During our recent visit to Washington D.C., we decided to stay 12 nights at the Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South.
In hindsight, that was a bit of a mistake. Not because the hotel was terrible, but because it was a pain driving into the city each day. Instead, I wish we’d stayed 8 nights at the Hyatt Place and then 4 nights in Washington D.C.; you can read more about why here.
The reason I’d chosen the Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South is because we managed to get a decent deal on both paid rates and using points. We ended up paying cash for 8 of the nights and used points for the other 4 – I explain more about that in the ‘Cost’ section later on.
Overall, it’s a decent enough hotel, especially for the price we paid. There were a couple of less satisfying elements, particularly the Wi-Fi which was simply awful. Here’s a more comprehensive review of our stay.
Check-In
Shae and I had driven in from Davis, West Virginia and arrived about 1:30pm. That was a little earlier than the normal check-in time, but we were able to get checked in early which might’ve been helped by the fact that I have Globalist status with Hyatt.
Elizabeth checked us in and she was simply fantastic. I mentioned that we had four separate reservations and that we wanted to pay for our stay using a couple of different credit cards. Rather than rolling her eyes or seeming put out, she had no problem at all processing that and was extremely friendly and professional. It took a few minutes to sort out due to her needing to merge all the reservations, but she knew exactly what she was doing.
When making our reservations online, I’d mentioned in the comments that we’d have our dog Truffles with us. Elizabeth mentioned that she’d been wanting to leave some dog treats in our room, but hadn’t had a chance as we arrived early. She therefore called Truffles over and pulled out a dog treat from behind the counter to give to her. Hyatt Places tend to be really good about lavishing attention on Truffles which she loves, so she ran right over.
After she’d merged our reservations, Elizabeth gave us our keys to room 513 and confirmed that our keys would work for our entire 12 night stay rather than having to check out and in every few days which we appreciated.
Bedroom
Room 513 was next to the elevator. We were a little apprehensive about that initially as it can sometimes mean it’s noisier outside which can lead Truffles to bark, but it didn’t end up being an issue during our stay.
When entering our room the living area was on the left which had a corner sleeper sofa and ottoman, along with a side table holding a blanket. As much as I love staying at Hyatt Places, one of my pet peeves is that the living areas rarely have any accessible power outlets. That wasn’t the case here, with one set above the sofa and another to the right of the side table, so that was great.
On the opposite side of the room was a desk and office chair…
…while behind that was a wet bar with a mini fridge beneath and a coffee maker on top.
In the middle of the room was a TV with a small storage area beneath containing an ice bucket and drinking glasses.
The TV channel selection was OK, but there was no Food Network, ION, Nickelodeon, NBC Sports, etc.
Past the living area was the bedroom that had a comfortable king bed. Similar to the living area, both sides of the bed had easily accessible power outlets.
On the opposite side of the room was a small closet that contained a luggage rack, iron, ironing board and pillows for the sleeper sofa.
The room was your typical Hyatt Place bedroom (i.e. very nice), although it did have one big downside – the temperature. The thermostat didn’t work properly, so we were constantly having to adjust the thermostat as it would either be frigid or far too hot. To give an indication as to how goofy it was, we were constantly adjusting the temperature between something like 64-66°, so there was definitely something up with the temperature gauge as 66° would usually be hot.
Bathroom
To the left of the closet was the room’s sink and vanity, with a dresser beneath.
The toiletries were your standard Barney Kenet M.D. shampoo and conditioner that you’ll find at all Hyatt Place properties in the US.
To the left of the sink was the bathroom that held the toilet and walk-in shower which had good water pressure.
Breakfast
Breakfast is always free when staying at Hyatt Place properties provided you’re a World of Hyatt member and have booked directly rather than through an OTA like Expedia, Hotels.com, etc. Having said that, most Hyatt Places we’ve stayed at this year haven’t enforced that, so it varies by property.
