This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Travel on Points (ToP) meetup in Minneapolis. If you’re not aware of ToP, it’s a very large Facebook group geared around using points and miles for travel. I previously went to their meetup in Pittsburgh back in 2023 and when we canceled our France trip, I had a free weekend to attend this one.

These meetups consist of scheduled sessions from around 9:30-2pm on Saturday and Sunday, along with social gatherings on Friday and Saturday evenings. It was a fun event where I learned quite a bit and got to hang out with like-minded points and miles nerds for 48 hours.

Most of the attendees stayed at the host hotel – the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis. It’s a category 4 Hyatt property about 25 minutes from the airport and not very far from downtown. I booked with points for Friday night (12,000) and cash for Saturday night ($180 all in) as the Saturday night points rate was 15,000. I try to get a minimum 1.5cpp for my Hyatt bookings and if I can’t, I’ll usually pay cash.

I arrived Friday around 5pm and my room had been upgraded from a Two Queen Room to a King City View. I didn’t ask about a suite upgrade, but it was just me anyway. I put my things in the room and ran out to meet some folks. I took some quick pictures of the room.

This is not a new hotel. It looks like it’s been around since at least the 1980s or maybe earlier. The rooms are not really updated, although everything worked OK. There was also a minifridge, safe and coffee maker along with complimentary water (which was replenished by housekeeping).

My room looked out toward downtown Minneapolis, which is nice but it doesn’t really have any major landmarks. I could just about see the baseball stadium on the far left.

Complementary breakfast was available to me in the hotel restaurant as a Hyatt Globalist. There is no club lounge. I was able to either have the buffet or order something from the menu. On Saturday morning, I ordered an omelet which came with toast and hash browns.

On Sunday, I chose the buffet, but was still have eggs made to order along with it.

The hotel is huge with over 600 rooms. There were several conferences going on besides our meeting which had around 250 people attending. On Friday night, a few of us went to the hotel bar and the food and drinks were pretty good.

I checked out the exercise facilities and they were very impressive. There was an indoor pool (with indoor pool view rooms for some reason), a large workout area, and something you never see in modern hotels, a separate gym with a full-court basketball court.

The service was generally good although quite a few of us had extra charges show up on our bill and had to have them removed. For example, they somehow charged me $41 for Friday night’s stay which was totally booked with points.

On Saturday afternoon, I took a walk down to the Mississippi River from the hotel, across a bridge and then back across another bridge to get back to the hotel. The route was about five miles and was a nice way to see a bit of the city. On the way back, I passed the statue of Mary Tyler Moore. Her TV show in the 1970s was set and partially filmed in Minneapolis. Maybe they all stayed at the Hyatt Regency back then 🙂

On Sunday morning, I walked to the nearby Brits Pub for the early Liverpool match (at 8am Central). One of the other attendees came along for the experience. It was another late winner for the cardiac Reds. They had a nice display of supporters club scarves from around the world.

Overall, this was a good spot for the ToP Meetup as it was large enough to house everybody attending, was reasonably accessible from the airport and close to downtown. Would I stay here if I was visiting for some other reason? Probably not. I would recommend staying either a bit closer to downtown or out by the Mall of America depending on what you were looking to do in the city.

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