I dumped Marriott for Hyatt as my main hotel loyalty program, and the funniest part is that Marriott is the reason I know I was right.
Here’s how that works. I still carry the Chase Marriott Bonvoy card, which hands me one free night certificate every year for a $95 annual fee. A free night certificate is just a coupon for a room that costs nothing but the coupon. Great deal on paper. In practice it’s capped at 35,000 points, and finding a room under that cap on dates you actually want to travel can feel like a scavenger hunt with no prize. So once a year we end up in a Marriott, using up the coupon.
And every single time, I get a little reminder of why I left. Hyatt must love that. I’m basically a free marketing department for them, funded by a Marriott credit card.
Now the fair part, because I’m not here to write a brochure. Hyatt’s program is not what it was. On May 20 of this year, World of Hyatt switched from a three-tier award chart to five tiers, and a lot of hotels got more expensive to book with points. Points people were furious, and I get it. Even so, Marriott prices rooms on a sliding scale that moves with demand, so you never really know what a night will cost until you look. Hyatt still takes fewer points for the same kind of stay, at least in my experience. That’s a hotel program winning by being less annoying than the other guy, which is a low bar, but it’s a bar.
Here’s how the brands stack up when I look at them side by side. At the high end, I’d give Marriott the edge on the actual properties. The rooms and the service are great, and if you ignore the absurd number of points a free night costs there, it’s hard to argue. In the middle, Hyatt wins, and it’s not close. Brands like Andaz and Thompson give you something that doesn’t feel like it came off a corporate assembly line. At the budget end, the points price of Marriott’s cheapest hotels is about what Hyatt charges for its midrange. Hyatt takes that matchup nearly every time, on points value and on how the place actually feels when you walk in.
The one real knock on Hyatt is size. There are simply fewer of them. If you’re driving through a small town at 10 p.m. and need a bed, Marriott is probably sitting at the next exit and Hyatt might not be. That’s a legitimate reason to keep a foot in both camps, and it’s the only reason I still do.
I know hotel points sound like a nerdy hobby, and they are. But the logic applies to plenty of things in life. A loyalty program is supposed to reward you for staying, and the best ones do. The worst ones make you work for the reward, then charge you extra when you finally try to cash it in. If a company’s best sales pitch is a coupon you can barely use, the coupon is telling you something.
My two cents: the best proof that I picked the right hotel loyalty program is the one night a year I spend at the wrong one.