Hyatt Place Keystone Review

We recently visited the beautiful Hyatt Place Keystone on a summer trip to Colorado. This hotel seems to be primarily a winter destination for those looking to snowboard and ski but it also is a nice summer destination.

There were hardly any visitors during our summer stay which made the experience very relaxing and enjoyable. In this review article, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the Hyatt Place Keystone.

Booking the Hyatt Place Keystone

We were completing a bit of a mattress run (for Titanium with Marriott) in Denver but decided to head up into the mountains for a couple of days to acclimate before our first 14er hike. The Hyatt Place Keystone sits around 9,400 feet so it seemed like a perfect place to do that.

I decided to use a free night certificate from my World of Hyatt Credit Card along with 15,000 points to cover two nights total. When doing this you need to call the hotel ahead of time so that they can link your reservations and keep you in the same room but you will have to remember to reactivate your room keys during your stay.

With taxes and fees, each night came out to around $220, which offered about 1.46 cents per point in value for the 15,000 points. That’s not the best value I have received with Hyatt points but with the upgrade (discussed below) the value was much better.

Tip: Use the free app WalletFlo to help you travel the world for free by finding the best travel credit cards and promotions!

Location overview

The Hyatt Place Keystone is located in Keystone, Colorado which is about 1.5 hours west of Denver and 20 minutes to Breckenridge.

Keystone, full of mining and logging history, is a small unincorporated mountain village with a population of somewhere around 1,000. It’s known for being home to the Keystone Resort — the only place to offer night skiing in the area.

The town has 20 lifts including two gondolas, two express six-pack and four high speed quads. Find more on the trails here.

The Snake River runs right behind the hotel and there are little walkways that take you on bridges over the river for some nice strolls. It’s truly scenic and worth it to check out.

You’ll find a lot of condominiums nearby but also a decent selection of restaurants. When we visited in July 2021 some of the restaurants were still shuttered from covid but many of them were completely open and did not require a mask.

Directly adjacent to the hotel is a place called Goat Soup & Whiskey Tavern. We didn’t try it out but I saw they had a lot of good reviews for both their soup and whiskey. There’s a Mexican restaurant directly across the street called Dos Locos Mexican Restaurant & Cantina which we did try and while we loved the queso the entrées were just okay.

If you walk about 15 minutes east you will hit the heart of the town: River Run Village.

This is where the Keystone Ski Resort is found and where you can find a lot more restaurants, the gondola, some ice-skating, etc. We tried the Pizza On the Run and felt like the pizza was pretty average. (Overall, none of the places we ate at in Keystone were a home run.)

We were going to give the gondola a shot but it was $33 per person (only day passes sold) and that would’ve only given us about 1.5 hours to utilize. That was a hard price to stomach considering Telluride offers free gondola rides.

If you head west from the hotel you can also find major attractions just minutes away like Keystone Lake, which is the largest maintained outdoor ice rink in the U.S. Keep heading west and you’ll hit Dillion where the Dillion Reservoir is located — a great scenic drive.

Be sure to check out the Sapphire Point Overlook which is found on a short loop trail (.6 miles, 36 feet in elevation) offering some pretty great views of the water and surrounding peaks.

Sapphire Point Overlook

Check-in (early check-in granted)

On the way to the hotel I was able to confirm that we would receive early check-in so we were able to get into our room around noon. The hotel staff member specifically mentioned my Hyatt Discoverist status, when offering me early check-in which was nice and I think the third or fourth time I’ve gotten early check-in due to Hyatt Discoverist status.

At check-in we were also able to confirm an upgrade to a Mountain View room. Although we were only placed on the second floor it was still a really nice view.

The total cost for the upgraded room would’ve come out to around $530 for two nights. So I basically got $265 in value for my free night certificate and for my 15,000 points which came out to a more respectable 1.76 cents per point.

The hotel offers both valet and free parking. You can find some parking spots below the hotel and others surrounding the property. To access the parking follow the one-way lane that takes you underneath the property.

The room (Mountain View King Bed)

The Mountain View King bed is small to medium sized room at 300-square-foot but it’s got mostly everything you need.

A as soon as you enter there is a full-length mirror and on the other side, a small, single-serve coffee/tea station.

Tip: head downstairs to the lounge area to pick up more tea flavors.

There is also a nice little mini fridge below the coffee station but no microwave.

Directly beside the coffee station, you’ll find the work station, which comes with a comfortable chair along with power outlets and USB ports. The large 42 inch TV is just to your side but you can swivel the screen so that it faces the bed a — feature I thought was pretty cool about this room.

There is also a little sitting area with an ottoman which looks out to the view. I really enjoyed sitting on the sofa and watching the rain roll in from the mountains. (If you’d like, you can open up one of the smaller windows by turning its handle.)

The furniture does feel a bit cluttered given the limited space but ultimately this was not a big deal to me with the large windows that open up the room.

The king bed was really comfortable, so I don’t have any complaints there. There are lamps built in to the floating headboard on either side of the bed and you will have two power outlets at your convenience. On one side you’ll have the phone and on the other side, the alarm clock.

The bathroom was nice and clean and came with a single sink and KenetMD Skincare amenities.

The shower is pretty spacious (long). The water pressure was fine but this was one of those hotel showers where there is a very thin line between warm water and scolding hot water. So pretty difficult to find the sweet spot.

Facilities

On the main floor, there is a nice cozy lounge area complete with a fireplace and large flatscreen TV.

There is also a bar area with plenty of seats surrounding it. (It is just behind this area where breakfast is served.)

Near the bar area there is a station for coffee and tea and also a Soda Stream machine.

If you are not familiar, Soda Stream is a company that produces sparkling water products. They have small machines that you can use in your kitchen to create your own sparkling water and it is one of the best purchases we have made in the last couple of years.

But at the hotel they have an industrial machine that serves up all kinds of different flavors. They had just set it up whenever we arrived and so they were adding new flavors every morning. It was all complimentary when we visited and it was a very nice surprise (although I will say that the level three carbonation is not as strong as the at home machines).

Beside the bar area there is a decent amount of seating with some nice views and you can also opt to sit outside if the weather is cooperating.

The breakfast was a pretty standard continental breakfast with juices, cereal, milk, fruit, Jimmy Dean sausages, etc. I’m not sure if there are any more offerings during non-pandemic times but you can take a look at the breakfast spread below.

Gym

The Hyatt Place Keystone has a really nice gym with most of the basic equipment you’d be looking for.

Hot tubs

There are three different hot tubs you can choose from at the Hyatt Place Keystone.

The first one is located on the bottom level, just outside of the parking garage. It has some privacy glass surrounding it so you can enjoy the hot tub with some degree of privacy, even though it’s found near an entrance to the hotel.

The other two hot tubs come with a view.

One is located on the fifth floor and the other is on the sixth floor. Both should have towels for you on-site.

We spent some time relaxing in the hot tub on the sixth floor and it was very nice especially with the amazing view.

There is also a pool that is shared with other nearby facilities. You just need to show your room key in order to access the pool but we did not try it out during our stay.

Final word

Overall, this was a great little summer getaway. The primary reason we stayed here was to acclimate to a higher elevation (which seemed to have worked for our hike by the way). But I enjoyed pretty much every aspect of the stay. The service was great and I really enjoyed soaking in the hot tub with such beautiful views.