Category: Hyatt

Chase Hyatt Visa two free nights & $50 credit & 1st year free

11/16/2013

Chase has recently waived the annual fee on the Hyatt Visa for the 1st year - a saving of $75 for you. The standard signup bonus is still two free nights as always. You need to spend $1,000 within 3 months to earn the free nights. However, bad news for current Platinum and Diamond members - they don't get special signup benefits as they used to. Platinum members used to get two free nights plus two suite upgrades on paid stays while Diamond members used to get two free nights confirmed in a suite.

If you go to Hyatt.com and try to make a booking, before you fill in guest information, you will see a little picture suggesting that you will receive a $50 statement credit after the 1st use of the card. Note that you don't actually need to complete any reservation - just click on the "LEARN MORE AND APPLY INSTANTLY" button and proceed with your credit card application. In the next step you do need to enter your Hyatt account number to continue.

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Chase Ink Bold and Ink Plus back to 50,000 points each & 1st year free

6/27/2013

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The temporary 60K offers have expired. Now Ink Bold and Ink Plus are back to 50,000 points. However, the spending requirement remains $5,000 (within 3 months), lower than the $10,000 requirement which has been around for a while. As always, the $95 annual fee is waived for the 1st year. Again since these two cards are considered two different products, you may get bonus for both.

Ink Bold 50K landing page
Ink Plus 50K landing page

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[GONE] Chase Ink Plus and Ink Bold up signup bonus to 60,000 points each (120,000 points in total) & 1st year free

6/16/2013

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[All four offers have expired]

For the Small Business Week (June 16 - June 22, 2013), Chase temporarily increases signup bonuses for its Ink Plus credit card and Ink Bold charge card from 50,000 points to 60,000 points each. Since they are considered two different products, if you sign up and get approved for both, you may earn 120,000 points in total. Also for each card, the spending requirement to get 60,000 points has been reduced from $10,000 to $5,000 within 3 months! Note that two other Ink cards - Ink Cash and Ink Classic will have a temporary 5,000 points bump each.

Landing page for all four Ink Business Cards
Application page for Ink Plus 60,000 points
Application page for Ink Bold 60,000 points

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The impact of 2013 hotel points devaluation on your credit card strategy

3/1/2013

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To frequent flyers/guests, 2013 is a bad year for hotel loyalty programs since several programs are having some major devaluation. You may have noticed that we seldom talk about how much we value miles and points since it is highly personal and subjective. However, this kind of major devaluation certainly has major negative impact on the hotel credit cards and we feel that we need to give some analysis here. We will go over the several hotel loyalty programs in this post.

Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG): The reason why our Top Lister Amex SPG credit card is considered as one of the best travel credit cards for many years is because the value and flexibility of Starpoints. One Starpoint is generally considered to hold a value of 2~3 cents, no matter if you redeem for SPG hotels or transfer them into miles of 30 airline partners. While the transfer feature remains untouched, starting March 5, 2013, SPG will change one of its best redemption options - Cash & Points, representing an increase of 20-25% in cost. This makes it much less attractive to redeem Starpoints for hotels. For one thing, while SPG does have some gorgeous high-end properties, redeeming Starpoints toward its Category 6 or 7 hotels has been not that attractive to start with due to the fact that the so-call all-suite or all-villa properties charge double points or more. For instance, the St. Regis Bora Bora which is a Category 7 all-villa property has a BAR starting around $1,100 USD and an award night costs a whooping 120,000 to 140,000 points while a standard Category 7 hotel costs 30,000-35,000 points. The current Cash & Points option for Category 1~5 hotels presents great value even with restrictions (capacity control) and that is how most savvy travelers redeem Starpoints if they want to stay at SPG hotels, but this year it will change. On top of that, SPG also did the annual adjust of the hotel categories - less than 50 properties will go down while more than 200 will go up in category. Thus while you may still find some good value in redeeming points for hotels (such as low-end properties in general and some particular hotels), we suggest using Starpoints mainly for airline miles transfer which still presents huge value. For the transfer feature alone, we still regard highly of Amex SPG Card.
Hilton HHonors: One Hilton point is generally considered less than 1 cent and we currently value one point at around 0.7 cent. Some of the most valuable properties for point redemption have been Conrad Maldives, Conrad Koh Samui, Hilton Bora Bora Nui, Hilton Seychelles Northolme, and Hilton Seychelles Labriz. However starting March 28, 2013, Hilton will have a revamped category chart, expanding from 7 categories to 10 categories. These current Category 7 hotels which cost 50,000 points per night will become Category 10 hotels which will cost 95,000 points per night (a 90% increase!). This literally trashes the value of the program. For people who want to build Hilton points toward these aspirational destinations, we used to recommend Amex Hilton/Surpass or Citi Hilton Reserve Visa for general spending since you earn 3 points per dollar spent and you also have great potential to beat our Cashback benchmark Fidelity Amex. Now we need to re-evaluate this strategy. As for signup bonus, if the Amex's offer remains the same as now - 60,000 points, it is not even going to be enough to cover one night at these properties. Ironically, Citi Hilton Reserve Visa's signup bonus, two weekend nights (Friday-Sunday), suddenly becomes very attractive by comparison.
Marriott Rewards and Ritz-Carlton Rewards: One Marriott/Ritz-Carlton point is generally considered less than 1 cent and we currently value one point at 0.8 cent. Now Marriott has 8 categories ranging from 7,500 to 40,000 points per night, and Ritz-Carlton has 5 tiers ranging from 30,000 to 70,000 points per night. Starting May 16, 2013, Marriott will add a new Category 9 which requires 45,000 points a night and 36% of its hotels will go up in category/tier while only 1% will go down in category/tier. Even though it is not near as bad as Hilton's destructive change, it still represents major damage. Top-category Marriott hotels are not in the same league as the forward mentioned top-category Hilton properties or Park Hyatt which we will cover later, thus they were never the most valuable in Marriott Rewards. Marriott Rewards' strength lies in those valuable properties throughout all categories, but many of these will cost 5,000 points more after May 16. Top-tier Ritz-Carlton properties have already required a substantial 70,000 points and some lower-tier properties actually represent better value. However, even Marriott does not change Ritz-Carlton Rewards tier structure, 30% (23/77) of Ritz-Carlton properties will cost 10,000 points more after May 16. With this devaluation, the signup bonuses, currently 70,000 for Chase Marriott Premier Visa and 70,000 for Chase JPM Ritz-Carlton Visa ($395 annual fee not waived), will diminish in value. The other thing to note is that the Category-4 and Category-5 free night certificates provided by Marriott Visa will also depreciate since 53% (190/359) of Category-5 hotels will go up to Category 6 and 51% (370/732) of Category-4 hotels will go to Category 5.
InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) Priority Club: In January 2012, Priority Club did tweak its awards chart by adding new redemption levels across the board, resulting many properties going up 5,000 to 10,000 points per night, around 20~40% increase in cost. That was a major devaluation. We adjusted our value for one point from 0.6 cent to 0.5 due to that. In January 2013, Priority Club introduced a completely new awards chart, switching from brand-based to category-based. Now the new chart has 9 categories, ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 points per night. Around 1,200 properties move up in points while 1,300 properties move down, compared to last year. Australia, Paris, London, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, and San Diego are among the destinations that were hit hardest, while places like China, Japan, and Southeast Asia actually see a great number of properties going down in cost. The top-of-line InterContinental properties remain 50,000 points a night (they went up from 40,000 points in the 2012 devaluation). While IHG does not have as many aspirational properties as SPG, Hilton or Hyatt, they do have a few such as the fabulous all-villa Bora Bora Resort and Thalasso Spa whose BAR stars around $970 USD. So generally we will say the value of points does not change much from last year. The biggest reason we recommend keeping Chase Priority Club Visa is the annual free night at any non-all-inclusive IHG hotels (with capacity control though), which is not affected by the hotel category changes.
Hyatt Gold Passport: Compared to other major hotel loyalty programs, Hyatt Gold Passport seems the most generous in terms of change for this year. Hyatt did not change its category structure and only 7 properties move up in cost while 10 move down. Category 6 Hyatt properties including several amazing Park Hyatt such as Park Hyatt Maldives, Park Hyatt Milano, Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, Park Hyatt Zurich, Park Hyatt Sydney, Park Hyatt Seoul, and Park Hyatt Tokyo, remain 22,000 points per night, which represents huge value. We continue to conservatively value a Hyatt point at 1.5 cents. With Hilton's destructive devaluation, Hyatt almost becomes the only program that allows you to redeem points cheaply for aspirational properties. Based on what we have seen so far in points devaluation in the hotel industry, we are nearly certain that in a year Hyatt will introduce a new category costing around 30,000 points per night. For now, Chase Hyatt Visa which offers two free nights at any Hyatt as signup bonus and one free night at Category 1-4 hotels upon each anniversary remains great value. Chase Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold/Plus Business whose Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred into Hyatt points, along with United, British, Korean miles, still remain among the best travel credit cards.

