The best feature of the Hyatt credit card is the anniversary free night certificate.
At renewal every year, you receive a certificate for use at any category 1-4 Hyatt hotel. Hyatt have seven category levels, so the certificate can’t be used at their most prestigious category 5-7 properties.
There are however many properties worldwide where this certificate can provide you with immense value. Some of the most popular locations for using the anniversary free night certificate are the Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf San Francisco, Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill and the Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort in Costa Rica.
A brand new category 4 hotel opened in April 2017 which rivals those hotels for the optimal use of your free night.
The Hyatt House Virginia Beach is located on the oceanfront at 27th St. That puts you just a few blocks away from the Neptune Statue to the north and 24th Street Park with its outdoor concerts to the south.
Breakfast is included, it’s pet-friendly and there’s a heated indoor swimming pool if the weather takes a turn for the worse. All the rooms have private balconies with ocean views, so you can’t really go wrong.
No Availability? Think Again…
Before heading off on our 5 year, 50 state road trip, Shae and I are living in Portsmouth VA – about 30 minutes from Virginia Beach. We each have the Hyatt credit card, so we were keen on using our anniversary free night certificates to check out this new Hyatt House.
Shae’s a middle school teacher, so the weekend after school ended (June 9-11) seemed like the perfect time to have a weekend away.
There was some weirdness going on when I tried to check availability though. As we each have a one night certificate, I tried searching for availability on the Friday night first, then did a separate search for the Saturday night.
The problem was that neither of those nights showed any availability. However, doing a two-night search from Friday to Sunday showed that there were rooms available.
That suggested the Hyatt House Virginia Beach Oceanfront has a two-night minimum stay, at least at weekends during the summer. Seeing as we needed to book one night stays under our separate accounts, we were out of luck.
Or were we…
Booking The Hyatt House Virginia Beach
Booking our stay online clearly wasn’t an option, so I called the Hyatt reservations team. I got through to a friendly phone agent and advised her that I wanted to book a stay at the Hyatt House using our free night certificates.
After checking her system, she confirmed my suspicions were correct – there was indeed a two-night minimum stay required. I explained we wanted to stay for two nights, but that it’d need to be booked for one night in my name and another night in Shae’s name.
After a couple of minutes, she was able to work out how to do this for us on her system – score! I gave her both my and Shae’s World of Hyatt account numbers and she worked her magic.
And by magic, I mean magic!
An Unexpected Upgrade
One of the terms for using Hyatt anniversary free night certificates is as follows (bolding is mine):
Award Night is good for one (1) night in any available standard room within 12 months from issuance at any Hyatt hotel or resort designated as Category one (1) through four (4)
At the Hyatt House Virginia Beach Oceanfront, there appear to be two types of standard rooms:
- Studio Kitchen Suite – One King Bed (plus sofa bed) – 360 sq ft
- Den Guestroom – Two Queen Bed – 350 sq ft
Even though the Den Guestroom with two queen beds appeared to be available that weekend, the agent booked us into a one bedroom kitchen suite with two queen beds. At 742 sq ft, that suite is more than double the size of the standard rooms. It includes a full kitchen as well as a separate living and dining area.
We only have Discoverist status in the World of Hyatt loyalty program, so there’s no reason that status would have gotten us such a great upgrade. I think I must have just been lucky with a super-helpful phone agent.
After a few minutes, the reservations were completed. We received separate email confirmations for both nights before the phone call ended.
$500 A Night Room For $75
After realizing we’d been booked into such a nice suite, I took a look on the Hyatt website to see how much the weekend stay would’ve cost if we’d had to pay cash.
The two nights would’ve cost us just over $1,000 when including taxes, so $501.39 per night. The Hyatt credit card has a $75 annual fee, so our Hyatt anniversary free night certificates got us some incredible value.
Even if we hadn’t received an upgrade, the standard rooms were going for about $450 per night including tax.
Edit: we had a great stay at the hotel, so check out our review of the Hyatt House Virginia Beach.
Summary
Virginia Beach is a fantastic place to visit in the summer with its extensive beach and warm ocean. It’s a perfect family vacation spot and is only a one hour drive from Williamsburg if you want some history.
The Hyatt House at the oceanfront is therefore an excellent choice for using your anniversary free night certificate from the Hyatt credit card. Rooms go for several hundred dollars per night in the summer, so you’ll get some great value.
If you’re interested in getting the Hyatt credit card, check out Doctor of Credit for more details. Like us, they don’t have credit card affiliate links, so they have an unbiased review.
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