Can Hyatt promo codes override seasonal cancellation policies?

Over the New Year holiday I braved the madness that is flying Southwest Airlines and took a weeklong trip down to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. While putting the trip together, I noticed something curious as I sifted through the hundreds of hotels lining Quintana Roo’s coast: using a Hyatt promo code seemed to remove the restrictive cancellation policy at the hotel I ultimately chose. Since I didn’t need to cancel the stay, I’m not certain this is replicable or even useful, but I wanted to put the possibility on readers’ radars.

Planning my stay

Sparing the details of how I narrowed down the options, I finally settled on the Thompson Playa Del Carmen Main House, which had a nice combination of being both “in town” as opposed to the isolated beachfront resort hotels and a Hyatt property which at 15,000 points per night was an order of magnitude cheaper than any other hotel I was seriously considering.

The plan was complicated, in a good way, by the fact that I had two stackable American Express Offers, one for $60 off $300 spent at any Thompson in the world, and the second for $100 off $400 spent at any Hyatt property in Latin America. I also had over $1,000 in Hotels.com gift cards I got from Cardcash in an earlier gift card exchange.

This meant I wanted to break my weeklong stay into three pieces: paying for the most expensive nights with Hyatt points and a free night award certificate, paying for the cheapest night with my American Express card in order to trigger $160 off $400 (I used room charges to “top up” my bill to $400, since the cheapest of the 7 nights was only $379.90 after tax), and paying for the remaining nights using my Hotels.com gift card.

Cancellation policies, promo codes, and “Pay Your Way”

Since I was looking for the cheapest night to pay with my American Express card, I started on my irregularly-updated Hotel Promotions page and saw that the promo code “GOJALIN15” was offering up to 15% off paid stays. When I plugged that code into Hyatt’s “Special Offer Code” field, the rate popped right up.

This Thompson property, at least between Christmas and Epiphany (apparently a big deal in Quintana Roo), had a 30-day cancellation policy on award reservations and on all the normal paid rates I found. Inside of that 30-day window, no changes or cancellations were permitted without forfeiting the entire price of the stay.

The GOJALIN15 rate did not have that restriction. Instead, it had the standard 3-day cancellation policy you’ll find on stays if you go searching right now. This wasn’t particularly interesting on its own: I only wanted to book one night with cash, and the 30-day cancellation rate was much cheaper than the GOJALIN15 rate.

What got my attention was that when I clicked through the GOJALIN15 rate, I was offered the ability to “PAY MY WAY,” Hyatt’s booking feature that allows you to combine paid nights and award nights on a single stay. And using that option, the favorable cancellation policy passed through to the PAY MY WAY booking page.

Two observations follow from this, one actionable, the other merely interesting. The interesting point is that some (or all!) coupon codes generate PAY MY WAY-eligible rates; typically only "standard” and “member” rates are eligible for PAY MY WAY, so it’s nice to be able to identify potential future exceptions.

The more practical consideration is that if you plan to redeem points for a stay with unfavorable cancellation conditions, but can use a coupon code that applies more generous terms to the whole stay, then you might be able to “buy” a more flexible cancellation policy by paying for one night of the stay with cash.

Additional considerations

That’s the potential play, as far as it goes, but there are two more wrinkles.

First, it seems that even if you use PAY MY WAY on a coupon code with favorable cancellation terms, if you pay entirely with points or award certificates, then the stay is treated entirely as an award stay and the cancellation terms revert to the standard ones after making the reservation. In other words, you can’t change the cancellation policy on an award reservation merely by clicking the PAY MY WAY button.

I say “after” making the reservation because all through the booking process the more generous coupon code terms were shown. It was only after making my reservation and receiving the confirmation e-mail that I saw the 30-day cancellation policy on my reservation. I think this gives you a pretty airtight case for having the more favorable terms manually applied, as long as you are sure to take plenty of screenshots during the booking process.

Second, because I didn’t ultimately make a “mixed” PAY MY WAY reservation, I don’t know if the same thing would have happened in that case. If so, I still think the case for invoking the “original” more generous terms would be ironclad, but it’s never ideal to get into a position where the score is up to the ref.

Conclusion

I’m aware that what I’m describing is a fairly advanced corner case. You need to have a working coupon code that is set up with favorable cancellation terms (GOJALIN15 expires February 28, 2024), a property with unfavorable cancellation terms during your stay, and a stay with at least one paid night cheap enough to justify paying in cash to swap the cancellation policies — plus the willingness to fight for your points back if you do need to cancel the reservation in the window between the favorable and unfavorable policies.

And if you don’t ultimately cancel the reservation, then you’ll never know whether it “worked” or not!