Another Category 1 Hyatt Place Award to the Rescue

Frequent readers of this blog know that I’m a huge fan of Hyatt and its World of Hyatt loyalty program. I love how we can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt and get more value than transfers to Marriott.

My family has used points to stay at some fabulous Hyatt resorts in Costa Rica, Texas and Florida. But, we’ve also used points to stay at regular, nondescript Hyatt hotels for an inexpensive award night.

Another Category 1 Hyatt Place Winner

Last weekend, my husband was meeting up with some childhood friends in Fort Worth for a concert (Iron Maiden). His friends were driving in from other parts of Texas, and he hadn’t seen them for a while. Originally, they planned to meet up for dinner before the show to catch up. However, a last-minute school activity for my son forced a slight change of plans, and my husband could no longer get to Fort Worth early for dinner.

So, they decided to meet up at the concert and then catch up at breakfast the next morning. The only problem is that we live kinda far from Fort Worth. We’re in the northeast suburbs of Dallas, and on a good traffic day, the drive is at least a solid hour (likely more) each way. My husband would have to make that drive late at night after the concert and then early again the next morning. Not so fun.

He looked into staying at the same hotel as his friends, but it was running $250 for the night. The cheapest cash rate we could find for a hotel in the area was around $160. With our upcoming house move, that’s money we didn’t want to spend right now.

We don’t have many hotel points right now, but I decided to look into Hyatts in the area. Sure enough, we found Hyatt Place Fort Worth/CityView was close to their destination. It’s a Category 1 hotel and only costs 5000 points (cash price for that night was ~$160). Since we had some Chase Ultimate Rewards, we transferred those to my husband’s Hyatt account and made the same-day reservation. Done! No more late night/early morning long driving.

There’s nothing spectacular about this Hyatt Place. It looks like almost every other Hyatt Place around. But, it had comfortable beds and a convenient location (plus free breakfast which in this case my husband and son didn’t use since they met up with friends for breakfast). For some reason, the hotel gave them a $10 voucher for snacks, which my son used for cake and a drink after the concert.

This isn’t the first time we’ve utilized a Category 1 Hyatt Place in the DFW area. We booked another one close to our home the night before our niece joined us on our European vacation. We don’t have a spare guest room in our house, but with a Category 1 Hyatt Place close by, who needs it?