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I just this morning got back to New York after 8 nights at the Grand Hyatt Kauai, a property that I’ve reviewed glowingly in the past. This time around, we didn’t get any upgrade at all — just a standard 2 Queen Bed parking-lot-view room. You might expect that would leave us disappointed, but to the contrary we extended our stay 3 nights longer than expected because we just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave. Despite the fact that this place isn’t the flashiest or fanciest Hyatt property on Earth, it might just be my family’s favorite. There are some drawbacks, but they won’t be enough to keep me from returning.
Grand Hyatt Kauai Bottom Line Review
The Grand Hyatt Kauai is a gorgeous property, with landscaping that is so well manicured that it truly feels like paradise. Facilities aren’t the most modern and it shows some wear here and there, but mostly in ways that give the place a familiar charm that is hard to describe. Absent are the modern touch-panel tight switches where you control each light from a panel next to the bed in favor of physical light switches (where you can actually figure out how to turn off exactly which light you want, which was a nice change of pace!).
However, apart from the grounds being so well kept, what really separates this place from the pack is the warmth of the service. Hyatt is generally known for good service at most properties, but the Grand Hyatt Kauai really stands out in my opinion. And it stands in contrast to the also-excellent but very different style of service you can get in places like the Grand Hyatt Macau or the Grand Hyatt Singapore or the Park Hyatt Vienna in that the service at the Grand Hyatt Kauai is so warm, friendly and personal. That’s particularly true in the club lounge, where Ana and Victoria and the rest of the staff feel like really nice family members who want to take good care of you. Smiles don’t feel faked — it really feels like what I’ve understood the spirit of Aloha to mean and I love it. We randomly met a woman in a park one day last week (our kids were playing with her child) who mentioned that she used to work in the club lounge at the Grand Hyatt Kauai and she spoke as glowingly about working there and about her former coworkers as we felt about it all, which says a lot.
As a Hyatt Globalist, I think the biggest two drawbacks are that upgrades can sometimes be hard to come by (we ended up with the base level room we booked with a parking lot view) and the fact that the food in the club lounge is highly repetitive, with almost everything being identical for breakfast each day (with two rotating dishes) and almost everything being identical for the evening happy hour (again, with two rotating dishes). However, we found enough variety to satisfy us and despite the lounge being relatively small, it never felt overcrowded and I don’t think I ever saw them run out of a dish because the staff were so quick to replenish things.
It’s also worth mentioning that we discovered tons of things to do within a short drive of the hotel. Whereas on past trips we’ve done a lot of driving to other parts of Kauai, we mostly stayed within about 10 minutes of the hotel this time around and we didn’t get bored at all. In fact, we can’t wait to return.
- Price: 30,000 to 35,000 points per night (my first 5 nights, during President’s Week, were 35K; the next three nights were 30K per night).
- Value: Fantastic given the cash price of rooms. The first 5 nights of our stay would have been about $1,200 per night all-in for a standard room at the time I booked; a room with club lounge access was ringing in around $1600 per night with taxes & fees. Based on my searches, rooms more typically run between $700 – $1,000 per night all-in, so this place pretty consistently returns 2-3c per point or more.
- Location: Excellent location on the south shore of Kauai, close to Poipu Beach. The ocean in this spot can be quite rough (the beach was red-flagged each day we were there with sizable waves, though we saw plenty of surfers in the water every evening), but the beach is gorgeous and often relatively empty. There’s a nice little hiking trail going up a cliff from the hotel with a secluded cove on the other side. Within a short drive, there are excellent beaches and plenty of things to do to keep you busy (Poipu Beach, although by far the most crowded we visited, had 15-20 turtles on the beach at a time when we visited; Salt Pond Beach was a bit farther but very peaceful and calm; the Makauwahi Cave trail is within 10 minutes by car and not only did we enjoy checking out the cave, but we also saw monk seals on the nearly-deserted beach there).
