New Hyatt Pay My Way Option – What It Is And How It Works
After a trial run with some members, the Hyatt Pay My Way feature is available to everyone. Hyatt has been busy lately, with tons of new hotels and continuing promotions. They must’ve liked what they saw in the test phase, because the “Pay My Way” feature should now be available to all World of Hyatt members. Here’s a quick look at what it is and how you can use it on your next booking.
What Is Hyatt “Pay My Way”?
Hyatt’s “Pay My Way” feature allows you to combine multiple types of payments in one booking. You can use a combination of free night certificates, points, cash, upgrades, etc. all in one booking. This eliminates the need for making multiple end-to-end bookings because you need a “free night certificate” booking which previously couldn’t be combined with other types of bookings.
How Does “Pay My Way” Work?
“Pay My Way” won’t work on all types of cash rates. If you have a negotiated rate, such as a group rate or corporate rate through your work, this option isn’t available. It won’t work with things like “Work From Hyatt” either.
Here are the rules for “Pay My Way” and how to make it work:
- Member must be signed into their account
- Choose a length of stay greater than one night
- Room quantity equals 1
- Choose a certain eligible room type / rate plan combination
- This includes the Member Discount family of rates and RACK rates
- Also includes Room Types associated with Points and Points + Cash
See It In Action – A Booking Example
Sounds good, but I’m a “see it in action” type of guy. Here’s a sample booking to see how it works.
I intentionally chose something I thought would be a busy weekend: 4th of July weekend in Philadelphia.
- Sign into your World of Hyatt account and search for a hotel as you normally would.
- Make sure to search for cash rates, not points.
3. Under “Book Now” you see the ‘Use Pay My Way’ option. Notice that this is only available on the “Member Rate” section and not the cheaper offers / promotions.
4. You will now see a breakdown of options for each night.
5. Because my wife has points & free night certificates available in her account, all options become available.
Initial Reactions
I find the new Hyatt “Pay My Way” settings really easy to use, once I figured out where it was. It’s only available on the Member Rate section and not promotions or discounts, such as advanced payment rates.
No matter how you pay, you will still earn points and status credits as normal. This option should be available to all World of Hyatt members now, and you need to be signed into your account when booking to see this option.
The ability to add suite upgrades or club lounge upgrades, which you can earn through World of Hyatt’s milestone rewards, is not included yet. You may need to book online and then to call add these manually.
Final Thoughts
It’s always great to see hotel programs increasing flexibility. I’ve had many stays with Hyatt where I had multiple confirmation numbers. That’s because I booked a cash promotion one night, used points & cash another night, and then a free night certificate on the last night. Situations like these are made simpler now with Hyatt’s Pay My Way booking feature. The down side is that it is only available on more expensive rates, so you can’t use this if you want the advanced purchase rates available to members on many bookings. If you want to save cash on those rates, you might still need separate bookings.
Have you used “Pay My Way”? What are your thoughts? Let us know.
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.
It seems that the Pay My Way option only works for up to a week. Not a huge deal but good to know.
Christian – you mean like 1 week booking/7 nights, and it doesn’t work if you have more nights?
[…] Update 4/3/21: Now been expanded to all members. Hat tip to MtM […]
[…] Update 4/3/21: Now been expanded to all members. Hat tip to MtM […]
I have free nights and points and I don’t see an option to use both and/or with cash when trying to book three nights. It just says I don’t have enough points to cover three nights. How exactly do you select free night certificate for one night, cash and points for second night, and cash for third night, or is this not possible?
P – you have to start from the cash booking part, not from the points side. Search for a cash rate and choose the “member rate” tab. Start there. Does that help?
I believe I read somewhere on FT that it ain’t possible to add club access awards or TSUs to stays booked using pay my way (not even manually through the call center). Haven’t had the opportunity to test this myself so take this FWIW.
John – interesting. I haven’t heard that, but I do know you can’t attach suite upgrades through the website when doing this. You have to call.
Honestly, it’s essentially useless since it’s only on “Member rate” and above. Who wouldn’t click the one of two tabs to the left in your example to get a better rate? I don’t know why the function wouldn’t be available on all rate options.
That’s the weird part, I agree. However, if you aren’t paying cash at all, then that part wouldn’t matter. You’d be able to combine points + free night certs, which you couldn’t previously do. It didn’t get us to the goal line, but it’s progress.
Valid premise.
I’m not sure if we can combine award nights, certificates, and paid nights at an advance purchase rate into one booking where we can use confirmed suite upgrades. If it’s necessary to pay a few bucks more to qualify for the confirmed suite, that still sounds pretty good to me.
I just hope they do not eventually go to a Hilton or Southwest sliding-scale, where there is dynamic point pricing on every transaction. When every point has an exact cash value, you lose any opportunity to get a good deal using points. I still can’t understand why Hilton fans haven’t figured this out yet.
Agreed!
That is really nice! Thanks for spelling it out!
Glad to help!