We recently travelled to Melbourne for a few days on business (which happened to coincide with the Logies TV Awards) and had the luxury of staying at the Park Hyatt, a luxurious and well situated hotel on the east side of the Melbourne CBD.
The the lobby oozes over-extravagance and it’s clear that the hotel chain spared no expense – what I suppose one would expect from the Park level hotel from the Hyatt chain. While the attention to detail continues into the room, the extravagance stops there.
Every noise from the hotel hallway can be heard loud and clear and during the day, the constant construction work at the nearby Cancer Centre can be distracting, especially if you’re trying to work from the room. This may have only been a problem for us, as we had a hotel room that looked down into the hotel “courtyard” – a blend of tables and chairs around a fountain, with a spectacular view down into the loading dock/trash bin of the Cancer Institute. If you’re lucky to get an odd numbered room on the Cathedral wing, you’ll fare much better. You will have a great view of the Cathedral that sits directly across the tree-lined street, creating the ambiance you’d expect from the location that a Park Hyatt guest would expect.
All in all, I’d give the hotel a 3/5 stars. Frankly, we stayed here only because I am a Gold Passport member, something that we were hassled about at checkin. The name on the credit card had to match, and the corporate card was in my wife’s name, while the GP card was in mine. You’d think that when someone spends $30,000 on a wedding at the Grand Hyatt Kaua’i, this wouldn’t bother the Hyatt.