During our last trip to Asia we stayed the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong. It was our first trip to Hong Kong and I had read rave reviews about the property in the past, and was excited to check it out for myself.

Booking and price

The hotel is a category 6, which requires 25,000 Gold Passport points per night. We needed 6 nights, which would have been 150,000 points. Instead of using so many points, I noticed that the hotel was running a 3rd night free promotion on a rate of $412 per night (non-refundable), so I did the following:

• Booked nights 1 through 4 via Citi Prestige MasterCard concierge
• Paid for nights 1 and 2 at $412 per night
• Received 3rd night free from the hotel
• Received 4th night free rebate from my Citi Prestige MasterCard
• Booked nights 5 and 6 with my wife’s Chase Hyatt Visa two free nights sign up bonus
• Applied Diamond Suite Upgrade to reservation
• Contacted the hotel in advance and asked if they could merge my wife’s two nights booking with my reservation and keep the suite for all 6 nights, which they agreed to do

By doing all this, while the nightly rate was pretty steep at $412 per night, we stayed for 6 nights but only paid for two of them, and got to stay at an incredible suite for 6 nights for a total of $824 while earning Hyatt stay credit toward Diamond 2017 requalification.

Check-in and lobby

On arrival there was no wait (we arrived at around 1pm), and we were given a very warm welcome, recognized as a Diamond member, confirmed into our suite, and given a very detailed explanation of all the Diamond benefits and property features. The front desk clerk confirmed all the details and even confirmed some notes I had added to the reservation.

The lobby was beautiful and very spacious, with a water fountain and flowers as its main features and some pretty majestic columns.

One thing that did catch my attention throughout our stay was the lack of sitting areas in the main lobby, although there were additional seating areas on the second level.

After checking in a hotel employee escorted us to our suite, which was on the 15th floor, and introduced us to the room features.

Our Diamond suite upgrade booked us into the hotel’s Grand Suite, which was impressive. As you enter the suite there is a hallway leading up to the living room.

The suite had a pretty nice view into the Victoria harbor, minus the construction work.

The windows were all floor to ceiling, which allowed for a lot of natural light. To the left of the living-room was the bedroom, with a king size bed.

There were lots of mirrors everywhere, and most doors were sliding doors, which gave the suite a much larger feel and made use of space more efficient.

The suite led into the main bathroom, which had a walk-in shower and a bathtub. There was an electric powered sliding panel between the bathtub and the room, which made the bedroom and bathroom feel much larger but also closed for privacy.

The bathtub had a waterproof TV embedded into the wall, which was pretty awesome.

The walk-in shower had a rain shower plate and additional handheld shower.

The toiletries were June Jacobs, which was the only thing that felt out of place as luxurious as the suite and the overall hotel was. 
I liked the vanity lights design, which were shaped like flowers. The bathroom had all essentials like shaving kits, toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, etc.

With all the marble, wooden floors and amenities the room felt very Park Hyatt. Inside the main bathroom was a closet area which contained shoe trees, bathrobes, safe and a few drawers.

The main bathroom had two entrances, one through the bedroom and another entrance through the main hallway. To the right of the main hallway was the powder room, which also had the toilet and a sink. Having the toilet and an additional sink separate from the main bathroom is very convenient and a nice feature of this suite.

Between the powder room and the living-room was an additional closet, which my wife took over, while I took the closet in the main bathroom.

The living-room also contained the minibar, and one of my favorite amenities, a Nespresso machine and pods. It also contained dishes, cups and glasses, and a pot for hot water.

Typical of Grand Hyatt properties, all the blinds, temperature controls and lights were completely electronic.

The hotel also provides what I think is arguably the best hotel amenity, and the fact that it is available for all guests in all rooms, regardless of elite status is even more impressive. It consists of a 4G smartphone with complimentary unlimited calls to the U.S., a wifi hotspot which you can use anywhere in the city, preloaded maps, taxi card contact info in English and Chinese, subway maps, and even discounts on local attractions, which we took advantage of and saved us quite a bit of money. I knew about the feature from reading prior reviews including this one from One Mile at a Time, but didn’t expect we would take advantage of this benefit as much as we did.

For anyone worried about loading apps into the phone and personal info, the phone is automatically wiped out after checkout. The battery life was also really good and we never had any problems running out of battery after being out all day.

The hotel also conveniently provides power adapters since Hong Kong does not use the standard U.S. plug. I had taken my own adapter but was pleasantly surprised and glad to have an extra adapter and be able to charge additional electronics at once.

Finally, the hotel also has a very useful benefit for Diamond members only, which is 3 complimentary pieces of laundry daily. We used it several times during our stay.

The view, while very nice, is quite an eye sore, because there is a massive construction project going on right outside the hotel, which I understand it to be a large traffic bypass. The view of Kowloon across the harbor was fantastic nonetheless.

While I had chosen the 1,000 welcome points (I usually do if the hotel has a club lounge), we still received a welcome note from the hotel’s GM as well as a fruit plate, dried fruit, pistachios and cookies, and a bottle of wine. It was a very nice touch for what was shaping to be a great stay.

Grand Club

As a Diamond member we received complimentary access to the hotel’s Grand Club, which is located on the 32nd floor, and has the best views in the whole property.

The club is open for breakfast and throughout the day serves light snacks and beverages, and then opens for dinner until 7:30 p.m., including complimentary premium alcohol. After 7:30 p.m. it serves desserts and stays open until midnight. There is also a concierge available at all times while the club is open. The food and service quality were both some of the best I’ve experienced anywhere. On one of the nights we met up for dinner at the lounge with Tahsir Ahsan, who happened to be in Hong Kong at the time flying the inaugural American LAX-HKG flight, and we talked travel hacking for quite a bit.

This is the view from the Grand Club.

Grand Cafe restaurant

While the breakfast buffet and dinner was definitely great, Diamond members also have the choice of having complimentary breakfast at the hotel’s Grand Cafe. We decided to try it on our second morning. Once we had breakfast at that buffet, I refused to have breakfast at the Grand Club. The Grand Cafe buffet was one of the most impressive set ups I have ever seen. Here are some pictures of our experience. See for yourselves.

This was by far one of the most impressive and high quality buffets I’ve ever seen. All the food was fresh, the setting was great, and it was busy, but didn’t feel overcrowded and the servers were on top of their game every morning.

Other amenities:

The pool had a nice set up, and you get to it by walking through a nice outdoor area past the spa, although being in between the two towers the sun only hits the water during midday, and the water felt pretty cold when we went in the late afternoon. It’s also pretty deep in the middle, and I didn’t notice the depth sign by one of the stepladders, and assuming it was normal depth I let go and sank 7 feet straight down without warning. Pretty funny I suppose. I also liked that the staff takes free bottles of water to your chairs at the pool.

The gym was to the right of the spa and was pretty large and had lots of equipment.

Overall impression:

The Grand Hyatt Hong Kong is one of the best Hyatt properties I’ve ever visited, and the staff, room accommodations and food quality were top notch. The location is not as pedestrian-friendly as Kowloon across the harbor, and the nearest subway station is about a 10-15 minute walk, but everything else more than makes up for it. This hotel will be at the top of our list whenever our travels take us back to Hong Kong.

The is a post from FreeTravelGuys.