6 Nights At The Andaz West Hollywood – Why I Booked, How I Booked & How Much It Cost

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As soon as Christmas was over Joanna, MJ and I headed back across the Atlantic to get some much-needed LA sunshine and to escape the European winter. We ended up flying with British Airways and booking the Andaz West Hollywood and, because I think it could be useful to others planning trips, I thought I’d share the details of why we booked what we did, how we went about booking and how much it all cost.

I’m splitting this information over two posts (one for the flights and one for the hotel) and today I’ll take a look at the following:

• Why I chose to book the Andaz West Hollywood
• Why I chose the room that I booked
• How much the booking cost
• How I earned any points that I used for the booking.

Why I Booked The Andaz West Hollywood

When I head back to LA I like to stay in the area where I used to live (West Hollywood) as it’s an incredibly walkable area.

Hollywood (a separate area from West Hollywood) isn’t a particularly nice place to stay (even if Starwood has a W Hotel there), Beverly Hills doesn’t really have much going for it as a place to stay and Downtown is just too far away from places I like visiting (Runyon Canyon, Griffith Park etc…)

If you choose the right location in WeHo you can walk to any number of great restaurants, cafes and bars quite easily and there are quite few gyms available that will let you buy a day/weekly pass if you’re looking to stay in shape (and don’t have a gym where you’re staying).

West Hollywood isn’t short of good hotels but most are independent properties (like the Grafton, the London and the Sunset Tower) so there are very limited options if you want to pay with points.

This is what makes the Andaz West Hollywood stand out and why I’m excited that Marriott is opening an EDITION property here later this year.

If I’m not looking to pay with points I’ll always check out the AirBnB listings first as having the use of a kitchen and a parking space are huge money savers. On this occasion, however, I was looking to save as much cash as possible while enjoying as comfortable trip as possible…and that meant raiding my Chase Ultimate Rewards balance.

Which Room(s) At The Andaz West Hollywood?

As there would be 3 of us traveling on this trip I knew we would either need two rooms or a good-sized suite and there was one overriding reason why I booked a suite – cost.

Two entry-level rooms at the Category 5 Andaz West Hollywood would cost 40,000 points/night in total while a suite costs just 32,000 points/night….and a suite at this property offers better views.

Hyatt award chart

 800 square feet and with a living area separate from the main bedroom, the Andaz King Suites are very good indeed.

I also knew that the rollaway beds that the Andaz provides (and which we put into the suite’s living area for MJ) are surprisingly good and so would be perfectly ok for MJ to sleep on – I would have spent the extra 8,000 points/night if I thought otherwise.

Booking The Andaz West Hollywood

I wasn’t going to take any chances that the Andaz would run out of suites for the New Year period so I booked the property a whole 9 months before we were due to check-in (that’s probably me being overly cautious…but better safe than sorry!)

Hyatt’s rule about booking suites with points is simple: If an entry-level suite is available for a cash booking then the same suite can be booked using points. You have to call up central reservations to make the booking (you cannot book online) but that’s only a small inconvenience.

I still held Hyatt top-tier status when I called up to make the booking and, as I explained in a post back in December, I was allowed to book the suite without having to hand over any points until a few days before check-in.

I loved this option as it meant that I could keep the points for this booking in the form of Ultimate Rewards points (a very flexible currency) until I was 100% sure that we wouldn’t be cancelling the reservation.

The reservation was made all the way back in February last year but, as you can see from the screenshot above, the points didn’t actually come out of my account until the end of November:

Paying For The Andaz West Hollywood

As I’ve already mentioned, I was looking to make the most of my Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) balance on this trip and, at a total cost of 192,000 points (6 nights at 32,000 points/night), I can honestly say that this was the most expensive Hyatt points booking I’ve ever made….and by some distance!

The living area of an Andaz King Suite at the Andaz West Hollywood

I collect UR points almost exclusively so that I can convert them to Hyatt Points when it suits me – I find that I get the most enjoyment out of them that way – so using a large part of my UR balance on the Andaz West Hollywood was a pretty natural thing to do.

The 192,000 points I used for this stay were earned from….

• The sign-up bonus for the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card (100,000 points)
• Some manufactured spend using my Chase Ink credit card, Visa Gift Cards and Amex Bluebird
• Spending on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card and later the Chase Sapphire reserve card

Had we wanted to book the same suite for the same dates with cash, it would have cost in the region of $3,000 for the 6 nights….so I was essentially getting around 1.56 cents/point of value from my points.

Many will tell you that you can do a lot better with Hyatt points (and you can if you book at ridiculously priced hotels) but given the choice of parting with $3,000 or 192,000 points I’m almost always going to take the points option.

Bottom Line

This was a very good example where a sign up bonus on a credit card went a long way to helping us pay for part of a family trip and save us quite a bit of money….but it still required a bit of manufactured spend and regular everyday spend too.

A review of the suite we stayed in at the Andaz West Hollywood will be coming up in the next few days (expect a lot of pictures!) and then you can decide for yourselves if I booked the right thing and if I used my points balance wisely.