At the Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South, breakfast is served until 9:30am on weekdays and 10am at the weekend. The hot options included scrambled eggs and breakfast potatoes every morning, with the other hot options rotating each day. Those other options included bacon, sausages, corned beef hash, French toast and more.
The eggs were pretty good (that’s not always the case), while the potatoes were always really tasty.
The other breakfast options pretty much remained the same each day, although the freshly cut fruit would sometimes change.
One thing that was missing was hot oatmeal. There was a section next to the granola and toppings where the oatmeal container would normally be placed, so I don’t know if its heater was broken or if they were just out of oatmeal for the almost two weeks that we stayed there.
As with all the Hyatt Places we’ve stayed at, the lobby seating doubles up as breakfast seating in the morning.
Amenities
The Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South has a few amenities. There’s a fitness room with a few pieces of equipment and weights.
The hotel has an outdoor swimming pool which is open seasonally; seeing as we were visiting in November, it was closed while we were there.
The hotel doesn’t have guest laundry facilities, so we had to use a nearby laundromat seeing as we were staying for so long.
Next to the lobby they had a business center consisting of two computers and a printer.
Due to its proximity to Dulles, the hotel offers free shuttle service to the airport. They also offer free shuttle service within a 5 mile radius.
As with all Hyatt Places, there’s a snack and beverage station at the front desk.
Pet Policy
The Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South is a pet-friendly hotel. They allow dogs weighing 50 lbs or less, with a limit of two dogs per room having a maximum combined weight of 75 lbs.
They charge $75 for stays of 1-6 days and $175 for stays of 7+ nights. We were fortunate because even though we stayed 12 nights, they only charged us $75.
The hotel has a few grassy areas around the property where your dog can do its stuff. There’s also an off-leash dog park at Rock Hill District Park which is about 5 minutes away.
This has separate sections for large and small dogs, although it’s certainly not the prettiest dog park you’ve even seen as much of the surface is gravel. We took Truffles there one day to chase after her ball for a while. That evening we noticed she had some kind of bad friction burn on her paw; we think it happened while skidding to a halt on the gravel, so be careful if your pups are running around there.
Service
Service at the hotel was a little mixed. Like I mentioned earlier, Elizabeth was awesome and was one of the best front desk agents we’ve had over our last two years of living in hotels. Annie was also very friendly and helpful.
There were some staff members who weren’t so great though. The Wi-Fi in our room was terrible (more about that in a moment), so Shae would often work in the lobby where the speed was a little better. She teaches online, so needs a decent speed for the video and audio. While teaching there one day, some of the staff members spent ages needlessly shouting to each other across the lobby, disturbing the class Shae was trying to teach. The front desk agent was especially loud, despite knowing that Shae was on some kind of video call.
One of the other staff members was kind though, as she let Shae use one of the meeting rooms early in the morning on some days when the lobby was busy.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
The check-in time at the Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South is 3pm, while check-out is at 12pm.
Wi-Fi
This was the worst part of our stay as the Wi-Fi was virtually unusable in our room. The speed was incredibly slow, so it often took ~30 seconds for a single webpage to load. Considering Shae and I both work online, it was a really painful situation.
Here’s a screenshot of a speed test I ran when the speed was fast enough to actually run the test:
We mentioned the speed when checking out, so Elizabeth said she’d look into getting some kind of Wi-Fi range extender.
Location
The hotel is about 15 minutes south of Dulles International Airport. There are several restaurants nearby, along with several grocery stores including Giant Food and Safeway.
In theory, the Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South is only 30 minutes from Washington D.C. In reality though, it takes more like 60-90 minutes if you’re not traveling there in the middle of the night as the rest of the day has perpetual traffic. It also takes a little longer if you want to avoid the EZ Pass toll roads.
Parking
It’s free to park at the hotel and there were always plenty of spaces available.
Cost
Buckle up, as this will be a much more extensive section than normal!
