Hyatt Regency Jacksonville: How I scored a Suite for $60

Disclaimer: This blog post is not sponsored by Hyatt and there are no affiliate links in this blog

As a family who likes travelling at least couple of times a year, we are always on a look out for making travel cheaper while not compromising on the experience. If you have been travelling within US chances are that you may at some point in time have experienced a stay with Hyatt. If you have not I would recommend trying one even if its their entry level Category 1 hotels like Hyatt Place and Hyatt House which often offer free breakfast and most of the time free parking. Granted Hyatt has a much smaller footprint than the big hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton but they do have their own exquisite charm and décor. The Points Guy (TPG) has compiled a list of Hyatt hotel brands in US here.

We recently travelled from our home in Charlotte, NC to Gulf Coast along Florida. A 11+ hour drive with an active Toddler in the back seat was an impossible drive, so we decided to take a break mid-way at Hyatt Regency Riverfront hotel Jacksonville, FL. The first time around we booked the standard room with City view but while on our way back much to our delight our standard room was upgraded to a Studio King Riverfront Suite which was a pretty good deal. Not only was the room spacious but overlooking the calm riverfront we were treated to the sight of a pod of Dolphins!! Ya my wife goes bonkers at the sight of Dolphins.

How to score a cheap Hyatt room?

The secret is using points. For Hyatt specifically, using points for booking your stay offers an excellent redemption value on base hotel rates typically in the range of 2 cents per point. But the icing on the top is that you don’t even need to pay any of the taxes and hotel resort fees. This by itself could save you quite a good bit of money.

Although we travel few times a year we don’t “earn” enough points from our stay. So instead we “spend” our way to getting enough points. We make use of credit cards and expenses to rack up a ton of points. I have a Word Of Hyatt credit card that provides Discoverist status and offers some practical benefits like free bottled water, complimentary upgrade (if available), 2 PM Late check-out (if available). Other way is by running a Chase trifecta setup that earns Ultimate Reward points and then transferring them over to Hyatt.

Utilizing points for stay can provide you with wide variety of options. If you are a road warrior then Hyatt Category 1 (5,000 points)/ Category 2 (8,000 points ) hotels would be ideal. But if you are going for those once in a lifetime trip at an expensive Hyatt property then you might want stock up those points for future.

Currently, Hyatt is running a 25% back on using points promotion for World Of Hyatt members plus free parking that further incentives using points for stay. The pricing for the Studio King Suite at Hyatt Regency was as below:

In summary, we got about 4.4 cents per point in value. In other words, we got that suite for more than 75% off which was a good deal.

I would leave you with few of the hotel pics and would encourage you to consider playing the points and miles game to enhance your travel experience.