Miami 2022: Hotel Planning

While the hotel planning was happening in parallel with choosing our flights, we didn’t solidify booking any hotels until the flights were booked.

South Beach Hotel

Due to availability and the number of points we had available, we decided we wanted to split our trip between South Beach and Miami proper. It would also give us a chance to get a better feel for downtown Miami.

From a points perspective, we also wanted to leverage our Marriott free night certificates as we didn’t have a ton of Marriott points in our account. I had transferred all my Marriott points to my wife’s account (for free) but it was only a few thousand. You can transfer up to 100K points per year out of your account and take in up to 500K points per the Bonvoy program rules.

When looking for hotels in South Beach, there were two options we could use our 35K free night certificates on. One was a Courtyard a block from he Hyatt Centric we stayed in the previous year and a Moxy hotel further south and more in the heart of South Beach. While the Hyatt we stayed at was okay, it wasn’t a hotel we were excited to go back to and there wasn’t points availability anyways.

The Courtyard looked like it had larger rooms and more options for upgrades to suites (using several suite night upgrade certificates my wife has in her account), but the reviews weren’t great, complaining about cleanliness and wear and tear in the hotel in general. By comparison, the Moxy had much smaller rooms, but has been open for less than a year so it was much newer. To compensate for the small rooms, reviews referred to some co-working space which we hoped we could use to get some work done during the stay. The pool looked very nice and there were several food options in the hotel and within walking distance.

We decided to stay 4 nights there based on availability and to more event break up our 8 night stay. Three of the four nights were priced at 35K points, allowing us to use some of the free night certificates. The other night was 40K points so we had to use points for that initially.

After doing some more research, I realized we had a 40K certificate my wife had chosen at the end of 2021 as her reward for reaching 75 qualifying nights. I called the next day to change that certificate from a different reservation to add it to the one at the Moxy South Beach so that 4 night stay was entirely using free night certificates. The nightly cash rates ranged from $450-600 so the certificates are providing almost $2000 worth of value!

I also applied suite upgrade certificates to the reservation. We have extras and aren’t likely to be able to use them all so we might as well see if we can get a better shot at a bigger room with a better view, though Marriot suite upgrades are not guaranteed and are only processed 5 days before checkin.

Miami Hotel

Last year we split our time between South Beach and Bal Harbor and didn’t spend much time in Miami itself. This time we wanted to spend quality time downtown to see some of the things we missed last time. Given the options and the number of points we had, it made the most sense to look for a Hyatt hotel.

We found two options. One was a Hyatt Centric with a great looking pool. The other was a Hyatt Regency which was more of a convention hotel. Both are located near the same shopping and dining areas. We ended up choosing the Hyatt Regency because it was a lot fewer points, had larger rooms, and had more/better options for a suite upgrade.

I quickly booked the room for 12,000 points per night for four nights. The cash rate was $525/night so this was an excellent value for the points. The Hyatt Centric was 20,000 points per night at about the same cash rate.

I then called Hyatt to see if I could use a suite upgrade certificate to upgrade our room to a suite. We had two options and I chose the larger room. It only took a few minutes and we were confirmed into the suite. This is one of my favorite features of the Hyatt program. It brings suites within reach without having to pay for them.

We made out well saving over $4000 in hotel expenses by using points and upgrades. These are the types of redemptions that keep me excited about points and miles!