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Guess Who Won Daily Getaways’ Hyatt Bonus Points Lightning Round?

SharonKurheg
a group of people walking with surfboards on the beach

OK, ‘fess up – how many of you were on the Daily Getaways website at 1pm ET, trying to get the 45% off the World of Hyatt Bonus Points? I know I was.

And do you know who got one?

(Pause for dramatic effect. Dun dun DUUUUNNNNN!)

Welp, I can tell you that it wasn’t me. But to those who did get one – congratulations to you. All 16 of you.

Yep, a whole 16 people.

This year Hyatt offered 3 different quantities of World of Hyatt Bonus Points packages on Daily Getaways:

8+6+2 = 16. SIXTEEN, y’all! To quote Badluck Schleprock (brownie points if you remember what TV show he was from), “Wowsie wowsie woo woo.”

I referred to trying to get one of the packages as a “Lightning Round” because really, with so few packages available, it wasn’t a matter of getting a good deal. It was just who has the luck of perfect timing, the fastest fingers, or maybe simply the best bot to grab one of the packages as soon as the clock hits 1pm.

Despite my being all ready – setting my alarm so I wouldn’t forget, having my World of Hyatt number saved in Firefox so I could quickly paste it in the box to prove my membership, and refreshing the page continuously from 12:59pm onward – I still wasn’t fast enough to snag one of the coveted packages.

As soon as I tried to get the 80k package (Hey, may as well go for the gusto, right? Plus it had the most amount of packages available), I got this notification:

Sorry, this inventory is already on hold for other customers while they complete their order.
But they may choose not to buy it, so here’s what you can do:
• 1. Try Again
• 2. Try selecting a smaller quantity

Of course, I knew it was silly to try again, but I did, just in case. I’m tellin’ ya, the 16 winners must’ve been the slowest keyboardists in history, cuz it took 13 minutes for the 50k package (quantity: 6) to be marked as “Sold Out,” 17 minutes for the 80k package (quantity 8), and a whopping 28 minutes for the 30k package (quantity: 2) to no longer have availability.

Seeing so few opportunities was admittedly disappointing. But my first thought about that was admittedly altruistic. “Well, there was the pandemic and Hyatt was still working at a net loss in the first quarter of 2022. Maybe that’s all they could afford but still be able to put their hat in the ring.” After all, they had the exact same deal in 2021, during Daily Getaways’ abbreviated (just 1 week instead of 2 or 4) promotion, last fall (note the reply that @ww_travel wrote that time around).

But then I looked at previous years, before the pandemic:

2011: Daily Getaway’s inaugural year.

2012: Exactly the same as 2011.

2013: Once again, the amount of points, and price per point package were the same as 2011, except the quantity of 24k points was 100 instead of 95.

2014:

2015: Exactly the same as 2011.

2016: Prices were the same but they messed around a little with the quantities of each package, and there were a few more of each:

2017: Exactly the same as 2016.

2018:

2019: The last year before the pandemic. Again, exactly the same as 2016.

2020: Daily Getaways cancelled due to the pandemic.

So as far back as the beginnings of the promotion, Hyatt’s Daily Getaways deal has never been stellar in terms of quantity. The most they’ve ever offered are 95, 100 or 120 packages of the 24k World of Hyatt Bonus Points. Otherwise it’s been a paltry 15, 25, 30, 35 or 54 packages of anything. Well, before the abysmal offerings of 2021 and 2022.

Don’t get me wrong; Hyatt is, by far, not the only company to offer slim pickings in Daily Getaways. Opportunities in the single and double digits have been a part of Daily Getaways from the beginning of the promotion, over a decade ago. Social media outlets, travel bloggers, etc. have all been saying, “You gotta be quick!” for years. Pretty much, for each opportunity that offers hundreds or even thousands of decent hotel packages or theme park discounts, there’s another one that offers 7 opportunities to stay 3 night in a popular vacation city, or (woo hoo!) 5 opportunities for 2 nights at a big ol’ fancy hotel somewhere.

To those latter examples I say, “Big fat, hairy deal.” Really, why even waste your time when your chances of actually getting one are so minimal?

Daily Getaways is promoted by the US Travel Association, a non-profit organization that represents all components of the travel industry. Their primary goal is to encourage tourism within the United States. I couldn’t find any statistics on how many tourism consumers actually participate in Daily Getaways. But frankly, with the chances of getting some opportunities, as @ww_travel said, “Harder than winning the lottery,” I’d be surprised if many of them keep trying, year after year.

I know I won’t.

But meh…don’t mind me; I’m just bitter cuz I didn’t get the 80,000 World of Hyatt Bonus Points for $960.

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