Here’s another reason why I love credit card points. Eight months ago I didn’t even know I wanted to go to Puerto Rico, and now here I am, having just returned from a great little trip with the family. Ok, that’s maybe only half true. Puerto Rico had been on my mile-long list of places to visit, but it rose to the top only because of the infamous Hyatt devaluation of 2023. Back in February, Hyatt announced that they were shifting the categories of some of their hotels, so some would now cost more points (and some were also moving down and would cost less). Being the upstanding hotel business that they are, they gave a little lead-time for nutty people like me to look at all of the places that would soon cost a few more points and decide what to book.
Enter the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve, Puerto Rico.
After spending way too much time looking at all of the hotels that were about to start going for higher points prices, I began to convince myself I needed to sit in a pool lounger while looking at the ocean with palm trees swaying above me. Fortunately, Tom did not need much convincing of this either, so we booked it! This one would be bumping up from Category 4 to 5, and choosing a weekend with a couple of off-peak nights got us two rooms for three nights for 84,000 Hyatt points total. For comparison, we recently stayed at a Hilton in NYC that was going for 90,000 points for one night in one room. Two totally different programs, I know, but it puts in perspective how valuable Hyatt points can be. This stay would have cost us around $3000, around a 3.5 cent per point value.
| Category | Off-Peak | Standard | Peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3,500 | 5,000 | 6,500 |
| 2 | 6,500 | 8,000 | 9,500 |
| 3 | 9,000 | 12,000 | 15,000 |
| 4 | 12,000 | 15,000 | 18,000 |
| 5 | 17,000 | 20,000 | 23,000 |
| 6 | 21,000 | 25,000 | 29,000 |
| 7 | 25,000 | 30,000 | 35,000 |
| 8 | 35,000 | 40,000 | 45,000 |
It got a little dicey after this, because we’d still need to book airfare. I first found really cheap flights back from San Juan during a Southwest sale, but since we were going just after Thanksgiving, both cash and points prices for airfare to get there was looking astronomical. I booked our return flights for just over 5,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards and $5.60 per ticket (and later got refunded one ticket when I added my daughter as a companion with the Companion Pass), but I could only find flights for 40,000-50,000 points each to get there. I just gave it some time and figured if it wasn’t meant to be, I’d cancel with no penalty. That’s another great thing about booking flights and hotels on points in these programs, both are refundable. On Southwest you can cancel up until ten minutes before departure and get your points back.
But don’t worry, a little time and persistence came through – and from the strangest place! After waiting a while and confirming that those Southwest fares were not coming down, I began using an award search tool called Roame.travel. This site has a free version that will return a search through many of the airline award programs for a date you are looking at and tell you which points you can transfer. There are many other free and paid sites like this that can really help when looking to find the best, most economical use of points for flights you are trying to book. I was really surprised to find that Delta had the best option for the date we wanted. Typically, Delta is known for very inflated points prices, but like anything, sometimes there are decent redemptions to be had. We ended up booking flights for 21,000 points per ticket plus taxes and fees. We transferred points from Amex, so incurred another charge there that Amex imposes on domestic airline carriers. Total for the return flights was 105,000 Membership Rewards plus $91. I felt pretty ok about getting five people to Puerto Rico and back, on more or less a whim, for 126,516 points plus $119. The best cash fares I could find for our dates were around $600/ticket, so this ended up being around a 2.3 cent per point redemption. To me, this is about as good as it gets on domestic economy.
Tom really loves his US Bank Altitude Reserve card. Maybe he’ll write a whole post on it some day, wink wink. Through the US Bank travel portal he was able to find a rental car on par with quotes we got from Autoslash that were also totally refundable. We ended up using 19,600 US Bank points to book the rental for four days. US Bank points can be redeemed through the travel portal or on real time travel purchases at 1.5 points per dollar. One of the perks of this card that we used in this case is primary CDW so you don’t have to purchase additional rental insurance.
Well, I’ve blathered on about the points we used to book this trip, now here’s the fun part: the trip itself!
