Chase Hyatt Visa Card -- Good deal?

Sure looks like a good deal. I have a Starwood Amex Card and love its many options for use of points. I do not have a Hilton or a Marriott Card.

Is the Hyatt Visa as good a deal as it looks for at least the first year?

If you stay at Hyatt properties then I feel the first year is a really good deal. Chase credited my account $100 and then I received the two free night vouchers and two suite upgrades after the $1K spend. I figured for $95 a year it's worth the free night after the first year.

It's most valuable if you can redeem the two free nights that come with the card the first year at a top-tier property (usually one of the Park Hyatts overseas is your best bet). You can fairly easily get a redemption worth $750-1000 per night, which makes this pretty sweet for the first year. Significantly less so in subsequent years, but still good.

Agreed but that is unlikely unless I defer getting the card until August and by then the offer may be gone. My only overseas trip where I will be paying for the hotel planned for 2013 is to Athens where I am staying on points at a great Starwood property. Marriott has nothing there anyway. In summer 2014 we plan a big trip and could use the free nights.

Should I wait and risk the offer going away? Any idea how long it will be out there?

Hasn't it been available more or less unchanged since the card came out a couple years ago? Of course, past performance is no indication of future returns...

I would say "no brainer" for the first year, but otherwise AUSsie is correct.

This is a card I am keeping long-term, the Platinum status benefits are great for my occasional Hyatt stays, each year anniversary gives a category 1-4 night stay cert that offsets the annual fee, and a no foreign transaction fee chip-and-signature card is good to have. I don't use the card for spend much, but every so often to have some activity on the card and points activity on my Hyatt account, which once went a year with no activity and I was worried my points might expire (fortunately, the did not).

Why I don't have it:

"Too many" alternative ways to get Platinum. MP Premier membership and UA Club VISA are two other avenues.

Lots of other no foreign transaction fee cards in my wallet/drawer (CSP, PC Visa, UA Club VISA, ...)

Chip and signature benefit is questionable: the only problem I have had with non-chip cards was in ticket/parking/gas pump vending machines, and they requested a PIN, not a signature. Would the Chip & Signature card have been any better than my mag stripe cards?

PC Visa gives one free night at any IHG property, not just low-category. For a lower annual fee.

Hyatt points don't expire in practice... and why would I carry a card from a hotel brand that I don't stay at for over a year? ...

... which ties in with the fact that I already have a lot of Chase cards that are more useful to me, so the "Hyatt" card is the "weakest link". I might get it at some point in the future, but I doubt I'd keep it.

Those are all good points relevant to your situation but may not apply to the original questioner, who only mentioned the Starwood Amex which does have a foreign transaction fee and the limited acceptance of Amex.

Chip-and-signature is second-rate compared to chip-and-pin and I love my Diner's Club with real chip-and-pin but that is not open to new US applicants at this time, and the Andrews FCU can be too much hassle for limited use.

I have the Chase Hyatt, Marriott and Priority Club and like each of them, none are perfect. I have no interest at this time in achieving MP Premier Membership, I am Diamond with Delta though may expand to United at some point. Or the UA Club Visa, and that Club Visa's fee will bite after all these waived first-year's are gone. For non-business I generally eschew chain hotels but stay a few times a year at each and those cards and their benefits suit me fine.

Yup. That's why I said "Why I don't have it:"

You already have it. But I used the wrong term: MP (MilePoint) Premium (not Premier) membership is what I meant. Ooops.

Ah, indeed MilePoint Premium is a great deal, I got that after the credit card, and happy to take the points credit. The National Executive status is great, let's me be a show-off to my colleagues on work trips.

DH and I both have the card. For us, as Diamond members, the annual free night is a great benefit. Used one at Park Hyatt Hamburg this past year. GH Istanbul in April will be the next.

As a diamond, the credit card was high on the priority list as I got 2 suite nights at the Park Hyatt Tokyo out of it. If you plan on getting diamond in the future, get the card in those years. If not, the free night annually offsets the annual fee and the platinum status as long as you have the card is a nice benefit.

Ah, yes, the 2 free nights on signup. I didn't mention those, as the OP was asking about subsequent years, but I am certainly glad my hubby and I were both Diamonds when we got the cards, as my suite nights were at PH Tokyo and his at the Churchill in London. Both were excellent redemptions, IMO.

After January NYC will no longer have a 1-4 rated hotel. All will be 5's and 6's so where the initial free stays work the annual ones after that will not. That is a bummer.

Point taken, but you'd have to work hard to find a Hyatt property that DIDN'T make that free night worth more than the $75 annual fee. Heck, the Category 1 Hyatt Place in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma is about $125 a night.

Hmm, ... that gives me an idea ...
http://milepoint.com/forums/threads/hyatt-worst-redemption-value-challenge-just-for-fun.53831/

Seems there is a Hyatt Place coming to NYC:

http://newyorkmidtown.place.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels-newyorkmidtown-place/place/index.jsp

I assume it's not going to be beyond cat4.

You are right. It looks like a 4 at 15,000 points per night.

YAY!

OK I am going to get the Chase Hyatt card. Does Chase give referrers credit? If so and you want refer me, let me know. If more than one of you respond, I'll do a random pick. I would hate not to ask and waste the referral credit. I'll check responses tomorrow evening around 7 pm EST and pick one then.

Don't you have to have a link to be able to get referral credit since I don't think Chase works like AMEX does for the SPG card. If so, I think you might be best off picking a blogger you like.

Correct and thank goodness since we are losing 48 Lex as an annual free night option. Let's hope this hotel sticks at a 4 for a while!

Yeeah... just upgraded a cheap stay at Grand Hyatt Istanbul to a suite .

And booked two nights at the PH Tokyo FOR FREE (the regular rate was 106000 JPY or $1203 for two nights). So, yeah... I'd say it's worth the annual fee. Helluva card to get, IMHO.

It does sound counter-intuitive to make the card less rewarding after the first year.

Virtually all cards have a sign-up bonus in the first year that isn't repeated every subsequent year. If this is counter-intuitive, it's basically SOP for all of them.