Hyatt “Guest of Honor” Award Bookings: Who Gets Credit
Hyatt recently updated their elite status program, World of Hyatt, to allow for elite stay credits on award nights. Recently one of our team members reached out to Hyatt’s Twitter Concierge for clarification on how Hyatt’s recent policy changes would affect World of Hyatt bookings. Specifically we where curious who gets the credit when a “Guest of Honor” booking is made by an elite member for someone else since award bookings now count towards status. This allows the member with status to pass along the perks of their status for another Hyatt member.
As it turns out, there is some confusion surrounding the new policies. The Hyatt Twitter rep gave our team member erroneous information. They said that no one gets the credit, this is incorrect. I’ve included screen shots of the exchange below.
So, What’s the Correct Answer?
So, What’s the Correct Answer?Shawn reached out to a corporate rep who was able to give us the correct answer. “A transferred Award Night, including Guest of Honor reservations, will count as a Qualifying Night for the member who stays if a World of Hyatt account is added.” Essentially this means that the guest, or recipient of the transferred award, will get the stay credit on their World of Hyatt account. As long as their World of Hyatt account number is on the reservation. You can usually add in the Guest of Honor’s Hyatt number at the time of booking or they can add it once they get to the hotel. Make sure they double check before checking out if the Guest of Honor wants the stay credit.
Conclusion
World of Hyatt’s change allowing members to get Elite status credit for award stays is a great step in the right direction. With this change the recipient of Guest of Honor bookings now receives credit. This is an improvement from the previous policy of neither party getting stay credits. This is a great perk that allows lower tier World of Hyatt members to take advantage of someone else’s status. Room upgrades and lounge access is a nice perk that you can give to a friend or family member.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Hyatt Twitter team let me down. I recently messaged them about an issue I was having at Baha Mar in Bahamas and they told me I could use any of the Ziva restaurants if I preferred. Unfortunately, Ziva is in Cancun. I wish they checked their information before putting it out there. Most people who don’t travel hack for a living could rely on this erroneous info to their detriment. Thankfully, the Miles to Memories team is here to help and hopefully avoid any such issues. Just remember to always get confirmation if an answer is unclear or you’re unsure that you were given correct info.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
[…] Who Gets Stay Credit for Hyatt “Guest of Honor” Bookings? […]
Pdxdealsguy – the article says that the guest who is staying will get the credit. Great. It also says that they “will get the stay credit on their World of Hyatt account. As long as their World of Hyatt account number is on the reservation. Since their Hyatt account number is needed to make the Guest of Honor booking this shouldn’t be a problem”
I’m saying that their hyatt account number is absolutely not required. So, if they want to get stay credit they should make sure their number is on the reservation when they check in.
I understand everything in the m2m article just fine. I’m correcting their point that a WOH number is required for the recipient of the reward. It’s not.
I will correct it. In my experience they asked for the person’s staying Hyatt number to put it but I guess that may not always be the case. Thanks!
I have made the adjustment – thanks again!
No problem. It seems to be fairly inconsistent depending upon the rep who handles your call (or *possibly* a change in policy, but I’m going to go with inconsistent). The first GoH I did they seemed like they needed the receiver’s number. The two I’ve done lately, they didn’t ask for it, in fact, most recent one I did, they advised me not to add it and have the receiver provide it at checkin.
Who knows what the official policy is, or even if there is one.
t – I think you might be confused about what Guest of Hyatt is. GoH is a program where a Globalist member is able to book a room using the OWN POINTS for another person, and that person gets most of the Globalists benefits during their stay. So in this scenario, the Globalist member making the booking (for another person) is NOT expected to be at the property.
Jamie & Christian – I believe you are correct that the person a Globalist is booking FOR (using GoH) does not necessarily need to have a WoH number (don’t need to be a member). But they might as well be. What Miles to Memories has been told by Hyatt is that the person staying on the GoH reservation is the only person who will get credit for the “nights” on the award stay (definitely not the Globalist member who books the GoH room with their points).
N – Thanks for the tip on using Hyatt Facebook team. I have found the quality of service from the Twitter team to have gone downhill recently. Although, granted, this has been a relatively small sample size. So perhaps I’ve just been unlucky. But I definitely find it frustrating that you might find yourself interacting with multiple (sometimes 4 or 5!) Twitter reps (as identified by their initials) during a back-and-forth conversation about one particular issue or booking. In my opinion, this may be efficient for Hyatt, but not a customer friendly experience.
The Hyatt Facebook has been awesome for me. Much more than the Twitter. And I made a Guest of Honor res with my points for my mom, and the Hyatt Facebook guys told me that my mom will get the stay credit, not me.
You definitely do NOT need to add the recipient’s WOH number to a GoH booking. In fact, I’ve even once been advised not to add it until the person arrived at the hotel, rather than when I make the booking.
I didn’t want to add the guest’s WOH# but I was recently warned that certain hotels may give the check in person a hard time if the person who booked the award stay doesn’t show up to check in. I didn’t want my wife to have to deal with any issue when she goes to check in. I guess I don’t really understand how the GoH benefit works
I’ve made multiple GoH bookings for people that didn’t even have a Hyatt number.
Any idea if this can be done if the person booked the hotel through Travelocity instead of direct?
Hotels will not usually extend any elite benefits if not booked direct. And Guest of Honor bookings are only available when booking direct.
I recently had to make an award booking reservation for my wife using my account since only I have enough points via UR transfer. I called in to Hyatt concierge to make sure that my wife will be able to check in before I arrive and they were able to change the reservation name to under her name. They didn’t ask for her Hyatt account number. I assume this means I still get credit for the stay? For some reason, the rep was not able to just add her to my reservation as a guest…
Just make sure that you add your WOH number at check-in or anytime before you leave. They’re usually good about that.