Don't forget resort fees when pricing Guest of Honor awards on paid stays

World of Hyatt elite “milestones” are, in addition to being a clever marketing gimmick, one source of additional value you accumulate as you earn elite qualifying nights each year. I recently broke down their value methodically here and shared my experience with “2K Next Stay Awards.”

At 40, 60, 70, 80, 90 elite-qualifying nights, and every 10 nights after 110 elite-qualifying nights, you automatically earn Guest of Honor Awards in addition to an award you choose. These awards allow you to give anyone (including yourself) the “in-hotel” benefits of being a Globalist elite. In addition to the breakfast and lounge access benefits most people are familiar with, and the guaranteed 4:00 pm checkout that’s my own favorite benefit, Globalists and Guests of Honor also get resort fees waived on paid stays.

The tricky part is that Hyatt does not remove resort fees from their pricing summary when you apply Guest of Honor awards online, which, if you’re not aware of it, will cause you to misvalue your World of Hyatt points.

You can see this clearly in these two screenshots, where a resort fee appears at checkout whether or not a Guest of Honor award is attached to the reservation:

Most of the time this doesn’t make a decisive difference: World of Hyatt points are usually so valuable that whether they’re “slightly more” or “slightly less” valuable doesn’t impact your booking decision.

Once you’re aware of the issue, however, it’s easy to imagine corner cases like the one I stumbled into at The Lodge At Spruce Peak, where I found the rates shown above. A Category 8 property, the hotel starts at 35,000 points per night during “off-peak” periods, and costs between 40,000 and 45,000 points per night during ski season.

At $424.08 per night off-peak, that’s already a marginal points redemption at 1.21 cents per point; you could book it through the Chase travel portal for fewer Ultimate Rewards points than transferring them to Hyatt.

But at the true price of $376.38 (after subtracting the waived resort fee and tax), it’s a truly godawful redemption at just 1.08 cents per point.

Conclusion

In the grand scheme of things, properties that charge resort fees are likely on the more expensive end of Hyatt’s portfolio, and thus likely to be solid enough point redemptions that a waived resort fee won’t change your booking calculus. But at highly seasonal properties, cash rates may drop by much more than points rates, while resort fees stay flat and make up a larger share of the total cost in cash.

In those circumstances, applying a Guest of Honor award to a paid rate may turn a marginal redemption into an outright bad one.