I have spent a lot of words on this site telling you that Hyatt is the one hotel currency worth buying, and the reason has always been the same: it publishes a chart. You can look up what a night costs before you spend anything, which is a sentence you cannot write about Marriott or Hilton.
That is still true. It is just true at higher prices than it used to be.
On May 20, 2026, Hyatt replaced a five-year-old award chart with a new one. The eight categories survived. The three pricing bands did not.
The new chart
Every category now prices across five bands rather than three: Lowest, Low, Moderate, Upper, Top. Standard room, points per night:
| Category | Lowest | Low | Moderate | Upper | Top |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3,000 | 5,000 | 7,000 | 8,000 | 9,000 |
| 2 | 6,000 | 9,000 | 12,000 | 13,500 | 15,000 |
| 3 | 8,000 | 12,000 | 16,000 | 18,000 | 20,000 |
| 4 | 12,000 | 16,000 | 20,000 | 22,500 | 25,000 |
| 5 | 15,000 | 21,000 | 28,000 | 32,000 | 35,000 |
| 6 | 20,000 | 28,000 | 35,000 | 37,500 | 40,000 |
| 7 | 25,000 | 33,000 | 42,000 | 48,000 | 55,000 |
| 8 | 35,000 | 48,000 | 60,000 | 68,000 | 75,000 |
The old chart topped out at 45,000 points for a Category 8 peak night. The new one tops out at 75,000, a 67% increase at the ceiling. Category 1 got cheaper at the bottom, from 3,500 to 3,000.
Then, separately, 136 hotels changed category: 112 moved up, 24 moved down. A single category bump compounds with the new bands, so a hotel going from Category 3 to 4 takes a mid-week night from 12,000 to 20,000 points. Worked examples from the coverage: Park Hyatt Tokyo mostly 45,000 but peaking at 75,000; Park Hyatt Los Cabos mostly 55,000 in January against a 45,000 old cap.
How bad is that? Genuinely contested. One major outlet called it a mild devaluation and found popular properties running about 10% more. Two others put the real damage at 30% to 67% depending on where your hotel sits. My read: if you book mid-tier properties on ordinary dates, you will barely feel it. If you book aspirational properties on dates other people also want, you will feel it a lot. Hyatt has also confirmed there is no cap on how many nights a hotel may price into the top bands, which is the sentence to worry about in 2027 and beyond.
What survived, and it matters
Free night certificates ignore the bands entirely. A Category 1-4 certificate covers a night priced up to 25,000 points. A Category 1-7 certificate covers a night up to 55,000. In a five-band world, that turns every certificate into a hunt for the most expensive qualifying night, and the value of a certificate went up when the chart got worse. Category 1-4 certificates come from the $95 World of Hyatt card anniversary, $15,000 of card spend, Brand Explorer, and the 30-night Milestone. Category 1-7 certificates arrive at 60 nights.
Points and Cash still costs exactly half the points of a straight award, plus cash. On an expensive night that is often the best redemption in the program.
Globalist is still the best mid-tier elite status in hotels. Sixty nights or 100,000 base points gets you confirmed suite upgrades at check-in, resort fees waived on every stay including awards, 4pm checkout, breakfast or lounge access, and free parking on award stays. Discoverist is 10 nights or 25,000 base points; Explorist 30 nights or 50,000. The 40-night Guest of Honor milestone passes full Globalist treatment to someone else for up to seven nights, which is the most generous thing in any hotel program.
Getting the points
Chase Ultimate Rewards and Bilt both transfer to Hyatt at 1:1, which is the single best use of Chase points that does not involve an airplane. If you have read my Chase guide, this is the hotel half of that argument. Note that Hyatt is one of the reasons to hold Chase over Amex, which has no Hyatt partnership at all.
Buying points is occasionally defensible here, which is not something I say often. Hyatt is currently discounting purchased points, and because the chart is published, the arithmetic finishes: price the night in points, price it in cash, multiply, compare. That test is only possible in a program like this one.
The verdict
A more expensive good program is still a good program. Hyatt’s chart moved against you, but it is still a chart, still small enough to learn, still attached to genuinely nice hotels, and still fed 1:1 by the most flexible currency in your wallet. Compare that to the programs that abandoned charts entirely, where you cannot even calculate what you lost.
Book the aspirational stays sooner rather than later. Chart programs under pressure only move one direction.