- Room: We had a standard 2 Queen Bed room with a parking lot view, with no upgrade available. I stalked availability looking to apply a suite upgrade, but I never saw a standard suite available and even the premium suites that became available now and then were all gone by the time we arrived. I didn’t press for an upgrade. Somewhat disappointingly, we weren’t even blocked in a room in the same wing with the club lounge, which kind of surprised me and was my only gripe.
- Parking: Self-parking is complimentary for everyone (it is included in the resort fee, which you do not pay when redeeming points regardless of your status or lack thereof). Valet parking is complimentary for Globalists on an award stay. We used valet and it was convenient and quick — our car was always waiting out front by the time we walked up from our room. Tips for valet service do add up over the course of a week, so you may prefer the free self-parking, but we were happy with valet.
- Resort/Destination Fee: $55 + tax, but that’s waived when redeeming a free night award (whether using points or a free night certificate). The resort fee includes a bunch of stuff that we mostly didn’t use.
- Internet: Speedy and coverage around the resort was excellent. I worked on my laptop by the saltwater lagoon one day, which is pretty far outside the building and yet I had no trouble getting a solid WiFi signal.
- Service: Stand-out good. Eric, our check-in agent, mentioned that he could see that it had been five years since our last visit, so he “welcomed us back” and explained what had changed (a small touch that should be easy given all the data that hotels have, yet in almost 100% of situations, the front desk agent asks whether I’ve been there before rather than seeing that I have been). Jeff, the bellman who carried in our bags, noticed my son’s Jurassic Park backpack and when I told him that my son has seen all of the movies, Jeff shared that he was in the second movie and got eaten by a raptor, which my son thought was awesome. When my 6yr old got a bracelet to ride the water slide but my 3yr old was just about an inch and a half too short, the attendant had a slap bracelet ready to give to my 3yr old to put a smile on his face anyway. But the club lounge is really where the service at this property shines. Everyone in the club lounge treated us more like you would treat a visiting family member than like a customer being served. Smiles were warm and genuine, not forced or stuffy. Rather than feeling like staff were trying to anticipate your needs (which is also nice, but a different kind of service), it felt like staff were trying to make sure you were comfortable and enjoying your time there. And around the resort, most people had the same outgoingly friendly attitude. One of the water slide attendants always had a huge smile on her face. I asked if the view from the top of the water slide ever got old and she replied with a genuine, “No, it does not”. In my opinion, it is a feat of hiring / management / training when you know that everyone around you is “at work”, but it feels like they are happy to be there rather than just doing a job.
- Turndown service: None.
- Dining: There are several restaurants, but we didn’t try any of the on-property options. We ate breakfast in the club lounge and the evening happy hour in the club lounge was substantial enough to substitute for a light dinner, so the only meal we ate most days was lunch and we did that off-property each day. The club lounge also had afternoon snacks (mostly cookies and nuts), which was nice since we could get the kids a drink and a snack in the late afternoon.
- Spa: My wife went to the spa on two separate days, once for a 90-minute massage and once for a facial. Services were very expensive. She was pleased with the quality of the services, but expect it to cost a pretty penny (with tip, the 90-minute massage was about $400 and the 60-minute facial was a bit cheaper, but not much).
- Fitness Room: While I fully intended to work out during this trip, I unfortunately didn’t make it to the fitness room. My wife stopped by with the kids one day and reported that it looked nice enough and had plenty of equipment, but also said that it was quite busy.
- Hyatt Globalist Benefits:
- Room Upgrade: None offered. I didn’t press for it as there weren’t even ocean view rooms for sale in the app when we arrived.
