World of Hyatt and Air Canada Aeroplan have teamed up to give members a slew of new benefits, but not all are worthwhile.

A new partnership for World of Hyatt and Air Canada Aeroplan

On July 15, 2026, both World of Hyatt and Air Canada Aeroplan announced a new partnership for members with opportunities for members of each program. These opportunities include:

• World of Hyatt members
  • Redeem 50,000 Hyatt points for a 30,000 award flight with Aeroplan, good for flights on Air Canada and partners.
  • Convert Hyatt points into Aeroplan points at a rate of 2:1. There is a minimum of 5,000 Hyatt points per transaction.
  • Elite members (Discoverist, Explorist, and Globalist) receive an Air Canada flight credit as follows:
    • $20 CAD per passenger for roundtrip bookings, or
    • $10 CAD per passenger for one-way bookings.
  • Explorist and Globalist members will receive status challenges with Aeroplan, available later in 2026.
    
• Aeroplan members
  • Earn 500 Aeroplan points per eligible stay at Hyatt hotels instead of World of Hyatt points.
  • Redeem Aeroplan points for free night awards at Hyatt at the following rates:
    • 25,000 Aeroplan points for a Hyatt Category 1-4 award, or
    • 75,000 Aeroplan points for a Hyatt Category 1-7 award.
  • Aeroplan elite members can convert Aeroplan points into Hyatt points at a rate of 2:1. There is a minimum of 500 Aeroplan points per transaction and a maximum of 250,000 Aeroplan points per week.
  • Aeroplan elite members and premium Aeroplan cardholders can enroll in a Hyatt status challenge that can earn the following Hyatt statuses:
    • Discoverist status after staying 4 nights in 90 days
    • Explorist status after staying 10 nights in 90 days
    • Globalist status after staying 20 nights in 90 days
  • Aeroplan cardmembers get extra benefits when staying at Hyatt hotels
    • Premium cardmembers
      • Earn 2 Aeroplan points per $1 CAD spent at Hyatt hotels
      • Earn 2 World of Hyatt points per $1 CAD spent at Hyatt hotels
      • Get complimentary Discoverist status
      • Two attempts annually for Hyatt status challenges
      • Get 5 elite night credits with Hyatt
    • Core cardmembers
      • Earn 1.5 Aeroplan points per $1 CAD spent at Hyatt hotels
      • Earn 1 World of Hyatt point per $1 CAD spent at Hyatt hotels

Earning these benefits requires linking your World of Hyatt and Aeroplan memberships. You’ll be able to do that here at this link.

The good and bad of the partnership benefits

Let’s spend a moment to briefly discuss each of the benefits and identify if they might be useful.

World of Hyatt member benefits

It might seem like World of Hyatt members get a little bit of a short draw, but that’s not really a surprise. There are currently only 41 Hyatt hotels in all of Canada. Hyatt simply has little presence in Canada, so any attempt to woo Aeroplan members seems deliberate to try to get a bigger following there. So with that in mind…

Redeem 50,000 Hyatt points for a 30,000 award flight with Aeroplan, good for flights on Air Canada and partners.

This depends on your perspective. From the standpoint of “hey, it’s better than the 2:1 transfer ratio”, you’d be correct. Normally, 25,000 Hyatt points only give you 25,000 Aeroplan points, so this is marginally better.

But this isn’t attractive to anyone with bank points in the United States. American Express, Bilt, Capital One, Chase, and Rove all give you Air Canada points at a 1:1 ratio. You’re better off using 30,000 of those points to get you 30,000 of Aeroplan points.

Thus, this doesn’t move the needle.

Convert Hyatt points into Aeroplan points at a rate of 2:1. There is a minimum of 5,000 Hyatt points per transaction.

See the section above–you can do better than this if you’re starting with bank points.

But what if you have too many Hyatt points? If you’re looking for any excuse to get out of Hyatt’s loyalty program, this gives an avenue but it’s more of a desperation “fire sale” type of move.

Elite members (Discoverist, Explorist, and Globalist) receive an Air Canada flight credit

This gets you $20 CAD off an Air Canada roundtrip flight (roughly $14 US), or $10 CAD ($7 US) off a one-way flight. You can only use this benefit once per year. While that might not sound all that interesting, it does at least apply for each passenger on the same booking.

The terms state that it only applies to cash fares booked on Air Canada’s website where Air Canada is the operating carrier. You also don’t get it if you book via a travel agency or even through Air Canada Vacations. However, you can apparently transfer it to someone else and the person who earned the credit doesn’t need to fly.

There are worse features, but the prospect of Hyatt elites getting something for free in exchange for nothing makes this decent. The fact that it applies to everyone on the same reservation makes this a bit better.

