I had planned to travel to Atlanta, Georgia for Spring Break with my kids in April. I had reserved a property in the Buckhead area of Atlanta with my soon to expire Chase Hyatt Reward certificate, good for any category 1-4 award.
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, I cancelled those reservations along with my flight reservations.
I decided to contact Hyatt through Twitter to see if they could extend the expiration on my free night certificate. I sent a tweet to @HyattConcierge asking if they could extend my expiration.
They replied and asked me to send them my information via Direct Message. I sent them my account number, my name, and my email address. They replied back and said that they appreciated that I was a part of World of Hyatt and they offered to provide me 10,000 Hyatt Points as a replacement. This is a perfect swap, in my opinion, as I can use these points at any time in the future. I replied that this was a great resolution and would gladly take the 10,000 points.
I really appreciated their offer and was glad to swap out the award for points. If you have an award certificate that you won’t be able to use due to the current situation, you might reach out to them to see if you can do the same.
I had booked a hotel requiring more points. I would have preferred just moving the reservation out a year. These points won’t even buy me my nights.
@harry – for me I was happy for a quick resolution as my certificate would expire in two weeks.
Currently IHG is dragging their feet on one that expires in 5 days
I think that HYATT should extend the same benefits to those of us in the US, Italy, etc. as they did in Asia. We are all in the same situation, some worse, at this point. I will be very disappointed if they do not come through – seems like it is the fair and equitable thing to do.
Seems like a really discounted value to me. I routinely use my Cat 1-4 free night certificates for Category 4 hotels that require 15,000 points per night (sometimes those hotels are $250-$350/night). I have 2 certificates expiring in May, and feel that Hyatt should either extend their expiration, or provide 15,000 points for expiring Cat 1-4 certificates.
@larry – I was just happy to not have it expire on my hands and didn’t feel like haggling but you bring up a valid point
The United States has more Coronavirus cases than Asia-Pacific. They extended status and certificates for those members. Why won’t they help out the people in the United States?
@ ata – I’m US based and it worked for me
Might want to update title to YMMV.
I just tried via Twitter Hyatt Concierge and was told by Christina that they were only extending certs for Asia Pacific-based members.
I think when certificates expire unused they automatically convert to points.