Hyatt All Inclusive Hotel Cancellation Fee
If you follow the site then you know I have been pretty excited about Hyatt’s massive expansion into the all inclusive realm lately. They added 52 new properties last week and have another 40 or so still on the way. These additional properties unlocked a 5th brand explorer free night opportunity and they even have some properties starting at the rock bottom price of 12,000 World of Hyatt points a night. Well, it doesn’t appear to be all sunshine and rainbows though. A couple of readers noticed there was a Hyatt all inclusive hotel cancellation fee on the newly added AMR properties. I figured this was just a glitch of the integration process but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
World Of Hyatt Hotel Cancellation Fees
Normally World of Hyatt hotels do not have a cancellation fee, especially on award nights. If anything, it will say that you need to cancel more than a fee days out to avoid any charges. There is nothing, at least if my memory serves me right, where a Hyatt hotel will charge you a fee if you cancel at ANY time. That appears to have changed.
As you can see here, the new Hyatt all inclusive resorts have a $50 cancellation fee baked in there. Even if you cancel 6 months out, they can charge you. If you wait until 3 days or less then you get hit with even more fees, charged for one night of your stay. I understand the close in fee, as many hotels have something similar, but a $50 fee all of time seems excessive. These terms are on both cash and award bookings.
I figured that this was just a hiccup in the onboarding process for these new additions. Surely Hyatt would be correcting this to match the standards of all of their other hotels. I reached out to our contact and received the following response:
The $50 cancellation fee for AMRC resorts will continue to stay as of now. But, given the integration is so recent this is subject to change once we hit our stride.
If I had to guess, I think this fee gets removed at some point in the future. Until then though, it is best to be aware of this and realize that you could need to pay if plans change.
How Is It Worded At Other Hyatt All Inclusive Hotels
For comparison, this is what the cancellation policy is at Zilara and Ziva all inclusive hotels. These are home grown Hyatt brands versus purchases.
A much more understandable 14 day cancellation policy. If you cancel more than two weeks out you don’t need to pay anything.
Hyatt All Inclusive Hotel Cancellation Fee – Final Thoughts
In this day and age flexibility is key. That was the main point I wanted to drive home on my $9,000 Maui trip booking. One of the few good things that came out of the pandemic was the travel industry becoming much more flexible. That is what surprises me about this Hyatt all inclusive hotel cancellation fee. Everyone else understands plans change rapidly these days and that cancelation fees are a big deterrent to people booking because of it. Having to pay $50 isn’t the end of the world, but I wish it would only come into play at 7 days out or something like that. You could book a hotel 6 months out, cancel a week later, and get charged for this. That doesn’t seem right. Hopefully this is something World of Hyatt can work out with the properties in the future.
We also have to wait and see how it is enforced. Will they waive it most of the time if the cancellation is far enough out? Let us know your experience as it happens in the comments.
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Well they are enforcing the fee. Tried to cancel 6 months in advance (booked a week ago thinking we would go to Mexico for Spring break), never had heard of a cancellation fee using points, not this far out, wouldn’t even waive it for Globalist. Also, had to book multiple reservations to get my dates and multiple rooms, so will have to pay $150 to cancel our reservations, just so I can rebook at a different Hyatt property during the same time.
[…] readers discovered that Hyatt has instituted an all-inclusive hotel cancellation fee for AMR properties. Most award nights at the World of Hyatt hotels do not charge a cancellation […]
I didnt read this when I kept changing my mind which all inclusive resort I wanted to stay at in Mexico. I booked with points and so far I haven’t seen a cancel charge.
Mark-Ziva & Zilara, as you may know, are owned and operated by Playa Resorts. Don’t they as the management company set the policies such as this? And wasn’t Hyatt’s takeover of the AMR properties only for the sales/marketing/distribution channel or are they handling property management as well? My biggest complaint with the AMR hotels when it was with Apple was the range of quality and service across their many hotels/brands/locations, all seemed to be run by different folks.
I am not sure who has final say on fees like that. I would imagine Hyatt has a lot of say since they don’t want hotels all over the place having different terms. But maybe they treat it like parking / resort fees where the hotels can adjust depending on where they are I guess.
[…] Yikes! Hyatt Has A Cancellation Fee On All Inclusive Booking […]
I bet they’re doing this to discourage speculative bookings and get a gauge of what actual demand will be like.
You’re probably right on that. Still, there’s something to be said for consistency and i bet a lot Hyatt regulars are going to be taken by surprise with this policy. Hopefully it will change.
I totally agree and hope it changes too!
My guess is that is how AMR had it set up and they weren’t gonna fight it for the time being until they can show they get more bookings etc. as a part of the Hyatt program.