Buy Hyatt Gold Passport Points From 1.71 Cents Each

---

TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.

Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission which helps contribute to the running of the site – I’m very grateful to anyone who uses these links but their use is entirely optional. The compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site and does not impact reviews that are published.

Hyatt has brought out a new “buy points and get a bonus” promotion that runs though 31 July. This promotion sees an improvement over the 30% bonus promotion that we saw back in May…but by how much will depend on what Hyatt has targeted you for. This time around I’ve only been targeted with a bonus offer of 35% but some have received an offer of a 40% bonus.

As with the last promotion, Gold Passport Members have to purchase a minimum of 5,000 points for the bonus to kick in but should you be buying Hyatt points in the first place?

Buy Hyatt Gold Passport Points For 1.71 Cents

Hyatt has stuck with the methodology it has used in past promotions so it doesn’t matter how many points you buy (as long it’s over 5,000) as you’ll pay the same amount per point. I quite like this as it makes it cheaper for those who aren’t looking to buy a huge stack of points and, instead, just want to top off an account to reach whatever award they’re going for.

The link to the promotion will take you to a page where you’ll need your Hyatt Gold Passport number to log in. After that it should all be pretty self-explanatory.

Hyatt allows members to buy/receive up to 55,000 Gold Passport Points per calendar year (not including bonus points) so, if you haven’t bought points yet this year you can go for the full amount…which will cost you $1,320:

55,000 points with a 35% bonus comes to 74,250 points which, at a total cost of $1,320, comes to 1.78 cents per point. If you were targeted for the 40% bonus you’ll get 77,000 points for the same price which comes to 1.71 cents per point.

Should You Buy Gold Passport Points In This Promotion?

I’m going to base all my calculation on the bonus I was targeted for – 35%

The Hyatt award chart looks like this…..

….so, if you wanted to buy enough points for an award night at a Category 7 property…like the Park Hyatt New York….

Park Hyatt New York Suite – Image courtesy of Hyatt

….you would have to spend $552 and you’d have some points left over:

That could be a good deal if you were set on visiting this hotel as, having picked 3 random dates in August, October and December the prices for the cheapest available room were:

and….

and:

Personally I would absolutely never, ever, pay that amount for a room….but obviously some do, so buying points in this promotion may work for them.

It’s actually very easy to decide if you should be buying points or not as it all comes down to common sense and then a bit of math.

The math bit is simple:

Compare the price you’d have to pay for the points for an award night to the cash price of the room for a night you’d like to stay – that will tell you if you can save money by buying points.

The common sense bit isn’t quite so simple because you need to be honest with yourself:

It’s very easy to persuade oneself that, because you can buy enough points for a night at the Park Hyatt New York (for example) at a price that can give a huge saving over the cash rates, that it’s a great idea to buy points in this promotion….but would you pay $552 (what the points would cost) for a hotel room in the first place?

If you can honestly answer “yes” to that question then this promotion may be for you but, if you can’t, then buying all the points needed for an award night (30,000) really isn’t something you should be considering.

Times When Buying Points Makes Sense

• When you’re topping off an account to get an award you’ve been waiting to reach:

If you’re already almost all of the way to an award (through hotel stays, credit card spend etc…) then these promotions are a pretty good way of getting the few thousand points you need to reach the award you’ve been working towards.

• When you were planning on a cash stay (before the promotion came out) and now buying points and using then for that stay is the cheaper way to go.

If you were already planning a stay at a Hyatt property then you were clearly prepared to pay the going rate…so you wouldn’t be fooling yourself that the points are saving you money….they really would!

This is where I tend to see most value and where I think most people would be able to make the most out of a promotion like this.

There are quite often times where, even with a AAA discount applied, the cheapest room at a hotel you need to stay at is expensive (this is the Park Hyatt Chicago):

…and that’s before taxes:

But you can get the same night for 25,000 Gold Passport Points or 12,500 Points & $150 cash:

If you wanted to buy the full amount of points for this award night you would have to buy 19,000 with a 35% bonus for $456:

Buying point would, theoretically, save you almost $120….although you should take into consideration that you would not earn any Gold Passport points from your stay (you would if you paid in cash) and you would not get any stay/night credit towards elite status.

The Points & Cash offering is, to me, the more interesting one as you still earn stay/night credit towards elite status and you still save money:

A Points & Cash award would cost $176.10 + 25,000 points (after taxes and fees):

The points element of the award are essentially saving you $399.75 which means that you’re getting 3.20 cents of value out of every point.…which isn’t bad if you only paid 1.78 cents for them!

Bottom Line

I realise that I type this a lot…but it doesn’t make it any less true….do the math before you buy! That’s the only way to be sure if you’re getting a good deal or not.

There are definitely times when points bought in this promotion will save you money but that in itself isn’t a reason to buy. If you don’t have an immediate or short-term use for the points then you shouldn’t be buying any….you never know when Hyatt will decide to devalue their currency and, should that happen, your points could be worth a lot less than you were planning on.