Secrets St. Lucia Resort & Spa opened on Choc Bay in June 2025, which means it's been welcoming guests for about 11 months as I write this. That's important context, because the first wave of "new resort on the Hyatt chart" coverage hit before anyone could actually stay there and bring back receipts. The category placement has now held through a high season, the all-inclusive operation has had time to find its rhythm, and the points math is no longer theoretical. This is a Category C all-inclusive that prices out, at off-peak, at roughly 2.1 cents per point against the published Hyatt baseline of 1.7. That's the headline. The rest of this guide is what to do with it.

The Property in 60 Seconds

Secrets St. Lucia Resort & Spa is the first Secrets-branded property on the island, sitting on Choc Bay on the northwest coast, a stretch of beach about 75 to 90 minutes north of Hewanorra International (UVF), or a much quicker hop from George F.L. Charles (SLU) if you can connect through a regional carrier. Hyatt's press release on the opening covers the official details, but the practical version is this: 355 adults-only rooms, full all-inclusive, five à la carte restaurants plus a buffet, plus a crêperie, a grill, and a café, and seven bars. The Preferred Club tier (the brand's upgraded room categories, though I'll get to what that means in a minute) adds a dedicated lounge, a private beach area, and swim-out suites that exist in every building.

The "first Secrets on the island" part matters more than it sounds. Secrets is an AMR Collection brand under Hyatt's all-inclusive umbrella, which means it sits in the same family as Zoëtry, Dreams, Breathless, and the rest of the Inclusive Collection. Until June of last year, if you wanted to redeem Hyatt points on an all-inclusive in St. Lucia, you had exactly one option: Zoëtry Marigot Bay, on the other side of the island. Now there are two real choices, and they're built for different trips. More on that below.

The Points Math

World of Hyatt's all-inclusive award chart runs categories A through G. Secrets St. Lucia is Category C, which costs:

  • 21,000 points off-peak
  • 25,000 points standard
  • 29,000 points peak

Those numbers are per room, per night, for up to two guests, and they're all-inclusive: food, drinks, non-motorized water sports, the lot. Cash rates at the property currently start around $449 per night for two guests in the lowest room categories, climbing into the $600s and $700s as you move up into Preferred Club rooms and into peak weeks.

Run the redemption math at off-peak and you land at roughly 2.1 cents per point ($449 ÷ 21,000 = 2.14 cpp). For reference, our house valuation on Hyatt points is 1.7 cpp, so off-peak Secrets clears that bar comfortably. Standard dates at $449 against 25,000 points pencils out at 1.8 cpp, still above baseline. Peak weeks are where the value compresses. At 29,000 points against a cash rate that may or may not move up proportionally, you want to actually price the dates you're considering against the points cost. The published peak windows around Christmas, New Year's, and the February dry-season high don't always come with proportional cash-rate increases on a property this new, so peak redemptions are the most situational of the three.

The comparison that matters for Caribbean Hyatt all-inclusives: Zoëtry Marigot Bay is Category D (25,000 / 29,000 / 33,000), Hyatt Ziva and Zilara Cap Cana run Category D as well, and Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancún sits at Category C alongside Secrets St. Lucia. So you're paying the same points for Secrets that you'd pay for the Cancún property, but you're getting an adults-only Caribbean-island resort instead of a Mexican mainland family resort. That's the trade.

The Transfer-Partner Pipeline

You don't earn 21,000 World of Hyatt points sitting around. You move them in. The two transfer relationships that matter are both 1:1:

If you hold a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve and you've been sitting on a stash of Ultimate Rewards points, this is the cleanest transfer use case on the chart. Four nights off-peak at Secrets St. Lucia costs 84,000 Hyatt points. The current Sapphire Preferred welcome bonus by itself, sized as it has been for most of the year, covers a four-night off-peak stay outright. A Sapphire Reserve welcome plus a quarter of normal everyday spend can fund a five-night peak stay without breaking a sweat. I keep our running playbook on stocking up Hyatt points updated for exactly this reason. Hyatt redemptions are where the value lives, and the path in is Chase or Bilt.

Bilt is the underrated pipeline here. If you're paying rent through Bilt, you're earning Hyatt-transferable currency on what's typically a household's largest monthly expense, and Bilt runs periodic transfer bonuses to specific partners. I won't tell you to wait for a Hyatt transfer bonus. Bilt has run more Hyatt bonuses than most flexible-currency programs, but waiting on one to materialize before you book a high-season Caribbean stay is asking for the dates to be gone. Transfer when you're ready to book, and treat any bonus as upside.

The other angle worth mentioning if you're a World of Hyatt cardholder: your free night certificate from Category 1-4 (or the Cat 1-7 from the Brand Explorer tier) won't work at Secrets. All-inclusive properties on the alphabet chart sit outside the free-night cert program. The cobrand earns useful base Hyatt points and gets you Discoverist status, but the cert math is separate from the all-inclusive math. Keep them in different mental buckets.

When Secrets Isn't the Right St. Lucia Hyatt

The case for redeeming points at Secrets St. Lucia is strong, but it's not the only Hyatt-connected option on the island, and it isn't the right pick for everyone.