- Free Breakfast: This property has a club lounge and as such breakfast is served in the lounge (restaurant breakfast is not offered for Globalists). The club lounge breakfast was mostly the same each day (with bagels / bread for toasting along with croissants / pastries / pound cake / banana or mango carrot bread to round out the carbs section, mixed fruit, daily fresh papaya and pineapple, oat meal, and sliced meats and rotating cheeses available in the mornings. There were also two rotating hot dishes that included options like pancakes, kalua pork hash (highly recommended!) and a daily egg dish (scrambled, frittata, etc).I walked out full each day. I could see some folks getting bored on the same-ness since this isn’t a huge breakfast spread, but we found it perfectly suitable.
- Club Lounge: The club lounge is small and as such the offerings weren’t broad, but there was enough to keep us satisfied for 8 nights. More importantly, service in the lounge was fantastic and everything was constantly restocked. All-day beverage options included a juice machine (with the Hawaiian staple of Passion Fruit Orange Guava juice!), a Sodastream water machine (that did various flavored waters), both an espresso machine and a Keurig for coffee, sodas (including Pepsi / Diet Pepsi / Starry), and milk (which included 2%, whole, almond, and oat milk). During the happy hour, there were wines (a couple of red options and at least one white) for $5 and liquor/cocktails for $7 with an honor bar system. Note that the alcoholic drinks were only available from 5pm-7pm. There were also cookies, nuts, granola bars, and sometimes potato chips available during the day (which was a good value — the same cookies were $4-$6 each by the pool! On at least one occasion, I think we had two cookies each in the lounge :-).
- Late Checkout: I didn’t need late checkout, so I’m not sure whether it would have been possible. One note on checkout: we had an ~$80 restaurant tab on our final folio that I didn’t recognize but initially chalked up to my wife perhaps getting something with the kids when I was working at some point. When she told me she hadn’t, I returned to the front desk. They were able to look up the charge and it wasn’t anything we’d ordered. They removed the charge without issue, so I was 100% happy with the response from the desk, though it did make more likely to look over my hotel bills in general more closely in the future. Everything else on our bill was correct.
- Welcome Amenity: There was a generous spread of snacks waiting for us in our room upon arrival, including a couple of granola bars, a large container of macadamia nut popcorn, a large box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, a bag of cookies, Maui potato chips, and probably more that I’m forgetting. We snacked on a lot that during the week.
- Would I stay again? Absolutely. The property is kept in great condition, the service is fantastic, the location is terrific. The place just feels like a charming slice of paradise despite being a massive convention property.
Pros
- Warm & friendly service
- Beautiful groundskeeping. Well-kept and clean in public spaces.
- Tons of small conveniences are accounted for — examples include the fact that beach towels are available from the valet; to-go coffee cups are on hand in the club lounge; laundry (washers & dryers) is not only free to do, but they have free detergent and dryer sheets
- Excellent pool area, including a large lazy river, a good waterslide for kids (must be at least 42″), a couple of hot tubs, and a large saltwater lagoon with plenty of very shallow water and an artificial beach
- Enough food in the lounge to substitute for dinner if you’d like
- Grand lobby makes you feel like you’ve arrived in Hawaii.
Cons
- This property would quickly get expensive without club lounge access given the cost of food on-property and the location being somewhat isolated. We did get Uber Eats delivered one time, but another night when I looked at delivery options around 9pm, delivery options were very slim.
- Property is VERY big, so the walk to your room or from your room to the parking lot can be very long, particularly if you get an oceanfront view (which we had the last time we stayed).
- Spa is open-air, which might be a plus since you can hear the ocean but my wife reports that you should bring your sunglasses
- Poolside chairs were often taken all day despite not really seeing anyone at them (a common resort issue)
- The ocean was too rough to swim unless you’re a strong swimmer
- Pool water was very cold (which might be a pro on a really hot day!). Hot tubs got a bit crowded.
Image Gallery
The Room
The Club Lounge
Facilities
Things we did nearby
A quick list of things we did nearby with some pics:
- Poipu Beach: By far the most crowded we visited, but we saw sea turtles there several times and it was calm enough for the kids (about 5 minutes away)
- Makauwahi Cave trail / cave: This is about 8 minutes away by car and then an easy (and really beautiful) hike. You do need to be able to get down on your hands and knees to crawl through the entrance to the cave, but it was cool!
