How to Get a Good Deal at Hyatt All-Inclusive Resorts
Looking to use your points for an all-inclusive getaway? Don’t miss this guest post by Summer Hall from Summer is Joy! She shares incredible tips on maximizing your Hyatt points when booking all-inclusive Hyatt resorts.
If you have been into credit card points and miles for any amount of time, you probably know that Hyatt is everyone’s favorite hotel program. It’s my favorite, it’s Kim’s favorite, and for good reason- the value you can get when redeeming your points is amazing. They have a fixed award chart so you can easily plan how many points you need to earn to redeem a free stay, and tons of options when you’re looking for the most stress-free kind of vacation there is— an all-inclusive one.
Back in 2022, my family of six redeemed Hyatt points to spend six nights at the Hyatt Ziva Cancun resort in Mexico, and it was the most luxurious vacation we have ever had. You can read all about it here! Our first exposure to the all-inclusive resort turned out to be our favorite way to travel, and it’s been a goal of mine to use points for another trip like it.
In recent years, Hyatt has expanded their all-inclusive collection to include over 90 different properties you can redeem points with for a free night. They have a separate award chart for these properties, which go from Category A to Category F. Since Hyatt points are so valuable, however, you definitely want to make sure that you’re getting a good value before you transfer your points to Hyatt and book an all-inclusive.
I loved our stay at Hyatt Ziva Cancun so much that I wanted to just go back there. But when Hyatt changed it to a Category F, they doubled the number of points it required to redeem a free night, despite the cash price staying the same. To add insult to injury, my email inbox is full of messages about their promotions where you can save up to 25% off rooms, but of course, these sales do not affect the award chart. My points are now worth less than half of what they were at Hyatt Ziva Cancun in 2022, so now I needed to know: which Hyatt all-inclusive resorts would give me the best redemption rate?
Understanding Cents Per Point
Before we dive into it, you first have to understand what is meant by the term “cents per point,” or CPP. Points & miles people talk about cents per point when they are comparing the points required to book a room to the cash cost of that room. It’s an easy way to calculate the value of your points with any given redemption: divide the cost of the room by the number of points required to book it, and you get your redemption value or cents per point. If a $500 room requires 50,000 Hyatt points, that redemption is worth 1 cent per point (which is kind of the bare minimum you should aim for). But if you can find a $500 room that only requires 25,000 Hyatt points, then you’re getting 2 cents per point, stretching your points even further.
If you follow lots of points & miles accounts on social media, you’ll see people redeeming Hyatt stays for 2-3 cents per point. It’s very easy to double or triple the value of your points at Hyatt’s hotels, but the all-inclusive collection is a different story. If you automatically assume you’re getting 2 cents per point at these resorts, you’ll be wrong more than half the time. That’s what I found out when I finally sat down to make this list of every resort’s redemption rate.
I started out making this list by manually searching different dates at different AI resorts on Hyatt.com, but then I quickly realized that there was a better way: MaxMyPoint.com is an amazing search tool that stores and displays free night availability at hotels, and they’ve already calculated the average cents per point for each resort they have data on. This cut my work significantly as all I had to do now was record every resort’s CPP score and organize it.
Not every resort has enough availability to calculate, but out of the ones that do, only 21 of them have an average redemption rate of around 2 cents per point or higher. Click here if you’re interested in seeing the full list. I excluded Alua brand resorts because they’re not the truly “all-inclusive” experience we’re interested in. Here are the top contenders:
Analyzing this list helped me come up with a few good rules of thumb. Secrets resorts dominate the top and almost always give you a great cent per point redemption. Dreams, which is the family-friendly sister brand to Secrets, tends to do pretty well too, although it would be nice if the top of the list didn’t so heavily favor Adults-Only resorts. Sadly, there are no Hyatt Ziva or Hyatt Zilara resorts that even come close to cracking the top, which just tells me that if I really want to stay at one of those resorts again, I need to be willing to settle for a less-than-stellar redemption.
