Hyatt Updates Its Best-Rate Guarantee for the Better
Most major hotel chains offer a best-rate guarantee of some sort in order to allow the customer to feel confident that they can book a stay directly with the hotel and still get the best deal. Hotels want customers to book directly, as they then get to keep a larger share of the night's revenue in their own pocket, rather than paying a portion to a third-party booking site. Customers who love their points do better booking stays directly much of the time, as they can then earn and use points.
While each chain's best-rate guarantee works a bit differently, essentially, if you find a better deal on the exact same room on the exact same dates within a certain amount of time after booking (or sometimes, before booking), the chain will give you some sort of bonus or discount for your efforts.
Hyatt has a best-rate guarantee that has gone through a few iterations in different years, but as was reported by The Gate, it's recently changed again -- for the better. As of April 16, if you find a lower rate on a publicly available and immediately bookable room for the exact same stay within 24 hours of booking the stay directly with Hyatt, Hyatt will not only match the rate but give you either 20% off the rate you found or 5,000 bonus World of Hyatt points awarded 72 hours after checkout.
For the last two years, Hyatt provided a $50 discount on a future stay for best-rate guarantee claims. Prior to that, Hyatt offered a 20% discount if you successfully submitted a best-rate guarantee claim. Having the choice of a 20% discount or 5,000 World of Hyatt points (valued at $85 by TPG valuations), makes this an improvement over the past several versions of Hyatt's best-rate offers.
To make a Hyatt best-rate guarantee claim, submit an online claim form or call 1-877-247-3909 within 24 hours after booking on hyatt.com.
Interestingly, Hyatt does permit best-rate claims using prices from websites that require a membership, so long as that membership is free. Not all hotel brands will honor prices on websites that require memberships or logins, so that is relatively unique.
While this all sounds great in theory, know that hotel best-rate-guarantee claims don't always go as smoothly as you would hope, so we recommend booking a refundable stay when making a claim, just in case it's not approved for some reason. However, if it is approved, you can save money or earn bonus points while still earning your normal Hyatt elite-stay credits and points in the process. (Here's a TPG reader success story of using a best-rate claim to save on a vacation.)
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