I had locked in our FREE Milan flights back in October, but I couldn’t lock in our hotel until today. I wanted us to stay at the Park Hyatt Milan, (heard it’s great), but neither Rob or I had enough World Of Hyatt points to book the 5 night stay. The hotel is a Hyatt Category 7 property, requiring 30,000 points per night. Despite some of our existing point balances and Rob getting an influx of 60,000 points back in the summer as the bonus on his Chase World of Hyatt credit card, we were still short.
Luckily, World of Hyatt is a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, and I was able to transfer about 35,000 points over from Rob’s Chase Ultimate Rewards account, that he has with his Chase Ink Business Preferred, to Rob’s World of Hyatt account. I depleted his Chase account with this transfer. However, even after this, we still didn’t have enough.
We needed 7,000 more points in Rob’s account. I had enough points in my account to book the last night, but instead of booking the reservation piecemeal (some nights via my account and some nights via Rob’s account), I decided to take advantage of World Of Hyatt’s liberal transfer policy which reads as follows:
A member may combine points from their account with those of one other specifically designated Member. A member may participate in a point-combining transaction (transferring or receiving of points) not more than once every 30 days. In order to combine points, the following requirements must be met:
(a) Each Member must have an active account to be eligible to combine points.
(b) A Program Point Combination Request Form must be completed and signed by both Members and submitted to Hyatt customer service. Completed forms must be returned to Hyatt via email as specified on the form.
(c) Points may be combined into only one Member’s account. Points received through transfer will be considered Bonus Points (not base points) for the recipient.
So, I printed the form (you cannot fill it out online) and scanned it and emailed it to World Of Hyatt. (You can also stick it in the regular mail). One week passed, then 2, then 3 then 4….each day I checked to see if the transfer went through, it hadn’t. I ultimately called World of Hyatt, they said it could take up to 6 weeks, which is what every program says but it never does. I have consistently transferred Marriott/SPG points and Hilton Honors points between Rob and my accounts and the transfers take merely a few days, if that. World Of Hyatt, what’s up???
Note, I wasn’t that concerned about the hotel being booked the week Rob and I were going, so I held off taking other measures, like transferring his Chase points he had earned since, or booking the reservation piecemeal. If I had thought that the hotel would have been booked up, I would not have leisurely waited for the transfer to go through.
After 6 weeks, I emailed them and a few days later, I got a reply. It seemed that the phone number on my account (home phone) did not match the phone number on my form (cell phone), everything on the form needs to match your account exactly. I am still wondering if World of Hyatt would have ever contacted me about this had I not sent the email, annoying!
Regardless, I redid the form this past Monday. This morning (3 days later) there was an email to Rob which read…
Dear Mr. Greenstein,
Thank you for contacting World of Hyatt!
I am pleased to confirm that, I have transferred 7,000 points from your World of Hyatt account number: xxxxxxxxxx to xxxxxxxxxx.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any other assistance. Have a great day!
So what we have learned is that if you are transferring World Of Hyatt points to someone else, (any other member, nice!), make sure the info on your point request from exactly matches the personal details (address, phone number) of your World Of Hyatt account.
Now for the good stuff-I booked 5 nights at the Milan property using 150,000 World Of Hyatt points. The room would have been 645 euros per night which as of today is about $734 per night. So the five nights would have cost about $3670 and that is what we saved using points.
Now the tricky value test….World Of Hyatt points are valued at about .07 cents per point. Using 150,000 points at .07 cents per point equates to $1,050 (150,000 *.007). So I am basically getting a hotel stay with a money value of $3,670 for only $1,050 worth of points. I think that’s a pretty good value, don’t you? Note, that is doesn’t always work this favorably, but in this case it sure did!