Outsized Value of Hyatt Free Night Awards

Getting outsized value from travel perks and deals is every aspirational traveler’s goal; getting this value from Hyatt’s Free Night Awards is no different. In this post, I cover the ins and outs of the Hyatt Free Night Award. This includes how you earn Free Night Awards, how-to book/spend these awards, and what type of value you can get from the awards. Those wanting to experience aspirational travel will want to continue reading below on maximizing the value of the Hyatt Free Night Award.

What are Hyatt Free Night Awards?

Hyatt Free Night Awards are awards that can be redeemed for one free hotel night within hotel award category limits. Anytime a standard room is available to be booked with points, a Hyatt Free Night Award can be used.

How to Get Hyatt Free Night Awards?

Hyatt Free Night Awards can be earned in a variety of methods. These methods range from credit card perks to staying with Hyatt hotels to various promotional offers.

Credit Card Annual Renewal

If you hold the World of Hyatt Credit Card (or the no longer available Hyatt Card), one annual perk of the card is a Hyatt Free Night Award. After paying the annual renewal fee on the credit card, a Free Night Award is earned. This night is valid for one year from the date of issue. This award is valid at Hyatt hotel categories 1 – 4. This means that this single certificate can save you between 5,000 and 15,000 points per night. Many category 4 hotels are expensive so the opportunity to save significantly with these certificates is real.

Credit Card Spend Bonus

The Free Night Award for renewing the World of Hyatt Credit Card isn’t its only perk. Another annual perk of the card awards a second Category 1 – 4 Free Night Award with $15,000 in spend on the credit card within a cardmember year. This can also be quite valuable and creates an opportunity for a free weekend getaway.

Hyatt Brand Explorer

One of the features of Hyatt’s loyalty program, World of Hyatt, is the Brand Explorer perk. Hyatt tracks how many of their brands that you have spent at least one night in. Hyatt brands include chains like Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Andaz, Hyatt Ziva (like the Hyatt Ziva Cap Cana), and Hyatt Centric, among others. For every five Hyatt brands someone stays at, Hyatt will award you a Category 1 – 4 Free Night Award.

Milestone Rewards

Hyatt also grants Free Night Awards as a perk for spending several nights with the brand within one year. You earn a Category 1 – 4 Free Night Award when you stay 30 nights with Hyatt in one year. Similarly, you earn a Category 1 – 7 Free Night Award when you stay 60 nights with Hyatt in one year

Promotion Awards

The final way that Hyatt gives out Free Night Awards is via various promotions throughout the year. These are varied but can include promotions like:
– Stay X nights within 3 months and earn a Hyatt Free Night Award
– Stay at a new hotel within 2 month of opening

How to Book a Hyatt Free Night Award

When you have a Hyatt Free Night Award, the Free Nights will be listed under the “My Awards” tab of your World of Hyatt account.

After you have confirmed that you have the award in your World of Hyatt account, verify the category restrictions on the award. The vast majority of Free Night Awards will be valid at Category 1 – 4 hotels.

If you have a particular location in mind, search for the city or hotel in the regular Hyatt search feature. If you are looking for some travel inspiration, there are two methods Hyatt provides for finding their hotels:

Hyatt Hotels List

The first option is to use the Hyatt Hotels list. The Hyatt Hotels list is best for those who know a region that they want to search in or a category of the hotel they want to book. A Category 4 hotel booked with a Free Night Award saves the most points. While many of the best values will be found in Category 4, don’t sleep on some of the lower categories. Depending on the time of year, rate, and where you want to go, these can sometimes present more value.

Hyatt Hotel Map Search

The second option is to use the Hyatt Hotels Map Search. This is best when you have specific locations to search or don’t mind panning across an area to see what is there. The map search provides more powerful filter options than the hotel list. These include a multi-category search, amenity search, and Hyatt brand search. The map view also conveniently shows the Award Category of each hotel along with the cash price or points price.

