Using the Hyatt Anniversary Night for a $600+ Per Night Room!

One of my favorite things about hotel credit cards is the ability to get a “free” (you have to pay the annual fee) anniversary night each year. This is existent on most mainstream hotel cards (not SPG!) and one of my favorite cards for it is the Chase Hyatt Visa.

Using Chase Hyatt Anniversary Night for $600+ Room

Link: Chase Hyatt Credit Card

The Grand Hyatt in Washington DC is a Category 4 – so you can use your free night here

This is certainly not a boast or a brag but a way to illustrate that these anniversary night certificates can be incredibly valuable depending on how you use them and what your hotel needs are.

The Chase Hyatt Anniversary Night

To give a brief overview, the Chase Hyatt anniversary night comes each year around the month that you pay the $75 annual fee. The anniversary night is good for a complimentary night at Category 1 – 4 hotels. Availability is obviously a factor but I have found it to be incredible at the hotels I checked out.

It is not available to you until you have held the card for the first year (though it is put into the account before the annual fee hits many times). The certificate is good until the end of the month one year from the time it was issued. It does not give the user any elite nights or credits and you cannot apply a Diamond Suite Upgrade to it.

Booking Your Chase Hyatt Anniversary Night

To use your Hyatt anniversary night, you simply need to login and start searching for hotels. When you find one you want to use it on, click to use Points or Awards and it will show the Promotional Award free night option if there is availability. Do note – it will show available even on Category 5 – 7 properties. This is a known glitch and it will not let you actually book the property (though it will go all the way through the booking process before giving an error).

Searching for Hyatt Anniversary Night Availability

If you want to see all Hyatt hotels that have the free night availability, you can search by Corporate Code from the front booking page and enter 71386. Again, this will even show category 5 – 7 properties though you cannot book them with this anniversary night.

Getting Great Value from the Hyatt Anniversary Night

I had to be in Washington, DC on a particular night and hotel rates were very high across the board. Time to whip out the Hyatt anniversary night! There are several properties in DC that are between category 1 – 4 rankings but my favorite is the Grand Hyatt. Even the lower category hotels were going for very high prices so this was not an instance of using a single hotel at a high rate for an example.

The Grand Hyatt Washington DC was going for over $600 the night I needed a hotel stay! But, when I clicked the button to go to awards, the free night option popped up to let me use my Hyatt anniversary night. Yes! If I had wanted to use points (which I couldn’t as there was no availability), it would have required 15,000 points since it was a category 4. Or I could have done Points+Cash (which also was not available) and used 7,500 points and $100 for the night.

Instead, I simply selected to use my Hyatt anniversary night and the room cost went from $600+ with taxes to $0! Actually, I had to pay the annual fee so it would be more like $75 (but being a cardholder gives me other benefits like the 10% on points used so it would be less for me in my valuation).

Again in Philadelphia!

Great to find Hyatt anniversary night availability instead of this price!

This is not an isolated incident either! I had needed to book a night in Philadelphia and, again, rates were very high. The Hyatt at The Bellevue in Philadelphia (also a category 4) was going for $600 a night as well but, again, there was availability for the Hyatt anniversary night! Again, no availability for points or Points+Cash so the Hyatt anniversary night won out again.

Since the Hyatt anniversary night can be used worldwide, it is a very valuable perk to have. I can use it at airport Hyatt properties that might cost well over $200 when I have an early flight or I can use it for a one night stay in a city (which I have a lot of). I have never used the Hyatt anniversary night for a property that was going for less than $100 for the night I used it – and that is with me not trying to get value from it at all!

Sure, it would be nice if the Hyatt anniversary night was good at all Hyatt category hotels but then I would feel more pressure to use it in a city where there was a category 7 – and probably spend more points/cash than I would otherwise just so I could get the extreme value out of it! Being that it is in the category 1 -4 gives me a nice range of properties that I can use it at and it makes for a valuable card to keep year after year. My wife and I have both held the card for years and we do not plan to give it up anytime soon.

What kind of value have you received from your Hyatt anniversary night?

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