At the end of the day, it’s incredibly important to remind ourselves that even without these first world problems, I and (hopefully you) are incredibly privileged and lucky to experience premium and luxury travel for less. I’ve been crunching the numbers on whether a Hyatt Diamond Challenge is worthwhile, particularly with this Hyatt devaluation which is not to our liking at all, since it basically means that it is go or bust for me to stay at some of the nicer Park Hyatt without paying a 30% increase in points. So I was thinking and thinking about how much elite status is worth.

The site listing all Hyatt Diamond status benefits is here. To maintain this status, you’ll need 25 paid stays and/or 50 paid nights in a calendar year. Award stays do not count. An easier way to get Diamond status is by doing a challenge if you hold a competitor hotel chain’s status such as IHG Rewards Platinum, Starwood Platinum, Hilton Gold + Diamond, and/or Marriott Gold + Platinum.

For this valuation, I’ve listed all the benefits and I’ve tried to put a quantitative monetary value on each benefit. I personally value status differently as you will see later down in the post, but here is what I think people would value Hyatt Diamond Status at. I’ve written a bit for each bullet point on how much I feel in cash the benefit is worth.

• Achieve rewards even faster with a 30% point bonus when choosing points

Even with the devaluation each point to many people are still worth 1.5 cents, given that this places a valuation on the Park Hyatt Paris at $450, and properties like the Andaz Amsterdam at $300. Fairly reasonable, eh?

Assuming $150 spend per night, and 30 nights, that’s $4500 in spend, with an additional 6,750 points. This could be worth $98.55 to the average North American mattress/mileage running bloggers with some paid work stays (ironically, this might fit a lot of other bloggers at BoardingArea!).

• Enjoy the best room available upon arrival, excluding suites

Some bloggers are willing to try the $20 trick in Vegas as well as not in Vegas, so this would mean that that I’d assume that an upgrade from a base category room to the category which is just under a junior suite such as a “deluxe” room would be worth $15 dollars a night. Thus for around 15 nights (assuming stays which aren’t upgraded with a Diamond Suite cert) this could be worth $225.

• Receive exclusive access to the Regency Club or Grand Club lounge featuring complimentary continental breakfast and evening hors d’oeuvres2. Enjoy daily complimentary full breakfast in hotels without a club lounge

Again, assuming half the properties the Diamond Guest stays have Regency/Grand clubs, the benefit from Regency/Grand Clubs would be around $20 for a moderately conservative valuation. This could be worth $300. I’d say free breakfast for 20 nights (where there is no Club Lounge) could be worth anywhere from $8 to $30 for the nicer Park Hyatt breakfasts. So a valuation of $20 per breakfast brings the total value of Club Lounges and Free Breakfast to $700.

• Treat yourself to a suite upgrade at the time of reservation four times annually on eligible paid nights

Generally I’d say the threshold for redeeming a suite upgrade versus outright paying for the suite could be anywhere between $50 to $150 a night, depending on the property. Assuming each stay is 3.5 days (so for stays where the suite upgrade is applied 1/2 the stays are 3 days, 1/2 are 4) for a total of 14 days upgraded to a suite upon booking, this benefit could be worth $700.

• Receive a special welcome point bonus or food and beverage amenity during each stay

For most full-service properties it’s 1,000 points or a food/beverage/locally inspired amenity, which would be worth then roughly $15. Given 20 stays, this could be worth $300.

• Receive a nightly room refresh

Value should be negligible.

• Receive the confirmed bed type at check-in

I should also assume the value should be negligible!

• Stay connected with complimentary in-room Internet access

This is accessible with Hyatt Platinum status which shouldn’t be hard to obtain (5 stays or Hyatt Credit Card) so valuation is negligible again.

• Expedite check-in at a dedicated area for elite members
• Ensure a room is always available with our 48-hour guarantee1
• Extend your stay until 4:00 p.m. with a late check out request
• Book reservations through an exclusive Diamond line

Again, the last for are hard to quantitatively justify what the monetary value is, but I’m assuming for most stays it shouldn’t be valued that much. For all of the benefits above, perhaps you could put a $200 value on it.

