World of Hyatt has announced that they will extend the tier status for those members with registered addresses in Asia-Pacific for an additional year due to the Coronavirus situation.
Customers whose status would normally expire on February 28, 2021 will now be extended until the following year: February 28, 2022.
The current Coronavirus lockdown of mainland China and to some extend Hong Kong has impacted many travelers in Asia and will likely continue to do so for the next couple of months.
Hyatt is the first hotel chain that has publicly announced it will extend the tier status for those World of Hyatt members residing in Asia (myself included).
The information has been published on their Coronavirus Status page (access here).
In response to the COVID-19 situation, World of Hyatt will be offering members residing in the Asia Pacific region a series of tier status and benefits extensions, including:
- Qualifying World of Hyatt Discoverist, Explorist and Globalist members will now have a new tier expiration of February 28, 2022 – rather than February 28, 2021 – to maintain their elite tier status and benefits.
- Currently valid Suite Upgrade Awards, Club Access Awards and Free Night Awards that expire in 2020 for qualifying members will be extended through December 31, 2021.
World of Hyatt is also working to evaluate tier and benefit extensions for global members who travel frequently to the Asia Pacific region. More information will be shared with qualifying members as it becomes available.
World of Hyatt expects to have qualifying members’ accounts updated to reflect the extension of elite tier status and award validity March 31, 2020. This will be effectuated by the World of Hyatt team – members do not need to take any action. Furthermore, qualifying members will receive information regarding these updates through email, My Hyatt Concierge, WeChat communications and more.
If members still have questions regarding their tier status, they can contact the nearest Hyatt Global Contact Center, reach Hyatt via WeChat (WeChat ID: HyattHotels) or email worldofhyatt@hyatt.com.
It’s definitely commendable that Hyatt looks out for their customers this way. At the same time I would imagine that a substantial part of business is going away considering Hyatt’s rather prominent footprint in Asia.
Hyatt didn’t specify in their post what their interpretation of Asia-Pacific is but usually what’s included in that is usually North/South East/South/Far East Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand.
A customers account data and history will decide about these exceptions. Since the announcement also mentions that Hyatt is working on a policy to grant extensions to members who have a substantial history of Asia travel even without having a registered address there I’d say many might be in luck this year not having to invest too much into their status.
I’ll publish some communication as soon as I hear from my Hyatt Concierge.
Conclusion
I’m sure other hotel chains will follow suit here which could seriously help those of us who are living in Asia or have a frequent travel profile in the region. I’m not planning on cutting down too much on my travels at the moment but I guess my China Visa will expire unused this year as I don’t expect the situation to be better until June.
Those reading and thinking to “move” their account to Asia after this announcement I’d say it’s a bad idea and Hyatt will certainly be able to tell when these changes have been initiated. Trying to pull some sort of fraud here is probably a bad idea.
Moving other chains account information to an address in the APAC region might be possible though before they come out with their own announcements.
