Hyatt Palm Springs: Bottom Line Review

In mid-February my wife and I stayed at the Hyatt Palm Springs for six nights. I was a little apprehensive because the property didn’t have a great rating on Hyatt’s website, showing an overall rating of 3.5 stars out of 5 and only 52% of reviewers willing to recommend the property.

The property is certainly dated and paid rates can get very high for a hotel I wouldn’t class as particularly special. Having said that, there’s a lot working in its favor and so I give it a thumbs up overall.

Hyatt Palm Springs Bottom Line Review

The Hyatt Palm Springs was built in 1990 and used to be a Hyatt Regency Suites property until it rebranded as a standard Hyatt in 2014. The hotel is certainly showing its age; I’d actually assumed that it had been built long before 1990 as some aspects – such as the ancient-looking putting green in front of our room – seemed older than 32 years old.

It doesn’t seem like they’re doing a great job with the general upkeep of the property either, although that might depend on which room you end up in. We got chatting to a couple while having a drink at Boozehounds (a pet-friendly bar & lounge in Palm Springs). They mentioned that they were staying at the Hyatt as well and weren’t impressed with their suite they’d paid $300+ per night for. Apparently their room was dated, wallpaper was peeling, there was some kind of issue with their bathroom, etc.

If paying that much for a room, I’d be unhappy too. However, there are a lot of positive aspects to the Hyatt Palm Springs. As the name of its former incarnation as the Hyatt Regency Suites suggests, it’s an all-suite hotel. That means that even if you don’t have Globalist status, Suite Upgrade Awards or the desire to book a standard or premium suite with points, you’ll end up in a more spacious room than you might otherwise expect to get.

As a category 3 property, booking an award stay can provide excellent value, especially if booking in the summer because nearly every single night from June 1 to September 30 is currently priced at the off-peak rate and so only costs 9,000 points per night.

I tried a different breakfast entrée every morning of our stay and all of them were tasty. The property is in an excellent location downtown, so you’re within walking distance of all kinds of attractions, restaurants, bars and stores.

There’s another potential benefit to booking a stay at the Hyatt Palm Springs. The World of Hyatt program has a Brand Explorer benefit that gets you a category 1-4 free night certificate for every five Hyatt brands you stay at. Surprisingly, one of the harder Hyatt brands to pick up is Hyatt itself. There are only 14 Hyatt-branded properties worldwide – eight in the US, one in France and five in India. Our stay at the Hyatt Palm Springs got me to nine different Hyatt brands which means I’ll be getting a second Brand Explorer free night certificate after a stay at an Unbound Collection property in early May.

Here’s a breakdown of everything else you need to know.