My understanding of mattress run is that the sole purpose of stays is to accumulate elite stay/night credit. So if you’re at 20 stays, and you’re five short, it’d only make sense if the price of the rooms were less than the monetary benefit of the status which I’ve just detailed.

This means the total valuation for being Hyatt Diamond (and whether you should mattress run for Hyatt) is $2225, give or take a few hundred dollars USD! This excludes all the warm fuzzy feelings from being treated generally well by Hyatt and the DYKWIA (for only some people! :P) of being a top-tier member, which of course require a helicopter pad and an room for a giraffe. 😉 As always my calculations are by no means authoritative, and could be completely and totally off given that I’m not a typical Hyatt Diamond member. This also excludes any additional promos which favour elites, closed club lounges, and more leverage to get compensation if something goes wrong. This also excludes benefits on award stays which depending on how many award stays you have relative to your paid stays, would increase the valuation anywhere from 30-100%.

But this isn’t the same for me.

Here’s my valuation, which is much much more conservative. I’ll explain why later on, but let me give you some values first:

• Achieve rewards even faster with a 30% point bonus when choosing points

I very conservatively value Hyatt points at 1.15 cents, which conservatively places a value of $345 on how much I would be willing to pay for the 30,000 point Park Hyatts of the world, which seems reasonable to me. The only difference is that I’m fairly sure that my spend would be much, much lower. I’m estimating that I’m spending around $3000 to complete the challenge. It seems very high I’m sure, but given that I’d be burning points if I didn’t pay the cash rate and that points are worth something too, I’m sure (or I hope!) that the actual spend from foregoing other brands and points stays will result in a much lower “pure” cost to achieve Diamond status.

I’m almost 100% sure that after completing the challenge I’ll have another 5-10 stays/nights at Hyatts, given my crazy burning of points given all the devaluations this year. At $270 on average per night (since I do a lot of FHR stays), that’s an additional 6,095 points. At 1.15 cents, this is worth around $90 to me.

• Enjoy the best room available upon arrival, excluding suites

$50, because on FHR rates and/or with other elite statuses which I can acquire and maintain for free also have some sort of an upgrade. I do understand that top-tier status is always better than mid/top-tier status that’s essentially given away but I don’t value that honestly. Maybe once in a while I’ll get an incredible upgrade, but outside of that, I wouldn’t value this as more than $50.

• Receive exclusive access to the Regency Club or Grand Club lounge featuring complimentary continental breakfast and evening hors d’oeuvres. Enjoy daily complimentary full breakfast in hotels without a club lounge

I’m cheap. So I would value the regency club at fast food (or slightly above that) prices and breakfast prices at starbucks prices for coffee and a pastry, because that’s what I would actually pay. If I did a Diamond challenge that would mean 12 nights with at least another ~8 paid stays during the qualification period. Or maybe I wouldn’t have any more paid stays but I’d have 8 award stays. In any case, in total this benefit for me is worth $160.

• Treat yourself to a suite upgrade at the time of reservation four times annually on eligible paid nights

I actually don’t value extra space that much. Maybe it’s because I’m young, or I don’t have a lot of stuff and I don’t need a lot of space, but to me each night in a suite if I had to pay for it would be worth around $15 per night, which might be super low, but that’s what I would pay if I was given the option to upgrade at a hotel like the Andaz West Hollywood from a standard room to a suite. At 16 nights, that’s worth $240.

• Receive a special welcome point bonus or food and beverage amenity during each stay

1,000 points times 10 guaranteed stays (20 nights) at 1.15 cents is worth $115 for me.

• Receive a nightly room refresh

Negligible. I place no value on this benefit.

• Receive the confirmed bed type at check-in

Negligible. I sleep as well on any bed as long as it is wider than a first class bed and is a real mattress 🙂

• Stay connected with complimentary in-room Internet access

Negligible. I can get internet from most other chains and I’m sure many non-chain hotels would offer this for free.

• Expedite check-in at a dedicated area for elite members

Negligible.

• Ensure a room is always available with our 48-hour guarantee

Negligible. I would never pay rack rate for a room and I definitely have no need to.

