Hyatt has just announced new award pricing for its World of Hyatt program, including raising points prices and expanding the number of tiers to 5.

Updated May 19, 2026. This is the last day to get in any bookings before both the devaluation and hotel category changes hit. Rates are likely to go up tomorrow (and if they go down, you’ll be automatically refunded the difference).

World of Hyatt will have 5 redemption levels in May 2026

Coming in May 20, 2026, Hyatt will revamp its World of Hyatt loyalty program. The program currently has Off-Peak, Standard, and Peak pricing at the following rates:

Starting in May 2026, there will continue to be 8 award categories but there will now be more variance in rates. A total of 5 levels of pricing will emerge: Lowest, Low, Moderate, Upper, and Top.

Can you say “ouch”? Let’s go through a few quick thoughts on the new tables.

The “moderate” award pricing level is going up

Don’t let it get lost in the shuffle of everything that’s going on. The middle column of the old and new ranges is the easiest way to say what average rates are for each range. In the old award chart, you could more easily make that claim, since the middle column was the exact average of peak and off-peak pricing. In the new award chart, that’s no longer the case. But let’s for a moment still look at the central rate in each category. Notice it going up?

• Category 1 “Standard” to “Moderate” pricing: 5,000 to 6,000 (20% increase)
• Category 2: 8,000 to 10,000 (25% increase)
• Category 3: 12,000 to 15,000 (25% increase)
• Category 4: 15,000 to 20,000 (33% increase)
• Category 5: 20,000 to 25,000 (25% increase)
• Category 6: 25,000 to 30,000 (20% increase)
• Category 7: 30,000 to 35,000 (17% increase)
• Category 8: 40,000 to 55,000 (38% increase)

Across the board, it will cost you significantly more points to book your award nights. In particular, Category 4 and 8 hotels are getting hammered with the pricing changes, with both exceeding 30% increases. Hyatt last touched these award rates in 2021, so you could argue that it’s time to adjust, but I could just as easily counter by saying they’ve been moving hotels up and down into other categories all along based on particular characteristics of each hotel. They tinkered with this all along anyways, so it seems unfair to give them a pass. This isn’t good, any way you slice it.

The five tiers within each category is just confusing

Let’s start by saying it seems intentional that the Lowest category is more or less in line with pricing under the prior Off-Peak category. It’s a way for Hyatt to save face and argue they’re not raising prices on X number of nights per year. What “X” is will be anyone’s guess.

Next, let’s also just point out that the Top category is more or less the same as the Moderate pricing of one category above it. This is how Hyatt can stretch the pricing of one room up a full category above it without saying the hotel changed categories. Want to know what the hotel pricing for a Category 9 will look like when it eventually comes out? I’d wager dollars to donuts the Moderate pricing for that tier will be at 75,000 points/night.

Is there any consolation with limiting a certain number of nights to the Top category? No, Hyatt isn’t giving any assurances of that. Just their word that they recognize the value of their points. Remember when they said they weren’t going to move hotels into the ultra-exclusive Category 8 and that it was exclusive to just a couple of one-off properties? Well, there are over 30 hotels in that category now, including two Hyatt Centric properties. Very exclusive, indeed.

This is Hyatt’s attempt at avoiding full on moving to a revenue-based metric for nights. Of course, that’s what the original move to Off-Peak and Peak pricing attempted to do in the first place. Still, it’s good they didn’t go all the way there and implement something as confusing as Marriott’s or Hilton’s pricing.

Hyatt pricing is changing for all rooms, not just standard awards

The above charts are just for their standard rooms. World of Hyatt has redemptions available for just about everything: club rooms, standard suites, premium suites, all-inclusive resorts, extra people staying in your rooms at all-inclusive resorts, and Miraval Resorts.

Each and every single one of those award charts is changing to this new system. The only exceptions would be Mr. & Mrs. Smith properties and The Venetian in Las Vegas as those properties are already fully revenue-based redemptions.

Want to know what the new highest-priced award rate will be at a Hyatt property that has an award chart? That would be a premium suite at a Miraval property. The old award chart would have put it at 137,000 Hyatt points per night. What would the new chart say? How about a massive 160,000 Hyatt points per night? Even if you considered Hyatt points at just 1 cent each, that’s like spending $1,600 of your hard-earned cash on just one night’s sleep. If you value the points closer to 1.5 cents each, that’s $2,400 for the night. At 2 cents each, that’s the equivalent of $3,200 for renting a bed for a night.

Sure, it’s a premium suite. But what happened to the World of Hyatt award program? It used to be much easier to find great award pricing pretty much everywhere.

Silver lining: suite pricing isn’t rising by quite as much as standard rooms

We’ll pick on standard suite pricing, but the same dynamic appears for premium suite pricing as well. The massive inflation isn’t quite as bad for suites as they are for standard rooms. Here is the old award chart for standard suites:

And here is the updated pricing starting May 2026:

If we again as a proxy take a look at how the old Standard compares to the new Moderate, we’ll see the changes are a bit more moderate:

• Category 1 “Standard” to “Moderate” suite pricing: 8,000 to 9,000 (13% increase)
• Category 2: 13,000 to 15,000 (15% increase)
• Category 3: 20,000 to 23,000 (15% increase)
• Category 4: 24,000 to 29,000 (21% increase)
• Category 5: 32,000 to 37,000 (16% increase)
• Category 6: 40,000 to 45,000 (13% increase)
• Category 7: 48,000 to 53,000 (10% increase)
• Category 8: 61,000 to 76,000 (25% increase)

Again, Categories 4 and 8 take more of the impact compared to the others. But I’d wager the new rates would be easier to swallow if the percent changes to the standard award nights followed the percent increases to standard suites. I can get behind a 15% change being a modest adjustment but a 25+% change all at once is rough.

