I got an email from Hyatt this morning mentioning that they are going to be granting people that spent $50,000 or more on their Hyatt card in 2016 to Explorist status in the new World of Hyatt
We wanted to give you the heads up that on March 1, 2017, we are surprising all Hyatt Credit Cardmembers who spent $50,000 or more on their card in 2016 with automatic Explorist tier under the new World of Hyatt loyalty program through February, 2018.
Explorist Benefits
- 20 percent bonus points (on qualifying nights, dining, spa experiences, etc.)
- Four Club lounge access awards annually
- Room upgrade upon arrival
Cardmembers can maintain their Explorist status by spending $50,000 on their Hyatt Credit Card each calendar year, staying 30 qualifying nights or earning 50,000 base points.
Top tier status through spend
I originally was much more excited about this email before I read the whole thing.  Originally I thought that Explorist was top-tier (it’s not; it’s id-tier) – if only their new names made any sense…. 🙂  And plus, spending $50,000 on the credit card is ALREADY a perk granting mid-tier Explorist status going forward – this is just making up for 2016 spend.
While it looks like they have not made the decision to reward big spend on their co-branded credit card with top-tier status (like Hilton does), this is at least a (small) step in the right direction.
This was one of the questions I asked Jeff Zidell, Hyatt’s SVP of Loyalty, when I interviewed him about the World of Hyatt program a few months ago and he responded that they were looking into doing something like this but not committing to anything yet.
Personally I’d be surprised if this affected very many people – if you’re spending $50,000 on the Hyatt credit card, something tells me you’re pretty interested in Hyatt and so I’d be surprised if most of those people weren’t Diamonds already and in line to be Globalists (top-tier)
Will you be affected by the “surprise” granting of Explorist status for Hyatt big spenders?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Pretty easy decision here. How much do you value lounge access on 4 family trips? Maybe $50 per day tops? Personally I’d rather have 50k Chase UR points or SPG points but YmMV
Plus you can easily get lounge access by using points if it’s really that important to you. Agree that 50K Chase UR points would be better especially since if you really wanted to, you could turn those 50K UR into 50K Hyatt points
I’m not seeing the news here, or I’m misreading it. They announced this option when they unveiled WoH last year.
I *think* the news is that they announced this would be a perk of WoH going forward but this is announcing that also people who had 50K spend in 2016 will also get Explorist
Thanks, Dan! Reader error. I forgot we weren’t still in 2016, so I was reading this as current-year spend. 😀