Hyatt Hotels is the small player among the major global hotel loyalty programs with a little more than 600 hotels worldwide for earning and redeeming Hyatt Gold Passport points. Hilton HHonors, Marriott Rewards, IHG Rewards Club, Wyndham Rewards and Choice Privileges each represent an opportunity for earning and burning points at 4,500 to over 7,000 hotels.
Club Carlson has about 1,400 hotels in Radisson brands, Park Inn, Park Plaza and Country Inns and Suites. The company recently sold to Chinese investors. France-based Le Club Accor Hotels represents about 2,500 hotels of nearly 4,000 hotels worldwide in the Accor chain with several of its economy brands not participating in the loyalty program. Smaller hotel chains like Starwood, Fairmont and Kimpton were purchased by the larger chains of Marriott, Accor and IHG over the past couple years.
All these merger and acquisitions in the hotel industry beg the question, “Is Hyatt Hotels going to be sold?â€. The upper upscale and luxury segments of Hyatt Hotels would enhance IHG or Wyndham, both programs with weaker global high-end market segments. InterContinental and Kimpton are luxury brands for IHG, but there is a competitive absence in IHG at the upper upscale hotel segment that would be filled in nicely with 200 hotels in Hyatt Regency and Centric brands. IHG Crowne Plaza is ranked upscale in STR Chain Scale 2016. The industry predictions are mostly aligned on the viewpoint there will be more hotel chain consolidation in 2017. Hyatt seems like a chain that will either buy or sell to be more competitive in the global market.
Hyatt Hotels data below are quick numbers based on the 2016 second quarter financial report for the company.
Observations:
Hyatt Hotels as a chain are expensive with even the average Hyatt Place room rate pushing $130. Hampton Inn is $120, Marriott’s Fairfield Inn is $110 and SpringHill Suites is $122. Starwood’s Four Points is $110 and Aloft $116. Granted, I prefer the room design at Hyatt Place over the other brands, although SpringHill Suites is probably the closest competitive brand to Hyatt Place in terms of hotel design.
Hyatt House with an average daily rate over $150 per night is significantly higher priced than most other extended stay brands. The advantage for Hyatt Gold Passport as a small chain with a captive loyalty following is the ability to price their hotels higher than the competition. Hilton Homewood Suites have a $135 ADR for this same period and Marriott Residence Inn comes in at $142 and only earns 50% points at 5 points/$1 compared to 10 points/$1 for SpringHill Suites $122 ADR.
I tend to only stay at extended stay hotels when I find a low rate deal and usually with IHG Candlewood Suites $82 ADR or Staybridge Suites $116 ADR. Looking at these room rate comparisons probably explains why Staybridge Suites are full most of the time I want to book an extended stay. Most of the extended stay hotel brands across Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, and Marriott run at 80% occupancy.
The main issue I have with Hyatt Hotels is the reward category creep that pushed so many hotels up from categories 1-4 to 5-7. For years I pointed to Hyatt and Marriott as two examples of consumer friendly reward programs offering the vast majority of their hotels in the bottom half of reward categories. Since the financial recession and 7 years of consecutive monthly room rate growth, both of these programs made massive shifts of hotels to higher categories. The Hyatt Gold Passport Visa card benefit of a free category 4 hotel reward night annually becomes less useful each year for a hotel stay at an upper upscale Hyatt.
Loyalty Traveler Next Steps:
Club Carlson and Best Western Rewards do not offer comparable data reporting on brand numbers and daily rates to the pieces I have already completed. I’ll write up what I can gather from their reports and add Accor Hotels to my hotel chain profile series.
Now that I have covered nearly all the major hotel chains for brand size and ADR, a look at hotel reward category distribution is another project I will develop. I have several years of comparative data from past articles on Loyalty Traveler to show how hotels have continued to rise in reward category rather than remain distributed among categories.
Related Loyalty Traveler articles in the hotel chain profile series
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