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With top-tier World of Hyatt Globalist status, you can enjoy various benefits such as complimentary breakfast, 4 p.m. late checkout, waivers for parking and resort fees, club lounge access, and suite upgrades upon availability. But what if you don’t have this hard-to-reach Globalist status and you still want to receive those same amazing benefits? Fortunately, there’s now a way.
Prior to this year, Hyatt would allow all Globalist members to share their elite status benefits when booking award stays for others. However, starting Jan. 1, Hyatt made some major changes to its loyalty program, which included these coveted “Guest of Honor” awards. Allowing other Hyatt travelers to experience Globalist benefits is easier than ever. In fact, there’s even the opportunity for you to gift Globalist status to yourself before you earn this top-tier status. In this article, we’ll explore the details of World of Hyatt Guest of Honor awards.
Earning Hyatt Guest of Honor awards
One of the better aspects of the World of Hyatt program is that members earn “Milestone Rewards” after earning a specific number of qualifying nights or base points. At each level, members receive a set reward or can even select a reward from a list of choices. The reward options differ at each level, but one reward you’ll see floating around often is the Guest of Honor award.
When applying a Guest of Honor award to a reservation, you’ll receive all the in-house benefits of Globalist status — Hyatt’s top-tier elite status level. This is a great opportunity to reap some great perks, such as a better room type (and the potential of a suite upgrade, if available), late checkout, waived resort fees, club lounge access and complimentary breakfast. These perks can not only provide you with a much more luxurious stay, but they can also save you a ton of money.
As you can see from the reward chart above, a Guest of Honor reward is automatically earned once you hit the following levels:
- 40 nights or 65,000 base points (one earned)
- 60 nights or 100,000 base points (two earned)
- 70 nights (one earned)
- 80 nights (one earned)
- 90 nights (one earned)
- 110 nights (one earned)
- 120 nights (one earned)
- 130 nights (one earned)
- 140 nights (one earned)
This means you can earn up to 10 Guest of Honor rewards in a single year. But, for those that typically earn Globalist status by crossing the 60-night threshold, you’ll end up with three Guest of Honor awards for the year.
This gives you ample opportunities to have a friend or family member receive the perks of Globalist status on a single reservation (up to a seven-night stay). Unlike the past policy where a Guest of Honor reservation could only be applied to a points reservation, Guest of Honor awards can now be used for paid or points reservations. And, if using points, the person using the Guest of Honor award can use points from their own account.
However, only one award can be applied per reservation, which means you can’t combine a free night certificate with a Guest of Honor award. Or, if you happen to have a Suite Upgrade Award in your account, that can’t be combined with a Guest of Honor award either.
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Related: 8 reasons frequent travelers love Hyatt Globalist elite status
And remember, you can also earn qualifying nights with credit card spending from both the World of Hyatt Credit Card and World of Hyatt Business Credit Card. With the World of Hyatt Credit Card, you automatically get five tier-qualifying nights each calendar year. You’ll also earn two additional tier-qualifying night credits for every $5,000 spent on your card each calendar year.
Meanwhile, if you have the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card, you’ll earn five tier-qualifying night credits for every $10,000 you spend on your card each calendar year. Earning extra tier-qualifying nights through spending on these two cards allows high-spenders to quickly earn Milestone Rewards.
Related: Is the World of Hyatt Credit Card worth the annual fee?
Additional Guest of Honor opportunities for 2024
For 2024 only, those with Globalist (or Lifetime Globalist) status as of Dec. 31, 2023, received five bonus Guest of Honor awards in their account at the start of the year. These awards are in addition to the Guest of Honor awards earned throughout the year as part of Milestone Rewards and can be gifted and redeemed in the exact same manner — with an expiration date of Feb. 28, 2025.
Additionally, World of Hyatt is offering a special perk for those who finished 2023 with Globalist status. Globalist members (as of Dec. 31, 2023) will be able to utilize the legacy Guest of Honor benefit after all of their Guest of Honor awards have been applied or gifted. With the legacy Guest of Honor benefits, only rooms booked as a free night award stay will be able to reap Globalist benefits. To do this, the Globalist member will need to call Hyatt directly to book this Guest of Honor stay. For these reservations, the Globalist member still doesn’t need to be a guest in the room (or even at the property) but must use points from their own account to book the stay.
