The perfect mattress run isn’t a mattress run at all. A mattress run is where you book a hotel stay solely to earn elite status and/or hotel points even though you have no plans to actually stay at the hotel. A perfect mattress run, meanwhile, happens when you very much do want to stay, and yet you can also maximize elite credit and other rewards. That’s the situation for me, right now.
I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a fantastic town… except for winter when the clouds are more of a problem than the cold. For whatever reason, clouds love Ann Arbor’s winter. Day after day of cold dark dreariness is grating. Most winters, my wife and I vacation often in warmer and sunnier locations.
This winter, with the Coronavirus raging along with the appearance of a new more virulent strain, we’ve been more hesitant than ever to fly or stay in hotels. However, driving and staying in home rentals seems relatively safe. As long as we have a kitchen so that we don’t have to eat out, we should be able to keep safe.
While I can always work from anywhere (this blog is my career after all!), the pandemic has made that true for my wife too. As long as we have good Wi-Fi, we don’t need to stay in Michigan all winter long.
The obvious solution was to look for Airbnb stand-alone units in southern states that we could drive to. I have no doubt that we could find amazing options that way. The downside is that it would mean forgoing Hyatt’s amazing overlapping promotions which are scheduled to end February 28th (see: Ludicrously easy path to Hyatt Globalist status). Fortunately for me, I found a Hyatt that checks all of the boxes:
- Located in (relatively) warm-weather
- Independent condo-like units with their own entrances
- Beautiful views
- Qualifies for Hyatt promotions (including 4X points!)
Vacation Rentals at Wild Dunes Resort
Hyatt has two options in Isle of Palms, South Carolina: Wild Dunes Resort, and Vacation Rentals at Wild Dunes Resort. The former will get you a hotel room in the resort’s Boardwalk Inn or an apartment-like room in the section of the resort called “The Village.” The latter will get you a condo rental in separate timeshare-like buildings. We opted for the latter to increase remoteness and to get a place as close as possible to the ocean.
Double Elite Nights and 4X Points
I registered for Hyatt’s Bonus Journey’s promotion well before the January 15th deadline. This promotion offers double elite nights and triple point earnings at all Hyatt properties for stays through February 28th. For Hyatt credit card holders, the promo also offers 4X points at select Hyatt resorts. Luckily both Wild Dunes Resort and Vacation Rentals at Wild Dunes Resort qualify!
Since I have the World of Hyatt credit card and top tier Globalist status, I expect to earn up to 25.5 points per dollar during this stay:
- 20 points per dollar thanks to the Bonus Journeys promotion (Hyatt properties standardly offer 5 points per dollar, so quadruple points = 20 points per dollar)
- 1.5 extra points per dollar as Globalist
- 4 points per dollar for paying with my Hyatt card
In addition to earning all of those points, I will earn cash back too. My Hyatt credit card had a Chase Offer loaded to it for 10% back at Hyatt on up to $250 spend. Plus, I have the targeted Amex Offer for Hyatt (Spend $300, Get $60) on both my wife’s Amex Gold card and my authorized user Gold card. In total, we should get $145 back for this stay.
I’ll also earn double elite night credits for this stay. Since I booked the Stay 2 Nights, Get 3rd Night Free rate, I’ll probably only be credited 4 base nights for my 6 night stay. If so, I’ll end up with 8 elite nights after getting the Bonus Journeys’ bonus elite nights. I’ve been told, though, that the fact that Hyatt doesn’t award elite nights on free nights is a system limitation rather than Hyatt’s intent. So, it may be possible to contact Hyatt after the stay to get my elite nights manually adjusted. If that works, I’ll end up with 12 elite nights for my 6 night stay.
Contact free entry
Yesterday (relative to when I wrote this post), we drove from North Carolina to Wild Dunes Resort to check in. Along the way, I received a text message from the property. The message included everything we needed to know for contactless entry to our unit. We were given the building name and unit number and a code for getting in the door. Inside the unit we found a packet with two parking passes (we only needed one), $25 per person breakfast vouchers (thanks to my Globalist status), and a resort map and other info. We did have to stop the car at a guard booth to show my ID, but that was literally the only contact needed to get to our unit.
