NEW: 700 Mr & Mrs Smith hotels (64 UK) now bookable for cash or points at hyatt.com
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Back in April 2023, Hyatt bought the London-based Mr & Mrs Smith hotel marketing group.
Long term readers will know that Mr & Mrs Smith used to have a deal with IHG One Rewards, whereby certain Smith properties could be booked, for cash or points, via the IHG website.
This ended when Hyatt bought the company. The first batch of 700 Smith hotels have now appeared on hyatt.com.
What is interesting about this deal is that Mr & Mrs Smith is not a hotel brand. It is, at heart, simply a travel agent with a focused niche on upmarket independent leisure hotels.
For Hyatt members, it is similar to the Small Luxury Hotels affiliation which has now ended. (Small Luxury Hotels will be joining Hilton from May.)
700 hotels are available today on the Hyatt website. 64 of these are in the UK. Of the better known names you have:
- The Lygon Arms
- Cowley Manor Experimental
- Grantley Hall (which is amazing, bottom image below)
- The Lakes by yoo
- Lucknam Park
- The Royal Crescent Hotel
- Cliveden
- The Grove
… albeit this list defeats the point somewhat, since Mr & Mrs Smith is really about the boutique properties in the system – such as the shepherd huts at Aller Dorset you can now book (image below).
Mr & Mrs Smith has 2,300 member hotels in total. Further hotels will be added to hyatt.com in time. Some will never join, either due to brand conflicts or by choice. Others are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach or are keen but need to upgrade their IT first. Getting exposure to 40 million World of Hyatt members should prove attractive to many.
Earning and redeeming at Mr & Mrs Smith via World of Hyatt
Here is what you need to know about booking and redeeming Mr & Mrs Smith hotels via World of Hyatt. It is not quite what you may have expected.
Redemptions are revenue based
Here’s the big surprise. Redemptions at Smith hotels will be revenue based. The number of points you need will be the cash price divided by a fixed rate per point.
This appears to average 1.3 – 1.4 cents per World of Hyatt point, looking at a few examples.
One upside here is that you can book any room, even suites, with points as long as you have enough.
At least, this is the plan. At the moment this doesn’t seem to be working as planned and only the cheapest available room category is offered. (This is definitely a bug, because when the cheapest room left is a suite, you are offered the suite on points. When the cheapest room is a shoe box, you get offered the shoe box and not the suite.)
The downside is that you won’t get outsize value. On peak nights in peak destinations, you will need a lot more points. The ‘pence per point’ rate won’t change.
You can’t blame Hyatt for doing this. Smith hotels are not ‘cookie cutter’ and wouldn’t fit easily into the Hyatt reward charts. Economically, it’s also difficult – these hotels are not a Hyatt franchise or managed by Hyatt and they don’t have any obligation to provide reward rooms at peppercorn rates. Instead, Hyatt will be paying the hotel something close to the standard cash rate.
Hyatt’s US ‘Homes & Hideaways’ property rental platform works the same way. You get 1.2 cents per point when you redeem for those.
1.4 cents (1.1p) is below our target redemption value of 1.3p when used for a Hyatt hotel redemption, and you can get a lot better than 1.3p if you try.
You won’t maximise the value of your World of Hyatt points if you use them at Mr & Mrs Smith, but it’s not a terrible deal either.
You earn points at the standard rates
You will earn points at the standard rate – 5 points per $1 spent, before taxes.
Elite members of World of Hyatt will continue to earn a status bonus on top. A Globalist would get a 30% bonus (6.5 points per $1). Based on our 1.3p per point valuation, you’d get a 10.5% return on your pre-tax spending. Even a base member would get (5 points x 1.3p / $1) 8.1% back.
Pricing tends to match the main Mr & Mrs Smith site and this is generally competitive with booking directly with the hotel. This is a big improvement over the Small Luxury Hotels partnership where you could almost always beat the price on hyatt.com.
Anyone working towards World of Hyatt elite status will value the option to earn elite night credits (or spend credit towards elite status) via World of Hyatt.
In the most extreme cases, a 4-5 night stay at Grantley Hall, Cowley Manor etc taking two rooms or a suite for a family would probably earn you Explorist status immediately ($10,000 of pre-tax spend). You’d also be well on the way to top-tier Globalist status ($20,000 of pre-tax spend).
Elite benefits are, unsurprisingly, different
As with the Small Luxury Hotels partnership, Smith hotels are taking a different approach to elite benefits.
Basically, you’re not getting any. No Globalist free breakfast, no guaranteed late check-out etc.
The only thing on offer is that top-tier Globalist members will receive an upgrade ‘if available’ at check in.
Mr & Mrs Smith counts as a brand towards ‘Brand Explorer’
World of Hyatt has this lovely promotion called ‘Brand Explorer’. It runs forever. Every time you stay at a fifth different Hyatt brand, you receive a certificate for a free night at a Category 1 to 4 hotel.
This is a pretty valuable benefit if used wisely. If you got, say, a £150 room for free then it’s equivalent to a £30 rebate on the five stays you did to earn it.
Mr & Mrs Smith counts as a single brand for ‘Brand Explorer’, which will be a good enough reason for many people to try it once. Here’s our article on ‘Brand Explorer’.
Hyatt now has properties in 20 new countries
Because Mr & Mrs Smith hotels are often ‘off the beaten track’ boutique properties, it has expanded the reach of Hyatt into 20 new countries. These include Namibia, Fiji and the British Virgin Islands.
Conclusion
In some ways the Smith partnership seems to offer the opposite of the outgoing Small Luxury Hotels deal:
- cash bookings for SLH hotels rarely made sense via hyatt.com but Smith hotels seem more keenly priced compared to booking direct
- redemptions for SLH hotels could be great value at times because they were based on the existing Hyatt reward chart, whilst Smith hotels will get you a fixed ‘not bad but certainly not great’ redemption value of around 1.1p per point
The big winners are:
- people chasing Hyatt status, since it is now easier to pick up elite qualifying nights or qualifying spend, and
- those who generate huge volumes of Hyatt points (mainly high spending US credit card holders) who now have far more places to redeem
Those who only pick up modest amounts of Hyatt points are probably better saving them for a better-value redemption at a Hyatt-branded property.
Any semi-regular Hyatt guest should make one Smith booking, cash or reward, to tick off a ‘Brand Explorer’ box.
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World of Hyatt update – April 2025:
Get bonus points: Hyatt is not currently running a global promotion
New to World of Hyatt? Read our overview of World of Hyatt here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on what we think World of Hyatt points are worth is here.
Buy points: If you need additional World of Hyatt points, you can buy them here.
Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from Hyatt and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.
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