- Anake’s Juice Bar: There’s a pic below. This is inside a little grocery store. Go!
- Kaua’i Culinary Market at The Shops at Kukui‘ula: This is on Wednesdays and is like a farmer’s marketing in an outdoor shopping center. We got a number of types of fresh fruit here! About 5 minutes by car.
- Waimea Canyon: “The Grand Canyon of Hawaii”. About an hour by car. Absolutely gorgeous.
- Salt Pond Beach: This was about halfway between the hotel and Waimea Canyon. We stopped on the way back after lunch at the nearby Chicken in a Barrell location. Very calm beach, great for kids.
- Kamalani Playground at Lydgate Park: Awesome playground about half an hour from the Grand Hyatt Kauai. Our kids loved it.
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I was there in January, I agree 100%, staff was spot on, club did a great job for us. We hopped 3 island, stayed at 6 different hotels, and besides Andaz for the breakfast, and Aulani for the fun, we enjoyed this stay the most. The Ny steak at Tidepools was incredible, like crazy good, and super fast service). I regret not planning more days to Kuai (4). But will come back for sure. In my case, hotel was packed, no suites available but we got upgrade to a partial ocean view, where they do the luau, view was awesome, sunrise was the best.
I think there’s a lap pool, right?
In the spa
Love the thumbs up picture of your son. A “chip off the old block”. Please share your flight particulars as well.
Thanks for the great review. We checked into the GH Tuesday. Sorry I missed you! Having a great time so far. I am a globalist and received an upgrade to a resort view room, with a pool view.
To each his own. I liked this hotel- but the lack of a swimable beach is a bummer. I prefer the andaz in maui- where the beach is better, the breakfast is better and I have been able to use a suite upgrade successfully on each of my five visits- the upgradable suite at this hotel is a real unicorn.
Love it, Nick. We will be there next weekend. I find it quite endearing that you were placed in a resort view room and didn’t pull a DYKWIA either pre or at arrival. Another example of why FM staff are the best in the business. Wonderful review as always. I truly appreciate you and the entire team.
Great review, esp on what to do around there. Looking forward to our stay there.
Its good to see a blogger gets the same suite upgrade that I get. None.
Was there last year and really enjoyed it – excellent value on points. In addition to Anake’s Juice Bar, definitely get poke at the stand in the front of the same market – Kukui’ula Fish Hut. We pickup up lunch there several times. Setvenson’s Library on property was also great for sushi dinner but not cheap.
Totally agree. It is the most favorite resort in Hawaii (Big island, Kauai and Maui) for our family too, among the 7 visits within the past 9 years. We stay here two years ago with the club access upgrade by points, which is totally worth it! it is quite busy in the club lounge but never to crowded.
And I would strongly recommend to have at least one dinner in the resort’s Tide Pool restaurant. It is not cheap, but the food is great, the fishpool side seaitngt with sunset view is amazing, and the staffs working there are top notch! It is always busy and not easy to make a reservation online, even three weeks in advance our check in, but we managed to get two spots for dinner within our 6-days’ staying there, with the help of the front desk people. my daughter still remembered the Lava cake and steak there, as well as the wonderful server (Xander ?), even after two years. And we are planning to go back there again later this year.
I do not have status with Hyatt. Can you please explain how I might get Club Access with points?
Club Access rooms are sometimes available as awards (they cost 9,000 points more than a regular room — i.e. if it’s 35K for a standard room, a club room is 44K — if it is available to book as an award, you’ll see it in the search results alongside the standard rooms.
You can also make friends with a Globalist who has club access awards (you earn those at elite nights and 30 elite nights) and they can gift you a club access award that you can apply to your standard room reservation (Globalists generally have no use for those club access awards since Globalists automatically get club lounge access).