When making our reservations, Hyatt was offering the 4th night free when booking paid stays at Hyatt Place and Hyatt House properties. I noticed that booking the four day period from Thursday to Monday offered the lowest prices, so I booked paid stays for those periods over two consecutive weeks. The other nights of our stay were more expensive though, so I booked those using points. The Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South is a category 1 property, so it only costs 5,000 World of Hyatt points per night.
Paid Reservations
Our first paid reservation of four nights was due to cost a total of $286.44 which is $71.61 per night. I managed to find the same room slightly cheaper on Hotels.com, so I submitted a Best Rate Guarantee (BRG) claim. In case you’re not familiar with Best Rate Guarantees, it’s where hotels guarantee you’ll get the cheapest price when booking directly. If you find a cheaper price elsewhere, they’ll match the rate and give you some kind of compensation. In Hyatt’s case, that’s either an additional 20% off your stay of 5,000 points. Due to how cheap our room rate was, I chose the 5,000 points.
Our second paid stay of four nights was due to cost $269.64. Once again, Hotels.com was slightly cheaper and so I submitted another BRG claim which was also successful.
Taking into account the fact that Hyatt matched the Hotels.com rate and that we had to pay a $75 pet fee, our final bill came to a total of $640.14. Shae and I both had offers on our Hyatt credit cards offering a $50 statement credit when spending $300+ at Hyatt Place or Hyatt House properties. We therefore split the cost of our stay across both cards, which means we’ll get $100 back in statement credits.
That means the net cost for our 8 paid nights was $67.52 per night which is an excellent rate, especially when taking into account the 10,000 bonus points we earned from the two BRG claims.
Points Reservations
We booked our first night at the hotel using points, as well as the three nights between our two four-night stays. As I mentioned earlier, that cost 5,000 points per night, so we redeemed a total of 20,000 points for those nights.
If we’d paid cash for those nights, it would’ve cost us an average of $132.08 per night, so redeeming 5,000 points per night was much better value.
Points Earned
Despite redeeming 20,000 points for those four nights, we actually came out ahead on points after our stay. For starters, the 10,000 points earned from the BRG claims made up for half the points we redeemed for the four nights. Our 8 paid nights earned us 9,431 points, plus we’ll earn ~2,200 points by paying for our stay using our Hyatt credit cards.
On top of all that, we earned another 10,000 bonus points. Once you earn Globalist status after staying 60 nights, Hyatt rewards you for each additional 10 nights you stay. You get the choice of a free suite night award or 10,000 points, so I chose the 10,000 points.
That means that by the end of our 12 night stay, we’d earned a net 11,631 points which is a good return on only $540.14 of spend. Looking at it another way, our 12 nights cost us $45 per night, but we also earned almost 1,000 points per night.
Final Thoughts
Our stay at the Hyatt Place Chantilly/Dulles Airport South was fairly good. The room was a good size, it was quiet, the breakfast was good each morning and a couple of staff members were excellent.
On the negative side, the room temperature couldn’t be controlled properly, the Wi-Fi was painfully slow and one of the staff members had no regard for Shae working in the lobby.
Despite the negative aspects I’d stay at this hotel again, although they’ll hopefully have sorted out the Wi-Fi situation if we ever return. There’s some good value to be had whether paying for your room using cash or points, although the paid rates can vary greatly depending on the day of the week and how long you book for.
Truffles Approval Rating
Truffles gives the hotel four paws out of four – pawfect! They only charged a $75 pet fee rather than $175 and the front desk staff gave her lots of attention and treats.
Our room was also nice and quiet despite being next to an elevator, so she didn’t bark a lot.
Our Rating
Room = 4.4 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 3.8 / 5
Food = 4.4 / 5
Location = 4.2 / 5
Service = 4.5 / 5
Overall Value = 4.7 / 5
Total = 4.33 / 5
Address
Hyatt Place, 4994 Westone Plaza, Chantilly, VA 20151
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