Finally, let me share the new value we assign to one point in each program, and like always your value may vary:

SPG - remains 2.25 cents due to the transfer feature
Hilton - decreases to 0.4 cent
Marriott - decreases to 0.7 cent
Priority Club - remains 0.5 cent
Hyatt - remains 1.5 cents

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Chase Ink Plus BUSINESS 50,000 points & 1st year free

9/5/2012

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Chase Ink Bold is on our Top List and has a generous 50,000 points signup bonus. Now as if it is not enough, Chase has the new Ink Plus Business Card which shares all the same great benefits as Ink Bold and the nice 50,000 points signup bonus. The only difference is that while Ink Bold is a charge card, Ink Plus is a regular credit card. The cool thing is that since Chase considers them as two different products, technically you can get 100,000 points if signing up both!

The 50,000 points bonus breaks down as: 25K after the 1st purchase and another 25K after you spend $10K within 3 months:
Landing page
Application page

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Chase Sapphire Preferred now 40,000 points & 1st year free

5/14/2012

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The old 50K offer has been pulled for a while and replaced with the new 40K offer. Open a new Chase Sapphire Preferred card (one of our Top Listers) Spend $3,000 within 90 days you will get 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points.

The landing page
The application page

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Chase quietly changed Ink Cards

11/30/2011

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[Update 5/15/12] Chase has made the Ink Bold 50K offer a little harder to achieve. The new offer is 25,000 points after the 1st purchase and another 25,000 points after spending $10,000 within 3 months. So basically you need to spend $5,000 more to get the full 50K.

The landing page
The application page

[Original Post 11/30/11] Ink only came out this May and yet Chase has decided to give it a facelift. We haven't got a chance to review Ink until around two weeks ago, and shortly after that we realized that Chase quietly changed the Ink Cards on its website. Please check out our updated review for details. Generally we are disappointed to see the changes; however we still recommend Ink since no doubt they are still among the best business cards in the market. Also while the link for the old Ink Bold 50K signup offer still works as of now, Chase continues to offer the 50K points for the new Ink Bold.

The new Ink Bold 50K points offer (after spending $5,000 within first 3 months):
The landing page
The application page

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Chase Ink Bold BUSINESS Card 50,000 points & 1st year free

9/23/2011

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Chase Ink Bold Business Card now offers 50,000 points at signup after you spend $5,000 within 3 months. The first annual fee is waived ($95 saving). Ink Bold is on Dr. Credit Card's to-review list for a while and hopefully the page will be up soon. Our review is up [11/20/2011]. Note that Ink Bold, just like Sapphire Preferred, is part of the Premium Ultimate Rewards program and you can redeem 50,000 points for $625 in travel through UR or transfer them into BA/CO/KE/Hyatt/etc. miles/points. Please see our review on SPG vs. MR vs. UR for details.

The application link is here.

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Chase Sapphire Preferred was enhanced quietly

7/25/2011

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Chase quietly added a list of 2x bonus categories, including dining, airfare, hotel, car rentals, travel agencies etc., to its Sapphire Preferred. The card used to be considered inferior to Amex PR Gold in our old review, now all of the sudden it almost becomes as good. Please check out our new review on Sapphire Preferred, a new Dr. Credit Card's Top Lister.

Please note that Chase is still offering 50K points as signup bonus.

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Chase Hyatt Card - two free nights at any Hyatt including Park Hyatt (1st year NOT free)

7/15/2011

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[Update 6/13/12] The offer with $75 credit is gone. But the original offer (at the end of the post) is still up.

[Update 5/15/12] There is a slightly better offer out there for the Hyatt Visa - two free nights plus $75 statement credit. Note that the 1st annual fee is still not waived, so essentially this credit offsets the annual fee.

The landing page (DEAD)

[Original Post 7/15/11] Chase Hyatt Card offers two free nights at any Hyatt hotels including the high-end Park Hyatt as the signup bonus. The nightly rate could be as high as $500 to $1,000. Bear in mind that you have to pay the $75 annual fee up front. The other way to look at this is that two nights means as much as 44,000 Hyatt points since the top-category Hyatt hotels require 22,000 points per night. Current Hyatt Platinum and Diamond members can get better signup offers. Please see our review on Chase Hyatt Visa for details.

The landing page
The application page

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Chase Hyatt Visa two free nights & $50 credit & 1st year free

Chase Ink Bold and Ink Plus back to 50,000 points each & 1st year free

[GONE] Chase Ink Plus and Ink Bold up signup bonus to 60,000 points each (120,000 points in total) & 1st year free

The impact of 2013 hotel points devaluation on your credit card strategy

Chase Ink Plus BUSINESS 50,000 points & 1st year free

Chase Sapphire Preferred now 40,000 points & 1st year free

Chase quietly changed Ink Cards

Chase Ink Bold BUSINESS Card 50,000 points & 1st year free

Chase Sapphire Preferred was enhanced quietly

Chase Hyatt Card - two free nights at any Hyatt including Park Hyatt (1st year NOT free)

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