Today is March 1 and that means that Hyatt has pushed out the Diamond Suite Upgrades to those members who qualified (or were given) for Diamond for 2016. It is good to see them so quickly available in case you had used up all of your suite upgrades for 2015 and you are ready to book.
New Diamond Suite Upgrades Available
Like clockwork, the 2015 Suite Upgrades have expired (technically, see below) and the 2016 Suite Upgrades have posted and are ready for us. As I wrote about before, these upgrades come with new terms and language regarding how they will be treated for reservations. Here is the new language:
- Suite awards issued on or after March 1, 2016 must be redeemed for reservations with a checkout date prior to the expiration date of the award. Suite awards unredeemed prior to the expiration date of the award will be forfeited.
As I said before, I do not think this is a completely unreasonable change in the terms since they were really the only (or one of the only) travel providers that had such upgrade instruments and allowed them to be used for travel past their expiration. Just know now that these suite upgrade certificates must be used for travel up to February 28, 2017 which is the expiration date. Remember also that Hyatt is deciding how to deal with issuing upgrades in the future so we may see them issue them to you for 2017 when you earn Diamond status, for example. For now, just remember that these certs are only good for travel from today through February 28, 2017.
Some Anomalies With “Old” Upgrades
It was reported on many blogs yesterday that it appeared that the computer system for Hyatt (likely the upgrade that occurred last year) was replacing the 2015 Diamond Suite Upgrades with expiration dates of 2017. Some reported that if you cancelled the suite upgrades you made yesterday, they would be redeposited with 2017 expiration dates.
However, even though my remaining award still is showing a 2017 expiration date, the language above it reads:
- Suite awards issued prior to March 1, 2016 must be redeemed by making a reservation no later than February 29, 2016 for future reservations. In the event one of these Suite awards is redeemed for stay dates beyond expiration date and reservation is cancelled after February 29, 2016 the Suite award will be forfeited.
I have checked and trying to use that remaining award for travel now does not work as the suite award was issued before today and I did not use. Furthermore, if you try cancelling the reservation that you applied your 2015 upgrades to, you will forfeit the suite upgrade. You will not get it back. So, just keep that in mind if you had made random reservations with the hope of getting the suite award back for future use, as some suggested might be possible.
Do you only get the new suite upgrades if you actually earned Diamond status (as opposed to status-match). I was matched to Diamond last December (through Feb 2017) and I see no new suite upgrades on my account 🙁
No, you should have them. Give it until tomorrow and then tweet then about it. Maybe they are rolling them out to qualifiers first?
Ugh… i booked all of my suite awards that were set to expire about a week ago. Last night i logged in and realized that it said that i still had 3 rewards that I hadn’t redeemed. I called in to check to make sure my suite awards were applied correctly and the CSR assured me they were, but there was just a little delay in the system (one that took over a week???) but today when i log in, it says i earned two awards, redeemed 2, and have zero available (ex feb 2017). i have a very bad feeling that my awards were NOT applied correctly and they somehow are being used against my 2017 batch, but also, why the heck does it say i only earned 2?
That is strange. It must just be a glitch. Give it a couple of days and then call in to ask about it. Since your 2016 awards were not supposed to even be available until today, it should be easy to sort out.
There was a glitch. Good thing no one leaked it to any bloggers / they didn’t publicize it.