Hyatt is running a promotion now through December 10 where you can purchase Hyatt Gold Passport points and receive a bonus of 30% (as long as you purchase at least 5,000). Since this is not a tiered promo and is a straight bonus, we can see that they are selling the points at a cost of 1.8 cents per point. Is that a good deal?
Read this post – Buying Miles and Points For “Free” Travel
Hyatt’s 30% Bonus Offer – Good Deal?
– Hyatt Point Purchase Link – Get 30% Bonus
We do hear the value of Hyatt points thrown around from time to time and that amount of 1.8 cents per point is right around where most people place the value on redeeming those points. When it comes to purchasing points, it is never a good idea to buy a bunch of points at the same value with which you expect to derive from them. For one reason, you are negating the opportunity to earn additional Hyatt points by booking an award stay over a paid stay and you are losing out on a qualifying night for elite credit and promotional credit (should a promo be running). This is because award stays are not valid for either.
Hyatt’s Points + Cash option might offer some of the best opportunity for points purchased but even there, you would have to be staying at a hotel with a very high cash rate and a low category ranking. One of my favorite Hyatts, the Hyatt Regency Thessaloniki, is a hotel where we have done the Points + Cash option a few times. Since it is a category 3, the cash cost is $75 and the points cost is 6,000 points. A regular night at this hotel costs around $210. Subtracting the $75 dollars from that cost, we get a point value (of our 6,000 points) of 2.2 cents per point, or .4 cents per point more value than these points would cost through this promo. Unless I really needed points for this, I would not consider that to be the best reason to buy.
I personally think that the best scenario for purchasing these points is if you are simply trying to top up your account to pay for an upcoming award. Even that loses some of its luster, however, since you can transfer Ultimate Reward points to Hyatt at a 1:1 rate and Ultimate Reward points are really quite easy to come by. If you were to use your Chase Ink Plus to buy gift cards at office supply stores (like prepaid Visa gift cards to use day to day or liquidate through loading up cards), you would essentially be buying points at a cost of .7 cents per point (because of the activation fee of the prepaid card). This is based on purchasing a $200 gift card and earning 5 points per dollar (because it is an office supply store and it earns 5x points on the Chase Ink Plus). If you only need a small amount, that would certainly be the way to go and far cheaper than purchasing points through this promo.
If you want to earn more Ultimate Reward points to transfer to Hyatt, you can apply for these cards that will give you good bonuses – the Chase Sapphire Preferred (40,000 points after spending $3,000 in 3 months) and the Chase Ink Plus (50,000 points after spending $5,000 in 3 months). Please note, these card links are affiliate links that pay me a commission.
