Park Hyatt Buenos Aires Review Park Executive Suite & Park King

Park Hyatt Buenos Aires Review Park Executive Suite & Park King

20

Some of you may remember my friend Nick, who reviewed JetBlue’s A321 Mint Class last August. He’s back with another trip report, this time from his recent trip to South America. Nick is possibly the biggest Delta/SkyTeam apologist funniest person I know, and despite the fact that he toned it down a bit for the trip report, I hope you still find it interesting/amusing. 😉

Unfortunately due to a seat mishap his phone disappeared, so half of his pictures are gone. Or to quote Nick: “can you add an editors note that United ate my phone – to be discussed in UA post – so like half my photos were lost forever hence back off bitchy commenters?”


Introduction
Copa Airlines Business Class Los Angeles To Panama City To Buenos Aires
Layover In Panama City
Park Hyatt Buenos Aires
United BusinessFirst Buenos Aires To Houston


We used a combination of points and cash, and outright points, for our trip to Buenos Aires, which was broken up by four days and nights at the beach in Uruguay – so we ended up with a one-night stay on the heels of our flight from Panama City, followed by a five-night stay at the end of our trip.

A couple of weeks before our first night at the Park Hyatt, I received a warm email from Matias, who introduced himself to us as our personal butler. In the email, Matias asked if we had any special requests.

Having seen a number of trip reports showing the modern tower of the Park Hyatt (where the majority of the rooms at the hotel are located), I figured on a whim I’d ask Matias if there was any way we could request a king room in the historic Palacio Duhau wing. Based on photos of the suites in the wing, the rooms looked a bit more regal than the modern wing, with a nod to the tradition and elegance of the Recoleta neighborhood.

I assumed that the wing had a mix of suites and basic rooms, and within a few days Matias emailed me to let me know that we had been confirmed into a king room in the Palacio Duhau wing for our first night. We were excited! For our first night, we paid 10,000 points + $150, and for the remaining nights we paid 20,000 points per night. (It’s worth noting that the $150 is actually charged as around 1300 Argentine pesos at the official exchange rate, and if you are flush with Argentine cash you procured at the “Blue Rate” – at the time of our visit, around 14 pesos per dollar – you could pay that portion in cash and you would effectively spend 10,000 points + $95 for the room.)

As it turns out, the historic wing and the modern tower each have their own lobbies, facing two different streets (the modern tower fronts Calle Posadas, which has cafes, pharmacies, restaurants and shopping malls, while the historic building fronts the grand Avenida Alvear, a lovely residential boulevard reminiscent of Park Avenue), and the two buildings are connected by an art-lined underground passageway. The taxi dropped us off on the Posadas side where we checked in (and subsequently walked all the way across the hotel to get to our room on the Alvear side). Check-in was warm, efficient, and touched off by a wonderful sentence, “you are in a Park Executive Suite in the historic building.” The charming bellboy led us to the historic wing, where we took the elevator to the fourth floor and our jaws were agape at the grandeur of the public areas. When he opened the door to the suite, our jaws finished dropping all the way to the floor. We cursed the fact we had to check out the next morning to catch our flight to Uruguay.

PH-Buenos-Aires-Historic-01 PH-Buenos-Aires-Historic-04

The executive suite was just enormous, with incredibly high ceilings and the sort of historical touches you’d expect from a grand hotel of the era – beautiful tall windows, parquet wooden floors, grand chandeliers. In the living room was a tray of macarons, a bowl of fruit and a special note from Matias. There was a large closet and a powder room off the entry hall leading to the living room, and, beyond the living room, double doors that swung open to a massive bedroom and an impressively large master bathroom that boasted a chandelier of its own.

PH-Buenos-Aires-Historic-05 PH-Buenos-Aires-Historic-06

As in many Park Hyatts, the lighting controls in the room were designed by sadists whose personal understanding of the word “intuitive” jibes not at all with how most human beings’ intuition works, and we found ourselves, maddeningly, accidentally turning off all the lights to the bathroom from the entryway 30 feet away, or turning on bright reading lamps over the bed while trying to find a bathroom light in the middle of the night. Nonetheless, lighting aside, we woke up in the morning to exquisite views from the suite: from the bedroom, a view over a picturesque but tattered neighboring historic mansion, and from the living room, a view across a series of stepped gardens to the ivy-covered modern tower.

Park-Hyatt-View

We were thoroughly wowed by the unexpected and lavish upgrade that Matias secured for us and left the Park Hyatt that morning with a fabulous impression, looking forward to returning after Uruguay for a longer stay in an exciting city. That all being said, we did not necessarily find the decor in the historic wing – either in the suite or in the public areas – to be quite our taste. The decor attempted to infuse modern design with historic elements, and in doing so it felt ever so slightly dated – the spare angular leather and wood designs sprinkled throughout felt mismatched rather than understated, and just something about it felt as if it were about ten years too late on the design front. The hotel opened in 2006, and it doesn’t feel like it has received a refresh since then. It could probably use one. On the Alvear side, the architecture and grandeur of the building are lavish, but not well served by the cold, understated decor.