We enjoyed our Delta flights – the kids especially liked having their own TV consoles for the longer flight. We tend to be “how do we get where we want to go in the cheapest way” travelers, so don’t really nerd out on airplanes or have bucket lists for the flights we want to take, but I can say that this little flight helped me understand why some people are partial to Delta. The seats felt a little roomier and comfier, and the snacks were a little better. Two drink and snack services, wow! We ended up arriving on time, even a few minutes early, and picked up our rental car with ease. The resort was an easy 30 minute drive from the airport, and we stopped at a nearby grocery store for some room snacks and drinks.
The check-in process was smooth, and we were told that one of our rooms was upgraded to a deluxe king room. The resort itself is sprawling, but we were pleased to find our room was quite close to the self parking lot ($18/day), and not too far to the pool and restaurants. They had golf carts running regularly to take people throughout the resort, but we never used them as our location was fairly central. After checking out our beautiful rooms, we walked around and made use of our drink coupons, of which we got two per room on check-in. So far, the resort life was suiting us just fine.
After orienting ourselves to all the resort had to offer – gorgeous pool, beach, tennis courts, games, fitness center, spa – we made our way to dinner at Nectar. Pretty much everything I read about this hotel leading up to the trip indicated that the food would be pricey and not that great. I wanted to make our arrival day simple, so we chose Nectar because it serves Puerto Rican food. The other restaurants on site were a steakhouse and sushi. We were all a little hangry and tired by dinner, so this is when I had the fleeting “why did I bring my kids here” thought. It only lasted a brief moment and occurred probably around the time my son ordered a whole grouper with scales and bones for his meal. I am taking a long time to say, yes, the food was not that great. Fortunately, this hotel is near a lot of other options, including Los Kioskos in Luquillo, which is a quarter mile of open air restaurants serving mostly local food.
We spent our first full day mostly hanging at the pool. It was fantastic. The kids enjoyed ordering virgin drinks from the swim-up bar. We decided to trek about 30 minutes down the road to Seven Seas beach in the afternoon. The beach at the resort was lovely, but a coral reef about 100 yards out made the water along the shoreline very calm. This was unacceptable to some of the children in our party, but would be fantastic if you were traveling with little ones. They also had complimentary kayaks to use and plenty of great loungers. If I were on a couples weekend or just with adults, I’d probably have spent a lot more time lounging on the resort beach. We enjoyed our little trek to Seven Seas – I tried to hike to the more remote Playa Escondita while everyone else swam, but the trail got way too muddy. Like, seeing people’s lost shoes muddy. We ended our day getting food at the Kioskos. We tried so much mofongo during our trip – but I think this one was my favorite.
Our second full day was spent exploring El Yunque National Rainforest. Amazingly, the entrance to this park was only 15 minutes from the hotel, and we could see one of the mountains from our room balcony. The kids’ favorite spots were Juan Diego Falls and a magical swimming hole at the bottom of the Angelito trail. The park is still undergoing massive reconstructive projects after hurricane Maria, but on the whole was beautiful with much to be seen. I loved being able to see the view of the eastern island beaches from the observatory tower.
Adventure awaits!
On our third full day we checked out of the Hyatt Regency and spent the day in Old San Juan. Our fourth night would be in the Hyatt House San Juan. We spent a good amount of time exploring Castille San Filipe El Morro on the western tip of Old San Juan. We then walked around the shops and of course payed a visit to the pigeons. Half of us hated this, and half of us seemed to love it. It was hot and we were tired, so we ended up back at the hotel by 6PM and ordered dinner to the room. Some extra time for Old San Juan would have been excellent – there are plenty of historic sites and museums that I would have loved to have seen. We did have time for the Museo de Las Americas on Wednesday morning before heading to the airport. This was an excellent little museum with 5 local art exhibits that we all enjoyed for different reasons.
All in all, this was a great little taste of the Eastern part of Puerto Rico. It was a little too short, but it was the time we had. The great thing is, going back is not out of the question because there are endless points and miles out there, just waiting for us!
