How Loyalty Pays Off: Earn Up to SIX Free Nights! (World Of Hyatt Brand Explorer Award)

Updated November 14, 2024

This is one of my favorite (and less discussed/known about) World of Hyatt (WoH)’s perks that literally rewards you for trying out hotel brands within the Hyatt Portfolio!

What is the Brand Explorer Award?

Brand Explorer Awards are Free Night Awards (for a stay at Category 1-4 hotel) given for every FIVE unique brands you stay at.

This is quite unique in the hospitality industry as none of Hyatt’s competitors (Hilton, Marriott, IHG, etc) offer anything like this. Another reason along with the fixed award chart with reasonable category based redemptions and guaranteed elite status perks that makes Hyatt beloved by many in the travel hacking world, myself included.

How To Get a Brand Explorer Award

• Pay an Eligible Rate, redeem points or redeem an earned Free Night Award (FNA) at five different Hyatt brands (which must be participating in WOH at time of stay) and earn a FNA at a Category 1-4 hotel. (I love that Hyatt is now allowing award nights using points and a Free Night Award to now count!)
• This is an automatically enrolled lifetime promotion upon signing up for your WOH account, so there is no set time frame for your stays which allows you to proceed at your desired pace.

_{Beautiful tip: these only requires ONE night at a brand to count! This means that you are able to benefit if you like to move around a lot on trip, take short trips or even want to spend one night at a posh hotel to keep (cash or points) costs down!}

Hyatt has made it easy to see what brands you have stayed at. Log into your account and go to Membership > My Account > Brand Explorer. Once a stay is completed at a new brand, you will see a check mark on that brand in your tracker. Once you reach 5 brands, you will receive a free night award!

The tracker on Hyatt’s website shows both your ‘current progress’ towards the next 5-brand threshold, and the number of free night awards you received per 5 brands visited/’awards earned).

I have found that once your stays are reflected in your account, the Brand Explorer is updated as well (and this has typically been within 48 hours of completing a stay for me).

Note that in the Hyatt app, you are able to see you current progress but not the total number of Brand Explorer Awards you have received.

Still a little confused? Think of this like a punch card for a cafe when you are rewarded for trying out different types of items (ie you would earn one punch each for an espresso drink, another for a tea, one for smoothie, another for hot breakfast items, fifth for lunch sandwiches). So you wouldn’t get a punch each for a latte and cappuccino as they are both espresso drinks.

So with Hyatt, staying at the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome and Park Hyatt Beaver Creek would only count once (for the Park Hyatt brand) but if you also stayed at the Hyatt Regency Denver, this would be two brands (Park Hyatt and Hyatt Regency).

Once you have five punches, you earn a free item which can be redeemed for something as simple as a hot tea or a little fancier item like avocado toast (the difference between a Category 1 and 4 hotel). You then start a second punch card when you will earn punches for new items from the first punch card (ie one for pastries, another for desserts, etc) with the ability to complete six punch cards in total.

How Do Brand Explorer Awards Work?

• Brand Explorer Award’s Free Night Awards are redeemable for one night at category 1-4 hotels and resorts.
• They are valid for one year from the date of issuance (note that your stay must be COMPLETED not just booked by the expiration date)
• They are not subject to blackout dates at Hyatt hotels. However, they may not be redeemable where a hotel has a minimum length of stay requirement.
• Note that there are some “award ineligible properties”. For a list of those and complete info on the Brand Explorer free night award; see the terms and conditions.

Redeeming The Brand Explorer Awards

As mentioned earlier, Hyatt still has a fixed award chart and sorts their properties into 8 categories, with 1 as their lowest end properties and 8 as the highest. The Hyatt Brand Explorer reward gives you a free night at Category 1-4 hotel or resort. Note that you cannot use a Category 1-4 free night certificate at all-inclusive properties.

You will receive an email letting you know when you have earned a FNA including a Brand Explorer one (top left). Your free night awards will also show up in your World of Hyatt account under ‘Awards’ for both website and on the app(bottom left).

To redeem your award for a free night, simply search for a category 1-4 hotel with points availability. You will be able to book a night using a FNA directly on the website or app (once you click on the down arrow on available awards, you will be able to select the award as seen in the top right).

Bottom right shows what your reservation details would look like when redeeming a Free Night Award.

Note that your FNA will cover the room rate one (1) night in a standard room so that room type must be available to use these meaning that if only an upgraded room type or suite is available, a FNA could not be applied to the booking.

Another great perk with World of Hyatt is that if you hold elite status, you’ll receive all associated benefits when redeeming a FNA!

It can be confusing to what hotels are classified in these categories but Hyatt has a Hotel Explorer tool where you can filter by region and category. You can then see a map or list view of all potential properties as seen above.

Eligible Brands

Here is a list of the 30 brands you can visit to earn Brand Explorer Awards.

• Park Hyatt
• Grand Hyatt
• Hyatt Regency
• Hyatt
• Hyatt Vacation Club
• Hyatt Place
• Hyatt House
• Hyatt Studios
• UrCove
• Miraval
• Alila (some locations only)
• Andaz
• Thompson Hotels
• Dream (some locations only)
• Hyatt Centric
• Caption by Hyatt
• The Unbound Collection by Hyatt
• Destination by Hyatt
• JdV by Hyatt
• Impression by Secrets
• Hyatt Ziva
• Hyatt Zilara
• Zoëtry
• Secrets
• Breathless
• Dreams
• Hyatt Vivid
• Alua
• Sunscape
• Mr and Mrs Smith

No other brand counts towards earning this award unless expressly specified elsewhere in the Terms and Conditions

How to Identify the Brand

For some of the brands, the name of the hotel will identify the brand such as Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme. On Hyatt.com, you will be able to tell for others where it isn’t so clear by the logo on the top left of the search results (this is a search for Paris, France stay).

Last Thoughts on Hyatt Brand Explorer Award

Loyalty programs can pay off handsomely and this perk with World of Hyatt shows how a program can do this in an extraordinary way! If you are able to use this award at Category 4 hotel during a peak time, you can really maximize the value. I was able to stay at the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile during the summer Olympics in August and used my Brand Explorer Award for one of the nights when the rooms were going for $874.93/€788.55 a night!

Have you been able to earn a Hyatt Brand Explorer Award? Where did you use your FNA?