Using our Hyatt Credit Card to Stay Free at Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach is a great weekend getaway, but it is even better when you get to stay at the awesome Hyatt resort for free!

One of the perks of having a Hyatt credit card is that you get a free night stay every year.  The free stay can only be used at a category 1-4 Hyatt property though.  However, that limitation is not applied to the sign up bonus.  Like most rewards credit cards, Hyatt offers a sign up bonus with their card when you spend a certain amount in the first three months.  The Hyatt limit is really easy to meet compared to most credit cards and the bonus is two free nights at any Hyatt property in the world.  If you use it correctly, this can be a nice sign up bonus.

We were planning to use our sign up bonus at the category 7 property in New York City to really get the bank for our buck, but the schedule never worked out and we found ourselves just a few weeks away from letting our two free nights expire.  Not wanting to waste our free nights, we quickly booked a room at the Huntington Beach resort, as it is only a four hour drive from where we live in Vegas and it was an easy weekend away where I did not have to miss any work.

While the Huntington Beach resort does not rival the Category 7 we wanted to stay at in New York, it is a Category 5 so it is nicer than the properties that you can use your annual night on.  If we had paid out of pocket, the hotel would have cost about $600 for the two nights, plus another $80 or so for the resort fee.  With the free nights, we were surprised they did not even charge the resort fee.  The only thing we paid was a $15 per night parking fee to park across the street at the beach.

The Huntington Beach resort made for a great weekend.  We enjoyed lots of time on the beach.  We rented bikes and spend an evening down at the Huntington Beach pier and even took the kids to a local reptile zoo.  Of course, we also enjoyed lots of time at the pool-swimming, riding the slides, soaking in the hot tub and making smores! All in all, it was a pretty great weekend trip and the value we got for the Hyatt sign up was pretty good considering the low spending requirement and the low $50 annual fee (the sign up bonus is subject to change so make sure you confirm the bonus you will get when you sign up).  Using Hyatt rewards, we have stayed in awesome places like Costa Rica, where the resort has friendly monkeys, and Paris.