Swap expired World of Hyatt free night awards for points

I recently found myself in the unfortunate position of having to cancel a Hyatt stay booked with a Category 1-7 free night award that was itself just days from expiration. As a reminder, these are awards that you receive after accumulating 60 and 100 qualifying nights each calendar year (the slightly more generous “Ultimate” free night award is earned after 150 qualifying nights and can be used anywhere), and are redeemable for any Category 1-7 property and all-inclusive resorts up to Category D, whenever standard rooms are available.

This isn’t a situation you should find yourself in all that often, especially now that these awards are transferrable (sellable) to any World of Hyatt member: you earn free night awards by earning qualifying nights, so in principle any qualifying night you’re paying for with cash or points should instead be bookable with free night awards, especially Category 1-7 free night awards, since that covers virtually the entire World of Hyatt portfolio of hotels.

Nevertheless, that’s the exact situation I found myself in: I’d booked a long weekend in New York City at the Andaz 5th Avenue for the end of April, but had to cancel the trip at almost the last moment, with a Category 1-7 free night award expiring at the beginning of May.

Free night awards have to be redeemed for stays that take place before their expiration date, so I knew there was no way I was going to be able to use it for myself. I could have tried to sell it, but I wasn’t prepared to go hunting for a double coincidence of wants on such short notice. So I called World of Hyatt.

My first call, prior to the expiration of the free night award, had the character of a Tom Stoppard play.

I asked, “can I exchange my free night award for points?”

The young lady on the other end said, “did you know you can transfer your reward to any other World of Hyatt member?”

I said, “yes, can I exchange my free night award for points?”

She said, “we encourage people to try to redeem or transfer their free night awards if at all possible.”

I said, “it is not possible, can I exchange my free night award for points?”

She said, “we sometimes allow for exceptions but we encourage people to try to redeem or transfer their free night awards if at all possible.”

I said, “when would be the correct time to request such an exception?”

She said, “we encourage people are to use their free night awards before they expire.”

I said, “so would the correct time to request an exception be after the free night award has expired?”

She said, “yes.”

So, this week I called World of Hyatt and asked for my expired Category 1-7 free night award to be converted into points and the call lasted, I kid you not, 4 minutes. The agent was able to immediately convert my expired certificate into 20,000 World of Hyatt points.

Is it worth it?

Obviously once your free night award has expired you have a duty to yourself and those you love to call in and ask to have it converted to points. The interesting question is whether it’s worth deliberately allowing them to expire with the goal of getting more value from the points than the award.

And of course there are obvious situations where this is so: my go-to Hyatt in Prague is a Category 2 property that costs as little as 6,500 points off-season: 20,000 points is worth up to 3 nights at that property, compared to one booked with a free night award. If that were the only Hyatt I booked every year, then I’d simply let my single free night award expire and convert it into 3 nights like clockwork.

In fact, however, the World of Hyatt program isn’t especially worth gaming unless you intend to make at least a couple high-level Hyatt award reservations every year. Their footprint is small enough that if you were just making hotel reservations on price you’d have no reason to earn elite status with them at all.

I have not had any trouble getting value from my World of Hyatt free night awards so don’t have any reservations about earning more with the intention of redeeming them for nights that cost more than 20,000 points each. But the option of cashing out expired awards is, for now, still available by phone.