One of my absolute favorite uses of Chase Ultimate Reward points is for weekend stays at the beach. Living in Maryland, near Washington DC, the beach is a manageable 2.5-3 hour drive.
One of the most popular beach towns for the DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia) is Ocean City, MD – which frankly I don’t care for. I prefer the beaches a little north in Dewey, Delaware.
Don’t get me wrong, all the beaches around DMV aren’t nice with crystal clear water but at least they are easy to get to.
Rooms in these beach areas are notoriously expensive – $2500/week for a 2 br condo is not unheard of along with $500+ hotel rooms.
When I first got into travel hacking a few years ago, I found an absolute steal – the Hyatt Place Dewey Beach was only a category 2 costing only 8,000 Hyatt points. Then it went up to a category 3 requiring 12,000 Hyatt points, and it went up again to a category 4 requiring 15,000 points.
Even at 15,000 points, I still think it’s a great bargain – let me show you the numbers:
A random two night weekend stay next summer will run over $1000 with the 10% Hyatt member rate:
I’ll gladly trade 30,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards transferred to Hyatt for this $1013 stay which yields 3.3¢/pt value.
Better yet if you can get the 7,500 points + $100 cash rate which yields 5.3¢/pt value (15,000 total points + $216 for 2 night stay)
$500/night usually gets you a pretty nice place in other parts of the country but not in the summer at DMV beaches. But you will get a nice clean Hyatt Place complete with a morning breakfast (with a unlimited mimosa & bloody mary bar on Saturdays).
Here are a few photos:
Hyatt Place Dewey Beach
The Beach – across the street + a few hundred feet
Lighthouse Restaurant on bayside and connected to Hyatt Place
Que Pasa Restaurant on bayside and connected to Hyatt Place
Hyatt Place Dewey main lobby
Hyatt Place Dewey reception
Hyatt Place Dewey breakfast area
Hyatt Place Dewey indoor pool
Dewey Beach, Delaware
How You Can Do It
The Chase Ink Business Preferred is still offering an 80,000 point sign up after spending $5000 in 3 months.
At 15,000 points a night, you can book yourself 5 nights at Hyatt Dewey Beach next summer worth over $2500.
Or if you want to stretch your miles, you can book 11 nights (spread over multiple different weekends) using the 7500 points + $100 cash option.
Let me know if you end up booking at nights next summer – I hope to see you there!
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I couldn’t find any weekend award availability for this summer. Maybe I was too late to check it
for this summer in 2017? or summer of 2018? I just check 9/10/17 to 9/11/17 and it was available for 15,000 pts/night
2017. I had been looking to redeem my free night since June, but failed to find any weekend availability. I consider summer ends after Labor Day.
I actually got lucky, I had a points reservation but wanted to use my free night from the credit card, there was a room available with points on a Thursday (for a Saturday night stay) – and Hyatt twitter team was able to refund my points and use the free night. it was tough to find – I’m booking nights for next summer now.
very cool post! Many times I get caught up trying to redeem points/miles at extravagant places (Maldives, Bora Bora, etc…), but I like how you still find incredible value at other locations that fit your travel needs. A good reminder for me