One of the coolest features open to everyone is Hyatt’s Brand Explorer. I know some people who love staying at different brands just to earn extra rewards.

Hotel chains have a lot of brands these days

Each major hotel chain has dozens of brands under its umbrella.

• Marriott has 37 brands (including MGM)
• Hilton has 24 brands
• Hyatt has 32 brands (including The Venetian)
• IHG has 21 brands

With many of these chains, the need for so many brands is rooted in the chain’s desire to fit more hotels into the same city. Generally speaking, there are limits to how close together two hotels of the same brand can be. That’s why you won’t see two Westin hotels across the street from each other but you might see a Sheraton and a Westin. Hotel brands, then, are more of a product for hotel owners than they are for the guest, especially when brand standards don’t seem to be all that consistent these days.

Hyatt’s Brand Explorer turns it into a game

There have been periodic promotions by chains to promote staying at different brands. Marriott from time to time might throw in a few extra bonus points for staying at multiple brands during a promotion. They also track all the brands you stay in when you check out your personalized lifetime status details. But there’s not a consistent promotion for staying at different Marriott brands.

World of Hyatt is a bit different in this regard. Hyatt is the only hotel chain that offers up a regular promotion whereby staying in multiple brands will earn you an extra benefit. The premise of Hyatt’s Brand Explorer benefit is quite simple and drives engagement. Stay at five unique Hyatt brands and earn a Category 1-4 free night certificate. Since there are currently 32 different brands, you can earn up to six free night certificates. What a fun way to play B-I-N-G-O and earn some rewards while doing it.

What I like the most about this feature is that you don’t need status with the hotel chain to earn this benefit. This is open to everyone regardless of how often you visit a Hyatt hotel. Visit four unique brands in a year but then don’t visit a fifth brand until three years from now. This isn’t like earning status where everything must be done in a year; you can take your time visiting their brands. Once you visit that fifth brand and it posts to your account, the free night award should also be deposited immediately.

Even if you’re staying on a free night certificate (perhaps one earned from this Brand Explorer!) or on points, you’ll receive credit. It’s not just nights paid with cash that count.

Just keep in mind that these awards expire one year from the date they were issued. You won’t be able to extend the validity of the award, but at least you get a full year to decide what to do with it. I’m definitely glad these are not awards with six month expiration, unlike their Milestone Rewards.

How to check your progress with Hyatt’s Brand Explorer

It’s quite simple to check your progress on either Hyatt’s website or the app. On their website, just log into your account and you should see the “Brand Explorer” category on the left. Then along the top you’ll see the awards already earned and your current progress to earning the next.

You’ll also find a helpful checklist to make it easy to know which hotels to strive for next, if your goal is to get another award.

The app is similarly easy to find. Just go to the Account tab and scroll down until you see “Brand Explorer”. All the same detail will be available for you as on the web.

My personal view of Hyatt’s Brand Explorer benefit

Personally, I think it’s awesome to get a free night certificate for being loyal to Hyatt. That said, I don’t plan my stays around trying out different brands. It feels like many of the new acquisitions these days are all-inclusive resorts which don’t appeal to me. That will probably limit how many of these awards I earn from Hyatt’s Brand Explorer feature.

But I also know my travel patterns don’t match everyone else’s. If I were into all-inclusive resorts, I’d feel quite impressed that I could try many different all-inclusive resorts and earn some easy free night rewards on top.

I mentioned that one of the features I liked the most was that you don’t need status to participate. That means I can benefit from this by playing in “2P mode”. As a Globalist, I can pass along some of my Guest of Honor rewards to my “Player 2” (Jenn) when we need a room for the kids. Then when she stays in enough unique brands to earn a free night, she can pass the free night back to me so we can have Globalist benefits on that stay.

(This is needed because Hyatt doesn’t allow multiple certificates to be applied to the same reservation. You can’t have a Guest of Honor award on top of a Category 1-4 free night award. So passing the award back to my account would let us both benefit.)

The same rules apply when our parents tag along for a trip. Just a small way I try to maximize this awesome benefit.

How many of Hyatt’s Brand Explorer awards have you earned?

Suggested reading:

• Why I Like World of Hyatt
• Case in Point: The Way I Value a Hyatt Point
• Plenty of Aloha: Review of the Andaz Maui at Wailea