Hyatt Mayday: A Devaluation Shaped Like Marriott Circa 2022
Hyatt's award chart expands from three pricing tiers to five at the end of May. Marriott made the same change in 2022, then scrapped the chart entirely a few months later.
On February 25, Hyatt announced that its award chart will expand at the end of May. The eight categories stay. The three pricing tiers — off-peak, standard, peak — become five: Lowest, Low, Moderate, Upper, and Top. Across the standard and all-inclusive charts, that's 78 redemption levels.
On May 20, 136 properties shift category. 112 move up, 24 move down. At the top of the chart, peak-tier rates rise by as much as 67%. A Category 8 stay at the new Top tier costs 75,000 points instead of the 45,000 it cost at the old peak.
Most loyalty blogs will call this a devaluation and tell readers to lock in stays before the rollout. They're not wrong on the price. They're missing the structural change underneath.
A three-tier chart commits a program to predictable redemptions. Five tiers gives the program room to raise prices over time without rewriting anything. That's the move Marriott made in 2022, just before scrapping its chart entirely.
Where Marriott and Hilton already are
Marriott eliminated its chart in March 2022. The old caps held through year-end as a transition. By 2023, the program was fully dynamic. The Category 5 cap moved from 40,000 to 69,000 points in under two years — a 72% increase. Today, Bonvoy points are worth about 0.6 to 0.8 cents.
Hilton got there a different way. The pre-2022 cap on standard rooms was around 95,000 points. By March 2022 it was 120,000. By May 2025 it was 200,000. By September 2025 it was 250,000. Today, Hilton points are worth about 0.4 cents.
What I learned watching SPG die
Hyatt has been the holdout. Stick with me on this — I've lived it.
In the early 2010s, SPG was the program for serious business travelers. I spent a lot of years chasing it. The brands were the brands you actually wanted to stay at — W, Westin, St. Regis. The benefits were real. Confirmed suite upgrades on cash stays. Suite Night Awards. Welcome amenities that were actual food. Lifetime status that meant something. Every business traveler I knew was an SPG loyalist or trying to become one.
Program quality and competitive scale aren't the same thing.
I didn't see at the time that program quality and competitive scale aren't the same thing. Starwood couldn't match Marriott or Hilton or IHG on size, and in the second half of 2015 it started shopping itself. The Marriott deal closed in 2016. The programs combined in 2018. The chart was killed in 2022. By 2023, Bonvoy was fully dynamic. The decline happened slowly enough that you could keep telling yourself the magic was still there. Until you couldn't.
A lot of us in that cohort moved to Hyatt. Globalist was a real status tier with real benefits. Confirmed suite upgrades that actually got confirmed. Free breakfast that was actual food. A smaller portfolio of around 1,400 properties meant every hotel was there for a reason. Mattress runs were back on the table. And the chart was still the chart — eight categories, with peak and off-peak nudging the standard rate by a few thousand points either way.
That's what May 20 ends.
What's actually changing on May 20
Award chart structure · May 20, 2026 update
| Category | Same prices, new names | Newly added | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest | Low | Moderate | UpperNEW | TopNEW | |
| (was off-peak) | (was standard) | (was peak) | |||
| Cat 1 | |||||
| Cat 2 | |||||
| Cat 3 | |||||
| Cat 4 | |||||
| Cat 5 | |||||
| Cat 6 | |||||
| Cat 7 | |||||
| Cat 8 | 35,000 | 40,000 | 45,000 | 60,000 | 75,000 |
Cat 8 prices
Same prices, new names
- Lowestwas off-peak35,000
- Lowwas standard40,000
- Moderatewas peak45,000
Newly added
- UpperNEW60,000
- TopNEW75,000
The price increase is the noise. The chart shape is the signal. Five tiers gives Hyatt what Marriott and Hilton already have — a way to keep the chart looking transparent while raising prices over time.
Hyatt was direct about this. The rollout is gradual: a limited number of nights move into the Upper and Top tiers in 2026, with broader adoption in the years after. That's the part to read carefully. 75,000 isn't a peak. It's a floor for a tier that will cover more nights with each calendar update.
The loyalty-blog tell
Watch what doesn't get said in coverage of the rollout. Almost every major travel-points outlet earns money by acquiring Chase, Amex, and Bilt customers. Hyatt is a significant Chase cobrand partner on the World of Hyatt Visa. Bloggers have a structural reason to call this update "thoughtful" or "still the best of the three." Not to call it what it is: Hyatt moving toward where Marriott and Hilton already are.
Today's points-value math still favors Hyatt — about 1.7 cents per point versus Marriott's 0.7 and Hilton's 0.4. That math reflects the past three years. The chart shape will reflect the next five.
| Program | Cents per point (median) |
|---|---|
| ~1.7¢ |
 | ~0.7¢ |
 | ~0.4¢ |
The reframe
Hyatt isn't moving to where Bonvoy is today. It's moving to where Marriott was in early 2022 — a chart with eight categories, multi-tier pricing inside each one, and a stated path to widen the bands over time. The chart was eliminated by year-end. Whether Hyatt eventually follows the rest of the way is anyone's guess. The path is recognizable.
I've watched this movie before.
The point of having lived through SPG is to see Hyatt's version coming — and to plan for it before the magic is fully gone.
Agree or disagree?
Tell me what I missed, what you'd add, or where the argument breaks.