Keep in mind that these figures are averages. Your specific dates could be even higher, which is great news! Unfortunately, they could be even lower, so always do the math if you think you’re on the fence about what rate you’re aiming for.
Properties with the Worst Redemption Rates
I believe people should vacation wherever they want to, but if you’re looking at any of these resorts, booking with Hyatt points might not be your best option, so you should look into other methods. Whatever value you aim to get out of your Hyatt points, this probably isn’t going to cut it compared to booking with Chase Travel℠.
What To Do When Resort Is Unavailable With Points
What can you do when a property is unavailable to book with Hyatt points? Some of these resorts have so little availability that it’s hard to even calculate an average redemption rate, but if you still want to book one there are a couple solutions. MaxMyPoint.com allows you to set up alerts for when a hotel room becomes available with just a free account, although you get way more options for customizing alerts when you upgrade to a paid membership.
You can also try looking farther in advance to figure out exactly when availability opens up because that’s when you’ll have the best chance at snagging a very popular resort. As a last resort (no pun intended), check Chase Travel℠, where there may be rooms available to book at a cash rate even when Hyatt is showing nothing available with points. It might be a terrible redemption, or it might surprise you, but either way, it’s good to know all your options.
Alternate Ways to Book Hyatt All-Inclusives
If you love a resort that’s not a particularly great value on points, you have options. Let’s say you want to stay at Hyatt Ziva Rose Hall for a week in January but you’d like to get a better value than 1 cent per point for your dates. You can book the same exact room through Chase Travel℠, and if you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, it’ll cost you fewer points than if you booked through Hyatt, because the Sapphire Preferred gives 1.25 cents per point. Things get even sweeter if you happen to have the Chase Sapphire Reserve® because that card gets you 1.5 cents per point.
Another option is to look into booking certain resorts through a Real Club member for a discount. This is a timeshare program of sorts where owners can use their membership to book reservations at around a 30% discount, depending on your dates. I haven’t done this method myself yet, but here is the Facebook group where you can gather more info and request a quote. You can even read reviews from Hyatt fans who used to book with Chase points but have since pivoted to booking through Real Club members because of the increased points required for a redemption. Many of the Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara properties are included!
Ways to Earn Hyatt Points
You can earn Hyatt points by opening up the World of Hyatt Credit Card from Chase, which has a welcome bonus of 30,000 points after spending $3,000 in three months. Hyatt also has a business version of their credit card which offers 60,000 bonus points for spending $5,000 in the first 3 months.
Hyatt is also a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, which means you can open the Chase Sapphire Preferred for its welcome bonus and turn those points into Hyatt points. Even cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® that are marketed as “cash back” actually earn Ultimate Rewards points that can be used to help you earn a free stay once you transfer them to Hyatt. All you need to do is combine them first with your points on the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or the Chase Ink Business Preferred. And don’t forget that you can combine Chase Ultimate Rewards with anyone in your household, unlocking the potential to rack up points pretty quickly.
Putting It All Together
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how much value you want to get out of your points. Even though some properties don’t represent a huge value, it’s still true that booking with Hyatt points is the way to go for almost all of their resorts. For resorts that have a lower redemption value, you have multiple options, and you might still go with Hyatt anyway to help with earning status. If you don’t have any specific destination in mind and just want to get the most bang for your buck (or point, in this case) then let the winners of this list inspire you to start looking up dates and earning points. Secrets Tides Punta Cana is looking pretty fabulous to me after all this research. I also recommend joining Facebook groups for any resorts you’re considering booking to help you get a sense of what the best things to do are and where their strengths lie.
No matter what you choose, there are so many great credit card offers that can help you get there, so get started. Your next free vacation is waiting!
More on Our Families Free Travels!
Family vacations were a near impossibility for us not that long ago. But about 7 years ago we discovered credit card points and miles and now traveling several times a year is the norm for us! If you want to learn more about how our family travels for next to nothing, I would love for you to check out my Quick Start Guide to Traveling with Points and Miles. It is a hobby that has forever changed our lives and given us the opportunity to see the world!