Explorist and Globalist members will receive status challenges with Aeroplan

Having access to status challenges is never a bad thing. You never know when you might need status when flying on a Star Alliance carrier if you don’t already have status. That said, there are no terms available to understand what this exactly means because the benefit isn’t available until “Fall 2026”. We’ll have to reserve judgment on this one until we learn more.

Air Canada Aeroplan member benefits

As noted above, the real play here is for Hyatt to get more of a foothold in the Canadian market, thus explaining the lopsided benefits in favor of Air Canada.

Earn 500 Aeroplan points per eligible stay at Hyatt hotels instead of World of Hyatt points

This isn’t likely to be useful unless the Aeroplan member has absolutely zero need for Hyatt points. You’d have to find a dirt-cheap rate ($50 or cheaper) to have this be useful. But if you were thinking of gaming this, would you really want to manage jumping back and forth between earning styles after each stay? The risk of getting this wrong seems too high for the squeeze. Even though Hyatt points lost some value with the devaluation, they’re not so bad that we’d want to switch away from them… yet.

Redeem Aeroplan points for free night awards at Hyatt

With this benefit, Aeroplan members can redeem 25,000 points for a Category 1-4 free night award or 75,000 points for a Category 1-7 award.

Please don’t do this.

The max rate for a Category 4 hotel under Hyatt’s program is 25,000 Hyatt points. The max rate for a Category 7 hotel is 55,000 Hyatt points. While you could make some argument about the Category 1-4 free night award, it’s not that compelling. You’d have to be staying at the “top” rate in a Category 4 hotel just to “breakeven” with how many Hyatt points you’d otherwise spend. If it’s anything less, you might have overpaid.

For the Category 7 hotel, you’d seemingly do better just redeeming Hyatt points. In fact, you could take those 75,000 Aeroplan points, convert them to Hyatt points at a 2:1 ratio (becoming 37,500 Hyatt points), and potentially have change leftover if redeeming for a median Category 7 hotel stay (35,000 points). I don’t see the point of the Category 1-7 certificate at all.

Aeroplan elite members can convert Aeroplan points into Hyatt points at a rate of 2:1

Similar to what Hyatt members get, Aeroplan elite members can share in the poor transfer rate. Programs are afraid of making transfers helpful to members where they might find an arbitrage opportunity, so instead you’re stuck with poor transfer rates. We wouldn’t consider this one at all.

Not sure why there’s the extra restriction here on needing to be an elite member with Aeroplan to take advantage. Perhaps they thought this was too good of an offer for the average member.

Aeroplan elite members and premium Aeroplan cardholders can enroll in a Hyatt status challenge

Having access to status challenges is helpful, as we said above in the Hyatt section. What’s most interesting here is that Aeroplan elite members and premium cardholders can get the challenge annually. With other Hyatt status challenges, the offer was typically once every other year.

If you successfully meet the terms of the challenge, you’ll get status the rest of that calendar year, all of the following calendar year, and then for two months in the year after that. Thus, the minimum amount of status you’ll get is 14 months, but if you max this out, you could potentially get it for about 25 months. Not bad, right?

Just remember this is the “Globalist lite” version. You’ll get the status but not the Category 1-7 free night certificate, suite upgrade awards, Guest of Honor awards, or the My Hyatt Concierge that typically comes with reaching 60 nights per year.

Aeroplan cardmembers get extra benefits when staying at Hyatt hotels

Here is the real thing that Hyatt wants. Hyatt has no credit card up in Canada and thus no way to connect with members aside from just stays in hotels. The Canadian credit card market might not be as lucrative as the US market, but it wants a presence. Rather than go through the pain of partnering with a bank to develop its own card, it’s instead taking the cheaper route and jumping onto Aeroplan’s card.

This isn’t the thing you typically see, but it seems like Hyatt is looking for a solution in markets where it has little presence. That’s better than Carnival Rewards! Carnival just flat out completely forgot about every market except the US market when it redesigned its program. Perhaps they need to borrow some ideas.

This doesn’t impact any of their existing partnerships

Both Air Canada and Hyatt have other partners. This tie-up between the two travel companies doesn’t change anything with other partnerships.

For Air Canada, it already has a partnership with Marriott Bonvoy. Most prominently, a Titanium or Ambassador Elite member can get complimentary Aeroplan 25K elite status. That pathway still exists, meaning it’s possible to be a Marriott elite and then alchemize your way into Hyatt status challenges. The path going in the opposite direction isn’t likely to be as useful as you’d need Aeroplan 50K elite status just to earn Marriott Gold Elite status (not very useful).

For Hyatt, it already has an airline partner in American Airlines. This sometimes offers the opportunity for Hyatt Globalist members to get temporary AA status. When that happens, it’s possible a Aeroplan elite member can get a status challenge from Hyatt, complete it, and then possibly get AA status. The same might be true going in the opposite direction, but it’s hard to assess if it’s worth it until we know the details of what the Hyatt to Aeroplan status challenge looks like.

What do you think about the news?