Now you know if you are going to be toeing the line of the 2015 Boston Marathon! Now you can get serious about planning your travel to get there, and to do it with minimal cash outlay. I know there is a lot of time until the race itself so here is something you can do with your time – start planing your Boston Marathon trip! Here is a post focused on Hyatt hotels in the Boston area that would serve you well in your Boston trip. Time to get ready!
Start Planning Your Boston Marathon Trip
Hyatt Hotels in Boston
Hyatt Regency Boston
- One Avenue de Lafayette, Boston, MA
- This is a 4-star hotel
- It is located 1 mile from the finish line
- The cost is $385 + tax per night
- It is a category 4 so requires 15,000 Gold Passport Points for a free night
- For Points + Cash, you will need to use 7,500 points and $100
- trip advisor reviews
- hotel website
- Point value – 2.5 cents per point
Hyatt Regency hotels are pretty dependable hotels. They are often made for the business traveler so have convenience, good amenities, decent workout areas, and anything else that one would look for in a good business hotel. This hotel is close enough to the marathon finish but not so close that you will get caught in the congestion after the race. The good part is that it is a category 4 – that means you can use your anniversary night certificate for your stay of one night here (more on that at the bottom).
Hyatt Regency Cambridge
- 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA
- This is a 4-star hotel
- It is located 1.9 miles away from the finish line
- The cost is $437 + tax per night
- It is a category 4 so requires 15,000 Gold Passport Points for a free night
- For Points + Cash, you will need to use 7,500 points and $100
- trip advisor reviews
- hotel website
- Point value – 2.9 cents per point
Again, the Hyatt Regency brand is pretty dependable. However, for some reason, this hotel is ranked 14 of 17 hotels in Cambridge on Trip Advisor. It looks like a wonderful hotel and is nicely situated just across the Charles River from Boston, but it apparently had not lived up to the expectations of many travelers. If you are looking for a cheaper hotel to book with cash for the marathon, this may be it. While the price is high right now, it has historically dropped in price within months of the race. As of right now, the points reservation would actually give you a great value of your points.
Getting Your Gold Passport Points
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That’s really it for the Hyatt option! There are other hotels in the area but they are greater than 8 miles away from that point so I chose not to include them in this overview. You can see that Hyatt is not the best hotel chain to give you the greatest of options in Boston, but the options that exist can be some nice hotels! The Hyatt Regency Boston is not far from the finish line and gives you a nice value for your points. However, SPG hotels may give you some more options so look for that post in the coming days!
However, should you desire to stay at a Hyatt while in town for the Boston Marathon, how would you go about accruing points that you can use to redeem at these hotels? Fortunately, there are quite a few ways to do so.
Hyatt Credit Card from Chase
The Hyatt Chase credit card gives you 2 free nights after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months of having the card. Unlike most other hotel branded credit cards, these are outright free nights and not points. This means that you can use these two nights at any category hotel. Since Hyatt has seven categories, I consider it not that great of a deal to use these free nights on either of these two hotels (they are both category 4 hotels). That being said, they are your free nights – if you decide that is how you want to spend them, who am I to tell you not to? 
Hyatt Chase Credit Card – 2 Free Nights after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months – application link
Hyatt’s Points + Cash
Thanks to the Points + Cash option, you can use 7,500 and $100 per night. Going this route will enable you to use a Diamond suite upgrade for your stay as well as earn credit for the stay and nights.
Hyatt Chase Anniversary Night
With the Hyatt Chase credit card above, you will receive a free night at a category 1-4 after your annual fee each year. This works great when a hotel costs more than $100 and is a category 4 or less. You can use this for either hotel above.
Ultimate Reward Points
Ultimate Reward points transfer at a ratio of 1:1 to the Hyatt Gold Passport program. This opens up many other ways to earn the points necessary to stay at Hyatt hotels. These two cards will give you those Ultimate Reward points.
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card – 40,000 Points after $3,000 in 3 months – application link *
Chase Ink Plus Card – 70,000 Points after $5,000 in 3 months – application link *
With just the two cards above, you would have enough points to convert to 110,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points (not that I am suggesting that!). That would get you many, many free nights!
Summary
As you can see, there are just a couple of options for Hyatt for the Boston Marathon. I would rather save my Hyatt points and stay at a different chain of hotels there. However, I know that there are some that may prefer to stay at Hyatt hotels (maybe they like them over others, maybe they have used these hotels before, maybe they have Hyatt Diamond status, maybe they have an overabundance of Hyatt points, etc). If you do not have Diamond status but you would like to take advantage of the benefits of that (the suite upgrades on eligible stays – like Points + Cash – and the free breakfasts and late checkouts), you can sign-up for the Diamond Challenge – see this post for more. If you prefer Hyatts or have the nights or points, now you know which hotels to look for and how to get the points!