Zoëtry Marigot Bay sits on the southwest coast in one of the most photographed bays in the Caribbean. It's smaller, more intimate, and the wellness-and-tranquility positioning of the Zoëtry brand is real (think shorter buffets, smaller pools, fewer bars). It's also a Category D redemption (25,000 off-peak vs. Secrets' 21,000), so you're paying 4,000 more points per night for a different kind of stay. If your read on this trip is "I want a quieter, smaller, more secluded all-inclusive and I'm willing to spend the marginal points," Zoëtry is the pick. If your read is "I want a bigger resort with seven bars, five à la cartes, swim-outs in every building, and the points to actually stretch across multiple nights," Secrets is it.

Rabot Hotel from Hotel Chocolat is the wild card. It's a Hyatt-affiliated property (Mr. and Mrs. Smith side of the integration) sitting on a working cocoa estate in the rainforest near Soufrière, with views of the Pitons. It's not all-inclusive, it's small, and the redemption math is completely different from the AMR chart. But if you're combining a few nights of resort with a few nights of "I want to be in the rainforest looking at the Pitons every morning," splitting a trip between Secrets and Rabot is the genuinely advanced play. The Mr. and Mrs. Smith integration into Hyatt has opened up exactly this kind of itinerary split.

The pattern I'd encourage: don't think of the three properties as competitors. Think of them as three different trips. Secrets is the seven-night beach reset. Zoëtry is the four-night honeymoon-or-anniversary stay. Rabot is the half of the itinerary that makes the trip feel like St. Lucia and not a generic Caribbean island.

What "All-Inclusive" Actually Means Here

The food-and-drink program at Secrets is the real reason the Category C redemption holds up against the cash rate. The five à la carte restaurants cover Italian, French, seafood, pan-Asian, and Mexican, with no surcharges and no upcharges on premium liquor. The grill and crêperie sit beachside; the café handles morning espresso and afternoon snacks. Seven bars means you're never more than a short walk from a drink, and the pool bars get the volume during the day while the lounge bars run later into the evening.

The Preferred Club tier is the upgrade-or-not decision most readers will face. The book-direct cash differential between a base room and Preferred Club typically runs $100 to $150 per night. On a points stay, Preferred Club rooms either book at the same Category C rate (if the room category isn't differentiated on the points side) or require a paid upgrade at check-in. As of this writing, the property has been honoring Preferred Club at the standard Category C points cost on lower-tier Preferred Club rooms in some booking windows, but that's the kind of thing that changes property by property and quarter by quarter, so call to confirm before you bank on it.

What you get with Preferred Club: a dedicated lounge with continental breakfast and evening canapés, a private beach area with reserved cabanas, and, in the brand's stated configuration, swim-outs in every building. The swim-out access alone is the closest thing to a "use the points for the higher room category" pitch I've seen at a Category C property this year.

Guest of Honor benefits apply at Secrets the same as at any Hyatt all-inclusive. If a Globalist friend books you a stay using their nights or points, you receive their full elite treatment for the duration. This is the single most under-used Hyatt benefit in the program, and it's the reason a meaningful number of Globalist members carry the status year over year.

The Practical Stuff

The airport. Hewanorra (UVF) is the big international entry point and handles most of the U.S. and U.K. nonstops. From UVF, plan on 75 to 90 minutes by car to Choc Bay depending on traffic. The resort can arrange transfers, third-party companies do it for less, and boat transfers (which used to be the slick option) are running again but are weather-dependent. If your flight options route you through SLU instead, the drive from Castries down to Choc Bay is closer to 15 minutes, a meaningful difference if you land late.

The booking window. Off-peak dates are the redemption you actually want. The Caribbean shoulder seasons (May to early June, September to early November) get you off-peak point pricing and weather that's still warm and dry most days. The hurricane window technically runs June through November, with peak risk in August-September; St. Lucia sits in the southern Caribbean, which generally fares better than the northern islands, but it's not immune. If you book in the storm window, the usual travel-hacking risk points apply: get appropriate trip protection, and consider comparing travel insurance options if your card benefits don't cover what you need. For flight pricing, Going's deal alerts cover the Caribbean routes regularly and are how I tend to find the cheap UVF fares when I'm being patient.

When to book. Hyatt's award inventory at the new all-inclusives has been generous through the first year, but that's the kind of pattern that compresses as the property fills its booking calendar. For Christmas, New Year's, and February dry-season weeks, book six to nine months out. For shoulder-season off-peak, four to six weeks of lead time has been fine.

Bottom Line

Secrets St. Lucia is the Caribbean Hyatt all-inclusive that finally gives points-payers a Category C adults-only resort with real scale and a real Preferred Club tier. The redemption math clears the baseline at off-peak and standard pricing, the transfer pipeline through Chase and Bilt is the cleanest path on the chart, and the existence of Zoëtry Marigot Bay and Rabot Hotel as alternatives means a points-funded St. Lucia trip can be three different shapes depending on what you actually want. If you've been sitting on a Chase Ultimate Rewards balance and waiting for the obvious redemption to come along, this is it. Book the off-peak shoulder week, transfer the points when you have the dates, and skip the cash-rate sticker shock entirely.

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