So far, so good
I’ll write a review after our stay. We’re very happy so far! We were upgraded to a two bedroom unit (too bad our son didn’t come along!) and we have a beautiful view of the ocean. While we had planned to make breakfast in our unit, we couldn’t pass up the free breakfast vouchers. So, in the morning, I called ahead for take-out, drove over to the hotel to pickup the food, and brought it back to our unit. By then, the sun had warmed our balcony enough to enjoy eating breakfast outside while wearing only a light sweatshirt. A short walk outside confirmed that we had found a sunny and warm-enough location to enjoy our work-cation. The wi-fi isn’t strong enough for me to work outside, but I’m happily writing this from the living room and frequently looking up at the view.
And I’ll leave you with a few photos…
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Thank you once again for the great tips, Greg. We regretfully canceled our Ventana Valentine’s trip cos of numerous covid restrictions/closures, ever changing airline reservations, and here lately the Big Sur highway mudslide devastation. Plus I’ll be Globalist when we finally do go, saving me 14k points/night on a Suite upgrade.
This and Wentworth Mansion are a good substitute trip. $75 back on 2 cards at Destination props + $75 of Chase credits on 3 cards make this an especially attractive deal at $225 off the cash rate of $712 total for 3rd night free. I reserved a 2 bedroom condo since the discounts more than made up for the price difference with a 1 bedroom. Their website said the 2 bedrooms had preferential views & seems you concur.
30,000 points/night at Wentworth Mansion hurts, but the Bonus Journeys 25% point rebate helps with that, too. Was happy to read you felt the high points were worth it in that case. I’m also looking forward to your Wild Dunes review – can you please tell me which building you were in (or which you otherwise recommend after having surveyed the layout for best views), so I can request that in advance? Thanks again
“Their website said the 2 bedrooms had preferential views & seems you concur.” I didn’t see the views from any 1 bedrooms so I can’t say.
“I’m also looking forward to your Wild Dunes review.” Coming soon! I promise!
“can you please tell me which building you were in (or which you otherwise recommend after having surveyed the layout for best views), so I can request that in advance?” I think that all ocean front rooms will likely have great views. The key is to book “ocean front” not “ocean view”
we are planning to stay for a week in 2 weeks. trying to decide between wild dunes resort and vacation rentals. We definitely need good Wifi to work.
Greg – how do you rate overall Wifi speed and quality at vacation rentals.
Vacation Rentals are scattered across many different buildings. My guess is that wifi varies a lot from one unit to the next like a box of chocolates. In my unit, speed was good for video calls, but strangely very slow for uploads and downloads.
I can’t see it here, but I remember reading somewhere else on your site that the extra night awards will come in 2-week intervals. Dies this mean 2 weeks aftter a stay or if I stay 3 times in a week all will come in a copule of weeks together? I stayed 1 night so far and it took 2 days for the single night’s credit to arrive.
Then, how long before the 25% rebate on award nights kicks in?
Hyatt has promised to update the bonus elite nights once ever two weeks. So, depending upon when you earn the base elite nights, it could take a day or it could take two weeks to get the bonus elite nights.
I don’t know how long the 25% rebate takes
Thanks, Greg. I just this morning got the 25% back on my first stay. It was split into 15% and 10%, so that’s 5 days after the stay. I’ll keep tabs on the “stays” and hope to see some in a week.
As always, I am grateful for your site and responses.
Greg, You are an easy 90 many drive down to sleep little Beaufort, SC which makes the top 10 in alot of magazines for best small town, best coastal town, etc. All the restaurants are open. Then another 90 min. and you are in Savannah. I think you were there recently. Come on down. Good day trip.
Next time, hopefully! I’m sure we’ll be back.
Are you going to do a review of your trip? Or did I just miss it? Hope so; we’re planning to go in February. Hopefully!
Yes, I hope to write it up soon. No much to say though. It was good!
looks like a nice venue to hang around during lockdowns… was the pool and gym open with reservations?
I don’t think they were open but honestly I didn’t even look. It’s too cold to swim and I’d rather walk the beach than work out in a gym.
I was there the last 4 days of December and the pools were closed because they were working on them, but they had been open until that week. So I am not sure if they have finished working on them by now. I was told they are heated supposedly. The hotel gym is closed, but you are allowed to use one of the gyms that belong to one of the condo complexes. They will shuttle you there or you can walk there along the nice walking paths. Hope this helps.
Just got back from sitting on my dock. About 90 min. south of Wild Dunes. 66F out there and sun shining. Just waiting for some fish jumping in the water. Sun going down and looks much like that sunset.
Come on, move on down to the low country. Where our shrimp and crabs come right off our dock.