Great review Nick. We were there at the same time, and my takeaways were similar. It was our third time, and the parking lot view as a Globalist was a disappointment given our nicer rooms in the past.
A special shout out to Anna in the lounge. She remembered us from our last visit 4 years ago, and made our trip very special!
While the room assignment was disappointing, I felt well treated as a Globalist. We also got a bottle of wine as a welcome amenity in addition to the things you mentioned.
This feels like a place where you can return over and over again. We are already planning a return next year. I wouldn’t say the same for the Andaz or HR Maui or other similar resorts.
We’ve stayed here maybe 4 times now, once as Globalist and the other times as Explorist. Every time they’ve comped valet charges. Used club upgrades each time, the water bottles alone was worth that though the free in room cheap refillable water bottles and water filling stations throughout the property are great. You used the lounge just as we did, breakfast and evening food, snacks and drinks throughout the day, lunch either at the pool or off property.
The beach must always have a red flag posted, I’ve never seen a day without it. And I was told the cliff jumping concern is the water currents that pull you around the cliff and away from shore. Most that visit are likely not staying enough in the water.
Explorist also got me access to the spa. It was rarely occupied, very nice to use the steam room in kind of a Finnish sauna kind of way with a cold shower right outside the door.
The pools are fantastic, my teen son and I had plenty of open space to throw our little silicon ball. It was less busy later afternoon but we never had trouble finding chairs.
Definitely get a car, you’ll miss out on a lot if you’re at the hotel the whole time.
We really love this hotel as a family getaway. Our kids are now teens and older so we’re picking other places to visit but small kids and families will love it. Ocean View rooms on the club side are nice and quiet and close to the spa
We just came back from a stay there for a week. Two of the restaurants serve huge portion. For the two of us one entree and one starter were what we’d expect for a normal meal.
It looks like the Grand Club moved from Dondero’s location over Christmas 2023 when we visited, back to the regular location. I think the review is spot on. The hotel is well kept and the service is good. This should be of no surprise if you consider the prices they charge. We used to go to Kauai once or twice a year and stayed at all the Starwood/Marriott properties except those in Lihue. Grand Hyatt Kauai is fine but I would not call it my favorite in Hawaii or Kauai, For more stunning location and view I would go to the Princeville Hotel – now rebranded as 1 Hotel for about the same cash price. Koloa Landing (a Marriott property a short drive away) has better swimming pools. There are also Sheraton Kauai and a Marriott timeshare right on the Poipu beach, which is certainly better than the one in front of Hyatt.
Isn’t the two queen bed room technically one king and one queen? We liked the included bikes to bike down to the blow hole a few miles down the road. We also liked getting to-go boxes for the lounge in the evening and then sitting on our balcony with a bottle of wine from Safeway because the lounge alcohol charge annoyed us.
When we had a late flight home (9 pm), they gave us access to the lounge that evening and you also had access to the shower at the spa so you could enjoy the day and freshen up before the flight.
Hope that balcony view of the parking lot is nice with your $5 Safeway wine
The two Queen rooms are just two queens. Identical beds.
Hi SteveH. I think you’re right about the two queen bed rooms technically being one king and one queen.
The two beds seemed identical to me — and more importantly, I am one thousand percent sure that if one of them were a king, my wife would have noticed. She always prefers a larger bed. They were the same in my room.
Hi Nick. I think you’re right. I was thinking back and I think it was the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Orlando where the rooms with 2 double beds had one queen and one full-size bed. I wasn’t too happy because my teenage kids claimed the queen size bed while my wife and I ended up with the full-size bed. I didn’t know until we were leaving that the kids’ bed was bigger.
There are some upgraded room types that include a king and a queen. I think they refer to them as a “deluxe”. I was upgraded to this room type 2 years ago on a visit as an Explorist, and then again last year I requested/received the same room as a Globalist. I did a GoH booking for a family member and got them upgraded to this room type as well. Pretty nice when you are use to a king as home and a queen works for the kids.