• Points Price: The Hyatt Palm Springs is a category 3 property, so it costs 9,000, 12,000 or 15,000 points per night depending on if it’s priced at the off-peak, standard or peak rate. As mentioned earlier, almost the entire summer is currently priced off-peak (presumably due to how hot Palm Springs gets at that time of year). That also means this hotel can be booked with category 1-4 free night certificates.
• Cash Price: Our six night stay unintentionally overlapped with the first few days of Modernism Week. A base room cost $272.99 per night including tax. I used a Suite Upgrade Award to upgrade to a Cabana Suite for which they were charging $418.62 per night during our dates. Somewhat strangely, the Cabana Suite is a standard suite but is more expensive cash-wise than their premium suites.
  Prices aren’t always that high. It’s sometimes possible to book a base room for ~$200 per night with taxes and fees, but a minimum of $250 seems to be far more common pricing.
• Points Value: Very good. No matter whether you’re booking during off-peak, standard or peak dates, you should pretty consistently get at least 2cpp of value.
• Resort or Destination Fee: Yes, there’s a $22 per night resort fee. This is waived for all World of Hyatt members regardless of status when booking with points, as well as for Globalist members on paid stays. I’ve no clue what benefits the resort fee is supposed to provide though.
• Parking: Valet parking was still suspended during our stay due to COVID. The hotel has its own underground parking lot which costs $25 per day for self-parking; this is waived for Globalist members on award stays.
• Room: The two-room Cabana Suite we stayed in has you entering into the bedroom, with the living room beyond it and a private cabana outside. It seemed a little strange entering straight into the bedroom rather than the living room, but that might be so that the bedroom doesn’t get disturbed by noise from the swimming pool area out back.
  The suite felt a little dated, but it was clean and spacious. There were a couple of curious design decisions – the suite didn’t have any kind of desk and office chair to work from, while there was a leather (or perhaps faux-leather) couch which got very sticky in February, so I dread to think of how sticky it’d get in the summer even with the A/C on.
• Pet Policy: Hyatt’s website lists the property as pet-friendly, but doesn’t state what its pet policy is. Hotels.com says they charge a pet fee of $30 per night, but the hotel neglected to charge that which meant we saved $180 – greatly appreciated!
• Housekeeping: I think they only offered housekeeping every four or five days unless otherwise requested.
• Turndown service: Not that I’m aware of.
• Internet: Very good. We didn’t have any problems with download and upload speeds and Zoom calls worked fine too.
• Dining
  • SHARE: This is where breakfast was served. I think they offer lunch and dinner as well as a bar, but we only ever ate breakfast there. All the different breakfasts we ordered were very good.
  • HooDoo: This is an outdoor bar at the front of the property that’s open Thursday-Sunday from 6pm-11pm.
• Spa: None.
• Fitness Room: Yes. There were a few treadmills, a bike and several weights machines.
• Pool: Yes, they have both an outdoor pool and whirlpool. There are some cabanas available for all guests even if you don’t have a private one from a Cabana Suite.
• Service: Service was OK. The front desk agent when checking in wasn’t particularly helpful, but the restaurant staff in SHARE were always very friendly.
• Location: Excellent. It’s centrally located on Palm Canyon Drive, so you’re walking distance to many restaurants, bars and other attractions like the Palm Springs Art Museum, Marilyn Monroe statue and the Walk of Stars.
• Hyatt Elite Benefits: I have Globalist status, so here’s what we received/could’ve received:
  • Suite upgrade: I’d had a hard time finding standard award availability in February for as long as we wanted to stay, let alone standard suite award availability. However, I managed to find a six day stretch with award availability for both. I therefore booked the standard room and had my concierge use a Suite Upgrade Award to upgrade to a Cabana Suite. I’m therefore not sure how good the property is at upgrading Globalist members when checking in.
  • Complimentary premium internet: As mentioned earlier, this was very good.
  • Club Lounge: There’s no lounge. We therefore received free breakfast at SHARE restaurant each morning.
  • Free Breakfast: Our breakfast benefit meant my wife and I could each get a free breakfast entrée and a drink. There’s a good selection of breakfast options and all were tasty.
  • 4PM Late Checkout: We could’ve requested a late checkout, but had a long-ish drive up to Big Pine, CA, stopping at Manzanar National Historic Site for a couple of hours along the way. We therefore didn’t need to utilize the 4pm late checkout benefit.
  • Free Parking: We’re on a full-time road trip, so getting free parking on Hyatt award stays is a benefit we greatly appreciate and saved us $25 per night.
• Would I stay again? Definitely. The Hyatt Palm Springs is far from being an aspirational property that’s worth traveling to in its own right. However, we very much enjoyed Palm Springs and the Hyatt is in the perfect location for visiting the city. Award stays provide excellent value and getting a suite no matter which room type you book is uncommon.
• Pros:
  • Good way to get Hyatt on your Brand Explorer list.
  • Great value when booking award stays with points or category 1-4 free night certificates.
  • Excellent location downtown.
  • Spacious suites no matter what room type you book.
  • Using a Suite Upgrade Award or booking a standard suite with points gets you a Cabana Suite with your own private cabana.
  • Good breakfast.
• Cons:
  • $22 resort fee on paid stays with seemingly no discernible benefits for that fee.
  • Dated property, although photos on their website look like some suites might have been updated.
  • High cash prices for what you get, although Palm Springs is an expensive hotel market and so this isn’t an issue solely afflicting the Hyatt Palm Springs. There was a surprising amount of construction going on in the general Palm Springs area, so hopefully more hotels are on the way to help make paid stays more reasonable.

Photos & Captions Follow:

Here are just a few of the breakfasts we had:

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