I had a buy two get one free night promo post with only the paid nights getting elite night credit, but hyatt concierge was able to credit the additional nights for me via email inquiry. I imagine it’s possible to have this done if you call in as well.
Thanks, I’ve heard that a lot and so I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to get full credit if it doesn’t post that way initially.
Please update your followers if you get the ‘free’ nights credited. We are thinking of heading down there in February. Thanks.
Yes will do
How much do YOU value Globalist until 2023? The spreadsheet you put together suggests that you’d pay $485 for Globalist but you’re paying 1200 here. I know this is different than a typical mattress run since it’s a mini vacation but I’m having a hard time valuing Globalist status for 2 years. Is the “you’d pay” column in the spreadsheet the amount to stay under when booking a mattress run? Thanks
If you’re booking a real mattress run (e.g. you’re booking it only for the elite nights) then yes, you would want your net cost to be equal to or under the “you’d pay” total. That said, your net cost may be less than the total hotel bill thanks to earning valuable points for your stay. So, first put the numbers for the stay into the tab for choosing points vs cash. You can fill out only the cash part if you want. That will show you a net cost result after subtracting out the value of rewards earned.
In my case, I didn’t do any of that because I wanted to get away anyway and was willing to pay to do so. The fact that I could find a place that was inexpensive AND earned Hyatt points & elite nights was gravy.
I just returned from there recently, but I was at Boardwalk Inn
how was the internet speed for Boardwalk inn?
Hey Greg,
Can you post pictures of the desk area and also how fast is the Wifi, honestly considering this for 6 or 12 nights to close out feburary.
Wifi speed has been mixed. It’s sometimes frustratingly slow and sometimes drops me completely for a minute or two. As to the desk: the TV cabinet has a pull-out desk:
Note that there are many different sets of condo buildings here with completely different looks. I’d be very surprised if the wifi experience and/or desk setup was at all similar from one to the next. We got put in a section named “Shipwatch” in building A. You could be put in a completely different building a half mile away.
Cool thanks, we need good internet, so the wild dunes resort might be the better option with work from hyatt package and suite upgrades applied.
@Yusuf: Sign up for a free TMobile hotspot with 30GB of free data and bring it with you. See Slickdeals for full details.
Tried to find this on slick deals, I did find one for new customers, unfortunately I am an existing t mobile customer…kind of sucks at all the stuff they offer new customers but not existing customers.
Work from hyatt rate comes with 50 dollar credit a day. How many onsite restaurants are open at this time?
Three, I think. Only one was open every day but the other two were open Thursday through Sunday (I think)
We are doing something similar. Staying 4 weeks in timeshare in NC and SC. We are currently at the Marriott timeshare in Myrtle Beach. Not booked on points, but each week was less than $400 for 2 bedroom units via Interval International. When we stayed at the Marriott timeshare in Hilton Head via Interval in September, we even got the elite night credits, but that might be YMMV. Weather has been decent here. Close to 60 today and sunny.
Nice! I’ve heard that renting Marriott timeshares can be a great way to earn elite night credits. I’ll have to try that out next time I need Marriott nights.
i’m doing this wrong. You went drove to a beach resort for hyatt nights, I drove to Fairbanks through a snow storm in the dead of winter for hyatt nights.
We are happy with our choice too. Brand new category 1 regency in Sofia Bulgaria. 2x6night stays
As an explorist I had to use 2 of my 5 club access awards. Because of Covid and the club being closed we get $30 daily food and bev credit plus free parking $12 daily plus 25% back from the 5000 points I used per night. With the 2 night credit and 30 nights for globalist promotions I’ll be globalist for first time ever by the time we come back to NYC in mid February.
Just finished the mattress run (13 nights) in a Cat 1 Hyatt Place. Got globalist status, 1 Category 1-4 Free Night Award (Expired at July 2021 initially, but changed to Dec 2021 late), 2 Club Lounge Access Awards. The only issue is that I received 25% point rebate for 10 nights (7500+5000 pts) instead of 13 nights. May just wait for a while.
Did you split up the pmts so that you can get the Chase offer of 10% and the WOH points and then a separate transaction for the AmEx? And if you used the AmEx offer, then you wouldn’t get as many WOH points as it’s not a Hyatt card.
I haven’t yet, but I plan to go to the office to ask to put some of the charges on my Amex cards. I know I won’t earn 4X for those charges. That’s why I wrote that I would earn “up to” 24.5 points per dollar.