Upgrades continue to be the sweet spot of the program

Want to book a better room than standard and not pay the full points price? We’ve done this before where you pay cash for a base room and then upgrade to a better one using a small number of points per night. For premium suites, this is definitely the way to go:

• Club rooms: 3,000 points/night
• Suite upgrades: 6,000 points/night
• Premium suite upgrades: 9,000 points/night

Even with points getting devalued left and right elsewhere in the program, the fact that this is untouched makes it tolerable. Granted, these upgrades aren’t available each and every night, but when they are, we’ve considered booking them.

The value of Hyatt points will drop

We’ve done an analysis and determined we could easily get 2 cents/point when using our Hyatt points at their hotels. However, we feel confident the value of their points will drop when we refresh our analysis. Why?

For one, a program can’t rob customers of 25% value and not have any impact on the points currency. Remember, all points have a value. If the same hotel once cost you 20,000 points/night and it now becomes 25,000 points/night, you’ll need to use 25% more points for the same hotel night. It’s not like the cash price of the night will also jump 25% at the same time. Thus, simple economics dictate the value of the points will go down significantly.

On top of that, the more tiers they have within each category, the harder it will be to get outsized value for your points. Our valuation relied upon being selective with our points and using them when the math worked in our favor. Let’s say you had to stay two nights at a hotel. One night is priced at $300 and the other at $500. Let’s say it was a Category 5 hotel under the old chart, and the first night was Standard (20,000 points/night) and the other Peak (23,000). In this scenario, you might want to save your points on the first night and only use points for the second because you get a greater value doing so.

But those same prices under the new system? The award nights might move to Moderate (25,000) and Top (35,000). No longer could you get as good of a deal, so you might not do either on points. However, this view conflates the rising award price with the expansion of tiers. For the sake of argument, since Category 5 is going up by 25%, let’s artificially lower the price by 25% for these tiers. That gets us to a hypothetical Moderate adjusted for inflation (20,000) and a Top adjusted for inflation (28,000). Here, this still shows you won’t get the savings we historically want at that peak night (1.8 cents/point).

How much will our valuation drop? We will have to wait to see exactly how painful it will be. Expect it to not be pretty.

Other changes to World of Hyatt are coming too

Points sharing will be available online

Sharing points between World of Hyatt members has long been free and (fairly) easy to do. The only complication is that it must be done via an antiquated process. You’d have to indicate the sender’s and receiver’s Hyatt numbers and other personal details (like residential address) on the form, and also gather signatures. Those signatures couldn’t be electronic–they had long wanted hand-written signatures by both parties. While it was a free process, it’s a bit cumbersome to do especially if you don’t live near the other person.

In reality, the difficulty in the process helped reduce the likelihood of fraud.

Presumably in an attempt to free up customer service, Hyatt is moving to online functionality. Hopefully, it will remain free to transfer points, but we’ll need to see if there are any limits involved (again as a safety measure against fraud).

Earlier access to award nights for elite members and cardholders

Most, but not all, hotels open up award availability to all members at around 12 months out. That might seem like it gives you enough time to book, but sadly it can be a challenge. Some of the best hotels sell out what seems like almost immediately. Hyatt recognizes that issue and is planning to help certain customers out. If you have a Hyatt co-brand credit card or are an Explorist or Globalist member, you can book award nights an extra month out.

This is really only going to help you if you book that far out anyways. If you are someone who likes to think about travel 6 months in advance, having an extra month to book isn’t going to impact you at all. But for those who want to book a place like the Alila Ventana Big Sur, having a leg up on others will help. Personally, I would have preferred co-brand credit card holders not also get the benefit and restrict it to elites only. But these days the world moves on credit card spend…

Closing thoughts on this change from World of Hyatt

I might be critical of the specifics of the program, but I do want to recognize that it’s good that Hyatt maintains award charts. If not, we’d be flying in the dark like we are with the incredible number of surprise devaluations like we experience with Hilton. No member wants that–to wake up and realize that suddenly your portfolio of points lost substantial value. Maintaining an award chart (or 20) keeps Hyatt honest. And that’s a good thing we need to recognize.

On the flip side, the World of Hyatt program is becoming complicated. There are now five tiers of pricing across each of the award charts. The elevator pitch to promote the program is now gone. How can someone digest all the various award charts and upgrades and special rooms and all-inclusive pricing options at once? All they can comfortably say is at least we’re not Hilton. Hyatt needs to be more than just that as a baseline because the footprint of hotels is so much smaller.

You can stumble into a Marriott, Hilton, or IHG hotel pretty easily in any big city. But a Hyatt? Though the chain continues to grow and acquire others, it’s still hard to find a hotel where you want to be in the city. As a result, they need a value proposition to have customers take notice. That’s why the program has been more rewarding historically. Perhaps now that they’ve grown some, they can finally afford to be less rewarding to loyal customers. And thus the large devaluation we’re seeing.

Hyatt wants these rates to offer long-term stability for the program, but I feel like a similar message happened when they moved to Off-Peak and Peak pricing in the first place. In that sense, I view these changes as sticking around for about 5 years until Hyatt decides they want to do something more drastic. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds. The first part of that is finding out exactly how frequent the Top tier pricing will show up.

Lock in your future award stays now so you don’t pay the higher prices that are on the way!

What are your thoughts on the Hyatt devaluation of 2026?

Suggested reading:

• Hyatt Guest of Honor: How It Works & What to Know
• Excellent Value for Globalists: A Review of Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach
• Hyatt’s Brand Explorer: A Fun Way to Engage with Hotels