A couple of years back Kim and I got the Hyatt credit card. At the time, the signup bonus came with two free nights at any Hyatt property in the world.
After much thought, we used our free nights for a stay at the new Park Hyatt St Kitts. (Check out my review of our family visit to the property here.)
Besides those two free nights, the Hyatt credit card comes with one free night each year at any Category 1-4 hotel or resort on your cardmember anniversary.
Throughout the year, I hoped that our (combined) two free nights would come in handy during one of our trips. To my dismay, the free nights were of no use for trips that we planned to destinations like France, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay and Iceland.
With the expiration dates coming close, I needed to book a two-night Hyatt stay which created an unnecessary trip. (Regardless, in the end, it ended up being a lot of fun.)
I started looking into some ideas of where I could take Lucas. (Kim had work and Theo is in daycare over the summer.) For the stay I didn’t want to fly and I also wanted the drive to be within a few hours of our home in Brooklyn, NY.
I narrowed our options down to Philadelphia (a level 4 property) or Mystic, Connecticut (a level 3 property).
We love visiting Philadelphia and typically visit 1-2 times per year. In fact, we had been there a couple of months back.
Mystic is an area that I’ve wanted to check out for years. It’s a small New England town with good seafood and a top-notch aquarium which would appeal to Lucas. And, I could stop in New Haven each way to eat some delicious pizza!
In the end, the Hyatt Place Mystic was our pick!
You are probably wondering if this was a good deal. I know, I went with a Category 3 and I was allowed to book properties up to a Cat 4.
I’d say that value is in the eye of the beholder and I think that we did just fine.
The Hyatt card comes with a $95 annual fee. To come out ahead, you obviously want to book a room which is a good amount pricier than that.
Had I paid for our two free nights, night one would’ve cost $221.63 with tax. Night two would’ve been a ridiculous $340.51 with tax! So like I said, I think we did pretty well!
Final Thoughts:
If you look at the prices, $190 for two annual fees got us $562.14 in hotel bookings. If I didn’t have the free nights to use, we wouldn’t have booked this stay so I can’t say that I really got that exact kind of value.
Regardless, we had a great time and Lucas was thrilled that his older cousin joined us for our little Connecticut adventure.
Where have you used your Hyatt anniversary free nights? Did you feel that you got a good value?
We used our two free nights + one extra free night we earned for a stay at the Confidante in Miami. We wanted a quick getaway and this was a good use. Room rates were $250 and they waived the resort fee.
I do wish Hyatt would let you use a miles or cash co-pay to stay at higher point hotels. There were several hotels we would have stayed in but were category 5. It would be great if you were able to use these certs + 5k miles to stay at a category 5 and so on. They effectively would double as discounted category 5 to 8 certs.