I recently wrote about my stay at Radisson Hotel Kathmandu and I mentioned that I wasn’t very enthusiastic about my stay at Radisson. Well, that was primarily because I had stayed in Hyatt Regency Kathmandu couple of days earlier and my Hyatt stay had set my expectations rather high.
Location
Hyatt Regency Kathmandu, one of the few 5 star luxury hotel and resort in entire Nepal, is spread across 37 acres of property and is build on traditional Newari (roughly speaking it is subculture in Nepal) style of Nepalese architecture. The Hyatt webpage details its location rather elegantly:
This beautiful hotel and resort is located in the metropolitan city of Kathmandu at Taragaon, Boudha, and on the road to the Boudhanath Stupa: the most holy of all Tibetan Buddhist shrines outside of Tibet, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is walking distance from the hotel – about five minutes away.
Boudhanath Stupa was badly damaged in the massive 2015 earthquake in Nepal but as you can see below reconstruction is underway.
Boudhnath continues to be a tourist attraction and there is a good reason for it. Beside from being the UNESCO World Heritage and perhaps the only local attraction in the area, the Stupa is literally circled with souvenir shops and top rated tripadvisor restaurants in Kathmandu.
Apart from Stupa, there is a supermarket in walking distance called Bhat-Bhateni. It is most definitely not a tourist attraction but still worth mentioning since it is one of the few major supermarket in the capital city.
Booking
This hotel generally costs somewhere around 100-145. This is generally the same price range as that of IHG Kathmandu and 10-50 dollars higher than that of Radisson Kathmandu. However, since this is a category 1 hotel, it only costs 5000 Hyatt points to book a night. But if you call Hyatt, you can book 3 lowest level of suite (in this case, regency king suite) nights for 8000 x 3 = 24000 points and that is exactly what we did. We did not have to pay any type of tax.
First impression on arrival
We stopped the taxi by the gate and decided to walk in. It perhaps took us about 5-10 minutes to get to the lobby. The lobby as we later learned is the “3rd” floor of the hotel. At the entrance, we saw some folks that were playing calm traditional music. When I tried to check in at the lobby I was told to go to 5th floor for check in. Only when I was at 6th floor did it occur to me that it was the Regency Club. The receptionist at the Club welcomed us, explained us the benefits of the Club, had someone walk us to the room, but before we left she suggested we return to the Club soon after because “happy hour was ending in 45 minutes”.
The benefits of Regency Club
I am Hyatt Platinum (through Hyatt credit card) and I was granted RC access because I booked a suite. The main free benefits of RC at this hotel are as such:
- transfer to international or domestic (they’re really the same) airport.
- buffet breakfast every morning
- tea, coffee, and soft drinks all day in RC
- pre-dinner drinks and canapes every evening in RC
- access to Spa
The breakfast was far better than the one at Radisson but nothing spectacular. Dessert was also pretty decent.
First Impression of the Room
A picture is worth a thousand words so here are whole bunch of thousand words describing the room.
I realize that I might have overdone with the pictures but the hell with it. They’re rather easy to skip. That said, here are few more pictures I took from room window (with an exception of pool picture):
One thing I must mention – don’t use the minibar for chips and soft drinks. You can buy them at 1/5th the price at local shops.
Is the booking cost worth it?
At a quick glance, points booking seems like a great deal. Even for standard room, you get 2-2.5 cpp. Additionally, 3 suite nights for 24k seems like a steal and it perhaps is. However, if you are transfering UR points to Hyatt then 24k is $ 240 in cash. In Neplease currency that is 240k*1.7 = 40800 in cash. The question now becomes – what else can you do with about 41k cash? You can travel top two touristic cities in Nepal (i.e. Kathmandu and Pokahara) with that money. You could take a bus to travel between cities, stay at 3 star hotels, dine at decent resturants, and still have some saving for rafting and bungee jumping.
Closing Remark
If you’re looking for a resort like experience then this is one of the best hotels in Nepal. This hotel is also in a less polluted part of the city. However, if you’re looking to travel around in foot then there isn’t much sight seeing to do. Obviously you could stay in Hyatt and travel around with taxi. Last but not least, if you’re looking to burn your Hyatt points then this hotel is one of the best ccp you will get.
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Hey I’m staying here right now! Updates:
They’ve started a promo where every elite gets to draw from a fishbowl of bonuses on check-in. I got dinner for two as a lowly discoverist. I was able to trade that for club access and the benefits you described for two nights, paying $50 for the third night, seemed fair.
“don’t use the minibar for chips and soft drinks. You can buy them at 1/5th the price at local shops.”
I’ll say that the minibar pricing and room service is probably the most reasonable I’ve seen in a hotel. A KitKat is 200 rupees. That’s like $1.80 right now. A Coke is 160 rupees, about $1.40. That’s such a baby premium to pay that unless you’re planning on gorging yourself the time and effort to cab out to a local store isn’t worth it to save a dollar.
did they say if the promo was due to some special occasion? I’ve been there 3 times and never saw it. The pricing may have been off-putting to me because, well…this was one of my first premium hotel I stayed at…and also because I am very well traveled in Kathmandu, so I don’t mind doing my own shopping. I thank you for sharing a different perspective than the one I had back then.
It certainly could have been a limited time promotion, but it didn’t seem tied to any event. May be tied to promoting World of Hyatt?
In any event I think it’s the best hotel in Kathmandu and has such reasonable prices for both rooms in points or cash compared to other five star hotels (I stayed at night at the Yak and Yeti included as part of an Everest trip, didn’t hold a candle and would have been more cash than the Hyatt). Obviously there are MUCH cheaper hotels, but I’d say in this case you get what you pay for.
It is definitely at least the second best hotel in all of Nepal. Dwarikas hotel might be a better one but I haven’t stayed there. Regardless, there are less than five 5-star hotels in Nepal and this is one of them.