Apply Free Night Awards to Stay

Once you have located the target hotel within the category limits of the Free Night Award, you are ready to book.

Perform a normal award search at the hotel; fill out the check-in and check-out dates, the number of guests, and the number of rooms. Check the “Use Points” box before clicking Search. If rooms are available for a standard room points stay, you’re in luck. You will be able to use a Free Award Night for the stay if points stays are available.

After searching, a screen like the above should appear allowing you to select a room below the words “Free Night”. Clicking “SELECT” will apply your Free Night Award and finish your booking.

Hyatt’s IT system codes Free Night Awards as single night reservations. Therefore, if you want more than one Free Night Award, you will have to make multiple subsequent reservations. On some occasions, hotels place minimum length requirements on reservations. This causes an issue where Free Night Awards can’t be booked online. If you run into this issue call Hyatt Customer Service and they can manually book the award.

As shown above, this hotel only showed points award stays on a 2-night stay during high season – not Free Night Awards. After a total 10-minute call to Hyatt customer service (including hold time), this hotel was booked.

It never hurts to call and ask when you believe a room should be available. IT systems can be wrong and representatives could correct them. The worst that someone can say is “No.”

Wide Value in Hyatt Free Night Awards

In living up to the tagline of this blog (“Resources for Aspirational Travel”), Free Night Awards can save you a lot of money and open up aspirational travel that you otherwise would not have paid for.

High-Value Redemption

An example of getting great value from the Hyatt Free Night Awards is my recent hotel booking in Portland, Maine. I was looking for a two-night stay in Portland, Maine in June 2021. Due to the improving pandemic conditions in 2021, Maine’s renown as an outdoor vacation spot, and the pent-up travel demand, prices for a two-night stay in Portland’s Old Port area were very high.

Most hotels in the Portland Old Port area were going for $290 – $350 per night. The Hyatt Place located in the Old Port area was no different with a rate of $345 per night. That is such a high rate per night that I would be looking for lodging outside the city to bring down the cost.

However, this hotel is a Category 4 Hyatt and therefore eligible for Free Night Awards. I redeemed two Free Night Awards to cover this stay. All in all, these two award certificates saved me over $751 including taxes on the stay. One Free Night Award was earned from the Hyatt Credit Card on which I pay a $99 annual fee. I earned the other from a stay promotion for a vacation that was already booked. This ended up being a very good use of these certificates.

Poor-Value Redemption

However, be cautioned that not all redemptions save you $300+ per certificate. The prices of hotels even within the same category can vary in price widely depending on the time of year, events in the area, demand for the hotel. Some examples of this are shown below. Each of these Hyatt hotels is a Category 4 property. However, their prices are very different from the Portland redemption I made above. In the Hyatt House example, if you got the Free Night Award from the Hyatt Credit Card you would be saving only about $20 + taxes after the annual fee is accounted for. If something saves you $20 you would obviously take it, but it’s not the $250 savings above. In the Hotel Avante example, you would actually lose $10 on redeeming the Free Night Award after the credit card annual fee of $99 is taken into account.

The moral of the story is to always check your redemption value. Free Night Awards can be used for outsized value. Use them at those locations and pay for the $89/night hotels with cash.

Bottom Line

Hyatt Free Night awards can be a big tool in the traveler’s arsenal. They can save you money and allow you to have experiences that you wouldn’t pay for normally. However, all Free Night Award redemptions are not created equal. Use them to your advantage to save on expensive hotel nights. Finally, cookie-cutter IT systems and booking rules by hotels can make some Free Night Award redemptions difficult. In these situations don’t be afraid to call the Hyatt Customer Service team. In my experience, they are very helpful and accommodating. The worst thing that can happen is they say no and you lost 10 minutes of your day.

Comment below if you have any tips or tricks to use Hyatt Free Night Awards. Also if you have used Free Night Awards, what is the best redemption you have made?