Globalist members will be able to use this benefit until their Globalist status was originally set to expire as of Dec. 31, 2023. For most members that earned status in 2023, this means you’ll be able to book legacy Guest of Honor reservations through Feb. 28, 2025.
Booking Guest of Honor awards
When you sign in to your World of Hyatt account, you’ll see all of your awards earned, including Guest of Honor awards. From there, you can either “Gift” or “Redeem” each individual award.
To gift an award to a friend or family member, you’ll want to sign in to your account and go to the “Awards” section. In the Hyatt app, you’ll select the radio button next to the award you’re looking to gift and then select the “GIFT” option underneath the award. If you’re on the Hyatt website, you’ll want to click the three dots on the right side of the award and select “Gift Your Award.” On the next screen, you’ll need to enter the recipient’s World of Hyatt membership number and their last name. Once the award is gifted, the recipient will see the award in their account almost instantly.
Once an award is gifted, it can’t then be regifted to someone else. Because of this, make sure your recipient will be able to use the award prior to it being transferred.
Redeeming the gifted award is also incredibly simple. If you’ve already booked your reservation and you want to add the Guest of Honor award, you’ll need to call Hyatt and have it manually apply the award to the reservation. However, if you have not yet booked your reservation, you can simply apply the Guest of Honor award during the reservation process. Once you find your desired hotel and date, you’ll select the “Available Awards” above all of the room rate options. All of your earned (or gifted) awards should be listed, and you can select the “Guest of Honor Award” option. If, for some chance, the award isn’t listed, you can always call Hyatt directly to have it apply the award.
You’ll go ahead and book your reservation as you normally would, and on the final booking page, you’ll see that a Guest of Honor award has been applied.
If you’re using your own earned Guest of Honor award, you’ll follow the same steps as redeeming the award — since the award is already in your account. This can come in quite handy if you’re not yet a Globalist member but you earned a Guest of Honor award after staying 40 nights (or earning 65,000 base points).
Related: The best Hyatt Category 4 hotels, according to Globalists
Guest of Honor rules
The Guest of Honor program is simple and ultimately allows you to share your Globalist perks throughout the year by gifting a friend or family member a Guest of Honor award.
And while this is a huge benefit for the recipient, there is one pretty big perk for the member gifting the award as well. Even though the recipient will be the one earning the qualifying stays toward status, the member gifting the award will still receive one qualifying stay for the entire reservation. So if your friend or family member is applying the Guest of Honor award to a five-night stay, for example, you’ll still receive one qualifying stay toward status, even though you aren’t the one actually staying in the hotel room. However, this perk only applies to the Guest of Honor awards redeemed and not Guest of Honor reservations booked through the legacy method.
Also, once you earn a Guest of Honor award, it’ll be valid for the rest of the year, plus an additional 14 months. This means awards expire on the last day of February, two calendar years after they’re earned. For example, any Guest of Honor award earned in 2024 will expire on Feb. 28, 2026. This means your checkout date must be on or before the expiration date. Pay attention, as this is not simply a “book by” date.
That said, you might not be able to book a Guest of Honor reservation at all Hyatt properties per Hyatt’s terms and conditions:
Guest of Honor benefits are available only for gifted awards that are redeemed at a participating Park Hyatt, Miraval, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Andaz, Hyatt Centric, The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Thompson Hotels, Alila (some locations only), JdV by Hyatt, Dream (some locations only), Destination by Hyatt (both participating Destination Hotels and participating Destination Residences locations), Caption by Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Hyatt Ziva, Hyatt Zilara, Hyatt Vivid, Impression by Secrets, Secrets, Breathless, Zoëtry, Alua, Sunscape, or other Legacy AMR Collection (some locations only) hotel or resort. Not valid at Vacation Ownership Properties.
Related: You can transfer World of Hyatt points to other members: Here’s how
Bottom line
World of Hyatt offers the unique ability to share elite benefits with friends and family even when you’re not traveling with them. And now, with the ability to book a Guest of Honor reservation on free nights and paid stays, having others experience the many amazing perks is easier than ever.
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