How to Always Avoid Paying the 1 Night Cancellation Penalty at Hyatt

Hotels typically charge a 1 night cancellation policy, whereby if you don’t cancel the reservation 24 hours prior to the hotel check-in time (in their time zone), you’ll be charged a full night of room rate, regardless of how long your stay is.

This can be quite annoying, especially when plans change at the last minute. Hotels used to be more lenient in their cancellation policies, where you only needed to have it canceled just several hours prior to check-in, which was obviously much more convenient.

There’s a simply way to cancel any Hyatt hotel reservation, at any time, without having to pay the one night’s penalty – and it’s rather simple.

1. Find the reservation number of the stay in question. For ease of explanation, let’s use today, January 2, as the date.

2. Call the Hyatt reservations call center, and ask them to move the reservation to a date of your choice in the future. Don’t cancel the reservation entirely, or mention that you’re intending on cancel it. Just say you’d like to move the reservation to “so and so” date in the future. They’ll send you a change of reservation email, and you won’t be charged for moving the date. Hang up.

3. Call the Hyatt reservations call center again (and make sure you get a different agent on the phone… :)) and tell them you’d like to cancel the reservation on the new date. They’ll cancel the reservation and send you a cancellation email. Again, free of charge.

You’ve just canceled a Hyatt reservation within 24 hours of check-in for free. Congratulations!

To earn enough points to get a free night at any Hyatt property worldwide, consider getting the Hyatt Credit Card.

I myself am a Globalist with Hyatt – but I don’t think that is what influences them being able to move and cancel reservations, as I have many non-Globalist friends able to do this, too. I’m even able to do the same thing with Hilton where I have free Gold status thanks to my Founders Card.