Austin on Points and Miles: Stay at Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort
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Nicole is a 3rd grade teacher, mom, wife, and travel enthusiast ready to show you how to travel for nearly free using points and miles!
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Traveling can be expensive, but with the right strategy, you can enjoy the experience without breaking the bank.
One way to do this is using points and miles to pay for travel expenses. If you’re planning a trip to Austin, Texas, and looking for a great place to stay, the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort is an excellent option.
Flights / Transportation: Roundtrip Kansas City (MCI) to Austin is a 1 1/2 hour flight using our Southwest Companion Passes and points. The cost for the 4 of us to fly was just under $45. Check out this blog post if you want to learn how to earn Southwest Companion Passes on Repeat. If I had paid cash for our flights, it would have been $1,500.
I booked our rental car using the Chase Travel℠. I always pay $5-$10 for my rental car with my Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card since it offers excellent rental car coverage, and the rest is taken care of with Chase Ultimate Rewards.
I paid 9,000 points for a midsize car for the 3-night stay this time.
Stay: We transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt. I booked Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort nights using 25,000 points per night. This was made possible because I hold the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, which gives me access to 14 incredible transfer partners, including Hyatt.
The total cash value of the hotel room would have been $2200! We would have never spent this much money! Thank goodness for points.
This resort is located on 405 acres of beautiful Texas Hill Country and offers a wide range of activities, including golf, horseback riding, hiking, and a water park. Several dining options are on-site, including a steakhouse, a farm-to-table restaurant, and a bar.
Our favorite part of the resort was all the activities included with the resort fee. Since I paid with points, these were all free to us. This included getting to pet farm animals like mini donkeys and llamas at the resort’s barn, bingo, nightly s’mores, bikes, driving range, yard games, and kids activity classes like bracelet making.
Lost Pines Resort has a great pool area. It has an adults-only section, a lazy river, a slide, hot tubs, and a zero-entry section.
Food: While at Lost Pines Resort, my Hyatt Globalist status covered our breakfast each morning at Heartwood House, which was delicious. The pancakes were huge! We also grabbed pizza and sandwiches from Old Buck’s Place while at the pool.
In Austin, we brunched at Magnolia Cafe, where I had an Eggscape, which was so good! We also ate brisket at Black’s BBQ.
Fun: The trip’s highlight was kayaking at dusk to Congress Avenue Bridge to watch almost 2 million bats leave their roosts for the night to feed. Kayaking in downtown Austin was so much fun, and I highly recommend it.
We also played our first-ever game of duckpin bowling at Punch Bowl Social. Bowling with the tiny bowling ball was definitely a different experience. It almost felt like bowling with a skee ball.
And what’s a trip to Austin without checking out the latest reads at the Book People bookstore? Such a cool, independently owned business. I grabbed a couple of new travel books while I was there!
We tried swimming at Barton Springs, but it was still a bit cold during our trip in April.
My son is a huge military history nerd, and we lucked into a reenactment weekend at Camp Marby. Their military museum is top-notch! The museum is an all-branches museum with a huge collection.
Final thought
Using points and miles to pay for your stay at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort is an excellent way to make your trip to Austin more affordable.
Not only will you save money, but you’ll also enjoy a luxurious resort with a range of activities and amenities. So, start planning your trip today and maximize your travel rewards!
Cards that made this trip possible
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card
Ink Business Cash® Credit Card
If you decide to open a card for traveling with points and miles, I would appreciate it if you would use my affiliate links. It’s a free-to-you way to support all of my free content. Thank you!
Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
I was researching index funds and happened upon the points and miles community through creators who also post about budgets, financial independence, and investing.
Points and miles allowed those people to travel and work toward financial independence simultaneously.
Thank goodness I got started when I did. The past almost two years of travel have been something we will never forget.
Earning points and miles through credit cards is only a good choice if you have the financial discipline to use them, like cash/debit cards.
Since we started traveling with points and miles, we have had more money going into our investment and savings accounts than ever.