• Extend your stay until 4:00 p.m. with a late check out request

Negligible. AMEX FHR and Virtuoso rates have this as well as elite status from the other loyalty programs.

• Book reservations through an exclusive Diamond line

Negligible.

The total from my calculations is that I value Hyatt Diamond status (for one year, whether I requalify or not), at $655. This is the pure value of Hyatt Diamond status for me. So if I already have 9 paid stays planned given my travel with Hyatt, it’s whether the extra mattress nights cost less than $655.

Here’s the chart comparing both valuations.

My valuation is much lower because of two important points. First of all, I have no work stays at the moment. This means that all my travel is out of pocket, and also thus is dependent on my travel plans. Given the devaluations, I’ve been spending quite a lot of airline miles to lower my balance and stop hoarding. But even with this travel, I’m not sure whether I’m going to spend 25 stays/50 nights at Hyatt, so I’ve just calculated the numbers based on the fact that I will do 12 paid nights during the challenge to qualifying for the entire year, and that I have certain stays already planned/booked so I am guaranteed to have x number of elite stay/night credits, excluding any additional travel that I book.

The most important point, though, is that I don’t see Hyatt is not the only game in town. I have Hilton Gold (thanks to Milepoint Premium), SPG Gold (thanks to AMEX Plat), Accor Plat (which is essentially useless) and PC Gold (which is totally useless). The first valuation, in my opinion, neglects the fact that there are other loyalty programs as well. Of these programs I believe at least one of them offers continental breakfast, most offer free wifi and usually a line about a room upgrade which is generally unenforceable. So this already matches a lot of the benefits that Hyatt has, resulting in the bulk of my valuation coming from full breakfast/club lounge access, and confirmed diamond upgrade certificates.

Furthermore, while the cash difference is significant for suites and breakfasts, these numbers are inflated for me and by no means would I be willing to pay the upgrades for suites at the Park Hyatt Paris, for example. Maybe I’d pay for a $40+ breakfast once (even once I’d be hesitant to do though), so my valuation of breakfast at $8 is fair given that’s what I’d actually spend if I didn’t have this status.

Since I stay many fewer nights than other bloggers (but a lot of mine tend to be very reasonably priced stays stacked with FHR Benefits and promos), the breakfast, upgrade, and late checkout benefits are negligible for me and thus again I don’t put a very high valuation on those. I’m sure Hyatt Diamond status guests are probably treated better than those on Virtuoso/FHR stays (unless you’re high value and you have an awesome TA) but the tradeoff is the lack of reach of Hyatt. So the balance between the benefits of being a free-agent with Fine Hotel and Resort stays versus staying with Hyatt I’d say is pretty fair and neither side in my opinion has a significantly higher value than the other. Certainly this isn’t a strict divide, and there are lots of Hyatt properties which are in Fine Hotels and Resorts. I wrote about Fine Hotel and Resort Rates earlier here.

So this is the end of my analysis. Now I’m sure now some of you are thinking what a spoiled brat I am spending all my parent’s money, ahah. Well I do acknowledge that I do have trouble keeping spending in check (thank god for my parents or I would be so screwed) but I’ve never said that I’m perfect like everyone else (thinks they) are. I do pay for all my travel myself, so I do spend a significant portion of my income on travel! I’m sure at the end of it all it wouldn’t be much higher than my classmates spending $$$ on economy class tickets and budget hotel/hostels but the difference is that I get all this luxury travel. I hope that answers your questions/concerns. Do I deserve it? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So Why am I talking about myself?

Because whenever you value elite status, you should think about what other options you have. Everyone’s stay patterns, valuations, and willingness to pay are going to differ, but you have to ALWAYS look at the alternatives. Loyalty shouldn’t make you irrational, even though miles and point definitely cloud my judgement. Probably, your numbers would fall somewhere between a “typical” Diamond member valuation, and my valuation.

Whenever I get to it I will write the second part which will be the “cost of the Diamond Challenge.” I’m not sure if writing this post at 1am helped or hindered my judgement. 😛

What do you think? I hope you liked this post! 🙂

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