Good for a single night and gambling.

I’m writing this review after staying in the Hyatt for one night over this weekend, however, I have stayed at this hotel 4 or 5 times now so consider this review an aggregate of all those stays.

I’ll start with the most annoying aspect of the Hyatt and that is check-in. Unlike almost every other hotel in Manila, check-in time is 3 pm, not the standard 2 pm, but you are going to be stood around waiting to check-in for ages anyway, so it may as well be 3:30 pm. For some reason, there is no indication for guests to ask questions at the concierge, so because of this, each check-in desk becomes “general-questions-money-changer-and-anything-else”, so it means the queues are long. Then comes the actual check-in process when you finally get to the front of the queue… I have no idea what they are typing into those computers when you check-in (and why it is different than every other hotel I have stayed at), but I would say that me writing this review is quicker than them going through all the selections and actually giving you your key card — it’s blood boilingly infuriating.

I think it is also worth pointing out that on my trip before this one, we ended up waiting until 5 pm for our rooms to be ready, which was just crazy. On the flip side, and to be fair to the hotel, during my stay yesterday I did initially book a non-refundable and no-modification room, but had a family emergency and couldn’t make it. The hotel allowed me to change the date, nonetheless, so that was good of them.

So once you have finally checked in, then it’s up to the rooms. I usually stay in Wing 1, which I think are all the 56sqm. rooms. This time, I was in Wing 2 (36sqm. rooms) and the rooms are a little smaller and they do not have a bathtub. I’d recommend staying in Wing 1 where you can, as the rooms are much nicer and the tub is a nice touch, along with the view being a little better and it is easier to navigate to the rest of the hotel.

I have never had any issues with the rooms. Both sizes are very spacious, and despite other reviewers saying the contrary, I do think they are nice and modern. Make sure you avoid corner rooms as these are designed poorly. And do not get a room on the same level (Level 1) as the swimming pool, else you are going to have people screaming and shouting going past your room all day.

The swimming pool isn’t the best but certainly isn’t the worst. It’s kind of small and is tucked away to the side of a much larger pool, which is for guests of the Nobu Hotel. Now, my father would say to me that you should have worked harder at school so you can stay at the more expensive hotel and have a nice pool, but I didn’t — so I was stuck with the smaller Hyatt pool.

The pools also share a common pool bar, which serves the usual drinks and food you would expect beside a pool and is open until 10 pm. The Hyatt pool doesn’t get much sun due to it being surrounded on three sides by the actual building, and there is a hell of a wind trap late in the afternoon which can get quite breezy. If you are staying in Wing 1 as I told you to, then getting down to the pool is easy enough. But if you are in Wing 2, then it is a bit of a Labyrinth with you actually having to pass through an unremarkable fire-door at the end of a hallway that exits directly into the Nobu hotel. Then you have to walk by the Nobu Spa area out into the nice Nobu pool and then through a gate into the Hyatt pool… bring your map!

City of Dreams, which is the mall and casino that connects all the hotels, including the Hyatt, is nice enough. In fact, the Hyatt hotel lobby doubles up as one of the casino’s entrances. If you are a gambler (I am), then this is the best casino in Manila (perhaps bar Okada but I am yet to visit that new one) as it is spacious, has tons of table games, free drinks, excellent entertainment in the middle, a electronic virtual horse racing machine (second floor), and houses the Pokerstars poker tournament section on the second floor. The mall itself is full of restaurants and shops of different varieties and weirdly allows people to smoke inside the mall itself due to the casino kind of bleeding into it.

Except for the casino and the 8 or so restaurants in the mall, there isn’t a great deal else to do. Kids can go to the Dreamworks studio, but not having children myself, I cannot comment on it. As a childless couple, I think you would be hard-pressed to enjoy much more than two nights here. The only restaurant in the actual Hyatt hotel is the buffet, and it’s not the most expansive in terms of variety and selection, but the food is decent enough quality. You can always jump in a taxi for about 2km and travel to the Mall of Asia if you want to wander around for a few hours in a massive mall or visit the pier, but don’t expect to be able to walk anywhere around the hotel grounds as it is all construction for the mini Las Vegas they are building.

If you are looking for a hotel to stay at for an evening whilst waiting to catch a flight, then the Hyatt is about 10 minutes from any of the 3 Manila terminals. The new expressway that they have built in the area really has done wonders for negating traffic around the airport, as long as you ensure the taxi driver or Uber takes the NAIA Expressway from the Hyatt hotel and pays the small 20 peso toll.

All in all, I think the rooms are reasonable for the price, and the Hyatt is a perfect hotel for one night losing money in the casino whilst you wait for the sun to come up and catch a ride to your early morning flight. But it doesn’t really offer much more outside of that, and I am not even sure it tries to.