tier Globalist. World and globalist are not words you would associate with Hyatt's tiny global footprint. Hyatt has four (soon five, I think) properties in London, one of the most touristy cities in the world. Hilton has more than 30! I read on FlyerTalk that SPG has more properties in Indonesia than Hyatt has in all of South-East Asia. There's no longer a property in New Zealand and very few in Africa.
Reduced benefits with a fraction of the global footprint of their competitors just doesn't work.
Oh, and Explorist and Discoverist aren't even words!
