Review – Hyatt Regency Churchill London

Introduction

During my recent London trip, I decided to pick a Hyatt stay due to my Diamond status this year.  There was the Hyatt Andaz or the Hyatt Regency Churchill.  While I love the Andaz properties, I ultimately went with the HR since readers told me it was more central to the tourist attractions.  I ultimately booked this for 7 nights (2 on p+c/dsu and 5 nights on pure points.)

 

Points + Cash / DSU

I initially booked this all on points, but about a week before my trip, points+cash opened up (I was randomly looking.)  Quick aside – it seems that Hyatt properties are beginning to play the airline F award game where they are opening up p+c and DSU availability a week before the date.  I then tweeted Hyatt and was able to change it to p+c and used one of my DSU’s (once again, I can’t stress how awesome it is to be able to do that.)

 

Getting to hotel

Since our flight was landing at 10AM and most hotels won’t have rooms ready until after noon, we decided to take the tube (aka slow train) to the hotel instead of faster and more expensive Heathrow Express.  I was able to use my Apple Pay with my Citi Prestige card just fine for the tube.  However my wife couldn’t get hers to work, and so I bought an Oyster card and put 15 GBP on it (total cost of 20GBP due to 5GBP deposit.)  In hindsight, I should have bought an Oyster card for myself as well since Apple Pay was finicky during my trip.

I don’t remember the total time, but I want to say it took about an hour.  The stop you want to get off is the Hyde Park Corner stop.  When you get off, there is a bus station right there.  I didn’t know how buses worked yet, so I was going to call an Uber.  Then I realized it was going to be tough for the Uber to pick me up at that exact spot due to it being a major street.  Ultimately, we decided to just walk through the park [and catch Pokemon while we were at it.]

 

Checkin

When we got to the hotel at around noon, our room was already ready.  They asked me what I wanted for the Diamond amenity, and I chose the wine and chips and nuts.  By the way, the chips and nuts were DELICIOUS.  The chips were Kettle-cooked and tasted a bit like BBQ flavor.  The nuts were roasted.  The great thing was they replenished the 2 dishes every night.  Alas, there was no refill on the red wine bottle.

Protip – ask for a room on floor 8 so you are on the same floor as the lounge.  This way, when heading back to your room, you can stop by and grab a cookie and/or a Coke/beer/water back to your room.

 

Wifi

The wifi was free.  I don’t think you needed room number and last name.  I think you just needed to accept the t&c.  Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.  This could be why the Wifi was spotty.  When it worked, it worked great.  However, there would be times when you would click on something and just wait too long (like it was dropping packets.)  I often toggled between the Wifi and just using the T-Mobile free 4G (promo for summer of 2016.)  At least the 4G was more stable and felt just as fast as the wifi.

 

Breakfast

We had breakfast in the lounge almost every day.  There were 2 hot dishes that they would change every day.  Some days you had eggs, some days French toast, some days sausage, etc.  There was also fruit and pastries as well.

 

Suite Room

While I enjoyed the suite and it was a let-down when we had to move to a regular room after the 2 nights, when I got my hotel bill for the 2 points+cash (~$260 USD), I wished we had just done the points all 7 nights.

 

Normal room

When we switched to the regular room, immediately, I felt I was no longer in London, meaning the room looked like any other Hyatt Regency room in the world.  So it was a bit of a letdown to be ‘downgraded.’  However, after the first night, I made peace with it since we weren’t spending that much time in the room anyway.

My biggest gripes about the room were 1) it wasn’t very sound-proof and you could hear people in the hallway pretty easily, 2) the room didn’t close on its own properly.  On the 2nd morning, I realized the door wasn’t fully closed all night.  FACEPALM!  Lastly and the biggest gripe of them all – while I appreciate modern bathrooms and showers, the half glass shower is a TERRIBLE IDEA in a hotel room.  Every time after the shower was over, there’d be a puddle outside the tub because you know, water fell outside SINCE THERE WAS NO GLASS THERE.

 

Conclusion

With all that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to stay here again.  It’s in a central location.  It was a relatively easy pickup spot for Uber although there were 3 different places that drivers picked us up from.  Most attractions were less than 10GBP away.  The bar there is pretty nice.  Plus, there’s a Pokestop at the front door.