Yesterday I posted about the SVP of Hyatt Loyalty, Jeff Zidell, doing an AMA on reddit concerning Hyatt’s new World of Hyatt loyalty program (coming March 1, 2017)
It was a little tricky to find the AMA (the email Hyatt promised to send with the link was AWOL), but eventually I found the link
Key link: Reddit AMA with Jeff Zidell, SVP Hyatt Loyalty
Hyatt AMA Breakdown
I admire Jeff and Hyatt for taking the time to answer questions in a new format and try to engage directly with consumers. Based on the feedback / comments on my post yesterday, I posted a few of the questions that you guys had for Jeff, and there were several other good questions posted about the new World of Hyatt program.
These types of direct interactions with consumers can go either way – either getting real feedback and interaction or turning into a huge trainwreck. Woody Harrelson’s AMA remains the “gold standard” of what can go wrong in a reddit AMA
Some of the Hyatt AMA questions / “answers”
Unfortunately, I did not get the feeling that Jeff was interested or able in answering some of the really tough questions. While I wasn’t expecting a serious answer to questions like “What is up with the status names and logos that look like it was created by a college intern?” (actual question), I felt that most of the answers were canned answers any intern could have given, whereas I’d have hoped for real feedback into some of the thought processes that went into the World of Hyatt changes.
Here are a few of the questions / “answers”
A question on the MLife partnership
One of the questions I had asked was from commenter martinplas talking about mattress running in Jan and Feb of 2017 to get Globalist status through Mar 2019, and while that question wasn’t answered by Jeff, another redditor pointed me to this View from the Wing post which seemed to indicate that would work
This is not to say that there weren’t ANY answers, but most of the actual answers were not anything strategic, or anything that couldn’t be handled by someone more lower level. Perhaps I’m alone in thinking this, but the draw of this AMA for me was to get someone higher up to really talk through some of the strategy / thinking behind some of Hyatt’s recent changes, especially with regards to the change in loyalty programs.
If you want to read more, you can get the full AMA details at reddit here.
It’s too bad because an AMA like this has the potential to be a great way for brands to interact with real users, but the reddit community is not forgiving of brand executives and/or celebrities inviting people to “ask [them] anything” and then giving canned responses and non-answers. If you look through the AMA, you can see a common theme repeating. Question asked -> Answer from Jeff -> follow up comments stating that this didn’t really answer the question. When the main AMAer’s comments on the thread keep getting voted down…. that’s a sign it’s not going well.
But then…. redemption?
I wrote most of this post while participating in the AMA in real-time, then had to set it down to go somewhere else. But when I went back in to catch the end of it… it got much better! I was pleasantly surprised that even though it was scheduled to just go for 30 minutes that Jeff answered questions for over an hour.
And while I still would have enjoyed a little bit more in-depth discussion, I got a few nuggets that I wasn’t aware of before. Here’s one example indicating that the changes for World of Hyatt were not intended as a cost-savings program
There were a couple of other good comments in there towards the end. So after a rough start, I thought Jeff redeemed things at least a little bit in the second half of the AMA
Were you at the Hyatt reddit AMA? What was your take on things?
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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 
Eliminating stays is a killer, and he gives such a non-answer. Stays are the only way I would have ever qualified for Hyatt Diamond, and they have typically been the way I have qualified for SPG gold (aided by the co-branded Amex card). Most of my non-award stays are 1-2 nights.
Who am I kidding….I can never stay with them anyway, given that the bulk of my work travel is in the Bay Area where rates are obscene, so I settle for the Holiday Inn Express or Four Points.
I didn’t find it useful. Most answers were canned and generic.
Agree, though I think it got better towards the end (if you stuck around that long!! 😀 )
I’ve read it. There is no reason to bother reading it. He didn’t indicate any understanding of people’s concerns and all of his answers were cut & paste. Made me less happy with Hyatt than before.
I personally loved the question from theshelts that pleaded he answer in actual conversational English……”Jeff – can you please tell us (in plain English, not corporate-speak) the single biggest reason that led Hyatt to decide to phase Gold Passport into WofH? ”
So he responded ………….”Sure. Excellent question! Hyatt is a purpose driven company—our purpose is to care for people so they can be their best, and we have been applying this lens to all we do. Mark, our CEO, challenged each of us at the company to reexamine our work with our purpose in mind. For my team and me, that meant taking a fresh look at our loyalty program.
We created World of Hyatt to celebrate the people at the center of our world, our members. We want to reward you more frequently as you engage across our portfolio so we’ve added an additional tier, and also reward you for doing the things you love on our properties, so you can now earn tier status as well as points for dining, spa and other activities.”
The answer was an almost perfect definition of corporate speak.