PH-Buenos-Aires-Historic-03

I love the modern sensibility of the Park Hyatt brand, but there are ways to fuse clean and modern lines with luxurious opulence (for instance, the Park Hyatt Vendome in Paris and the Park Hyatt in Washington, D.C. do that extraordinarily) – but the Park Hyatt Buenos Aires falls short in that regard.

When we returned to the Park Hyatt the following week, we were given a Park King room on the 11th floor of the modern wing, where, interestingly, the spare decor from circa-2006 still works rather well given the clean architectural lines of the building. The room was obviously much smaller, but was smartly designed, although the view from our room was a rather dismal, depressing view across some crumbling rooftops to the industrial Rio de la Plata. It was clearly the entry-level room (in my experience as a Platinum Gold Passport member, even on points I’m usually upgraded), but given the massive upgrade we received on our first night, we were not in a position to complain and were perfectly satisfied with the incredibly comfortable bed. The bathroom was a bit more strangely laid out, with a shower door that neither easily swung out or in, leading to fairly frequent flooding in the mornings while showering.

With a few exceptions, service remained thoughtful throughout our stay, with the women of the concierge desk doing a fabulous job of finding us on-point places to eat and drink. However, starting on our second night in the Park King room, when we woke up sweating multiple times despite the air conditioner being on its lowest setting, we realized that our room was sweltering.

On the third day, we called down to the front desk and told them our air conditioner was broken. Within minutes, a technician came up, took a look at the console for maybe thirty seconds, shrugged and left without saying anything. Hours later, on returning to the room, we were dismayed that the air conditioning was still seemingly broken, so I called down again. The front desk told me that the technician declared the a/c working perfectly, but that they’d send someone else up: this time, another technician was joined by a female front desk employee who acted as the translator. She told us that since it was hot outside (it was maybe 82 or 83 degrees) that our room was simply not going to get any colder and that we should sleep in light clothing.

Now, I realize that America has a particular love affair with the air conditioner, but I have been at luxury hotels all over the world and I can assure you that if you want your room to be frigid and blowing ice cold air on you, you can get that anywhere. I certainly do not doubt that at a Park Hyatt, the air conditioning does not operate on a “eh, maybe it’ll work better if it cools down outside” basis.

So this time I walked down to the front desk and explained the situation. The gentleman at the front desk seemed alarmed by this series of events, although he – in what I think we can agree is behavior we can chalk up to “cultural differences” rather than “outright misogyny” – told me that the hotel’s mistake was in sending a woman up to the room to diagnose the issue, since, as he leaned in to tell me conspiratorially, women do not know what they’re talking about with mechanical problems and anyway, women are always so cold (amiright, fellas?!), so she would have no way of telling if the a/c was working properly.

I bit my tongue, but he assured me that while we were out at dinner that night, he would send a team up, and he promised me with utmost sincerity that when we returned to the room, the room would be as frigid as we wanted it to be. I took him for his word and taped a little note in Spanish to the a/c control console, suggesting that the problem seemed likely to be the fan, which was not blowing air at all.

We returned to the room after dinner around 1:45am (it is Argentina, after all) to a sweltering mess of a room that hadn’t even had turndown service, much less a technician come up to look at the a/c – in fact, the note was still taped on the console. I walked down, again, to the front desk and explained the situation to a clearly horrified agent who immediately got the manager, Nicolas, to help with the situation. Nicolas joined us in the room and agreed that the air conditioner was broken (only 14 hours after we first told the hotel of this problem), and apologetically offered to move us to another room on the 11th floor, which we confirmed had a well-operating air conditioning system in place.

Nicolas and his team insisted that we wait down in the lobby with a complimentary bottle of water while they moved our personal effects from one room to the other, and about a half hour later, we returned to our new room (which seemed to be a Park Deluxe King, since the view was far nicer and faced a park) where Nicolas offered us a bottle of complimentary Chandon sparkling wine. (I can only imagine the horror that would grip Ben’s eyes at the sight of someone trying to pass of Chandon as an amenity.) Nicolas’ sincere efforts to try to rectify the situation were appreciated, though, and he suggested that he would try to think of some other way to compensate us. The next day, Nicolas offered to credit 20,000 Gold Passport points to my account and, a few days later on checkout, another manager came out specially to thank us for our patronage despite the snafus, about which she said she was personally embarrassed.

We found our stay at the Park Hyatt to be a mix of some incredible service and some well-intentioned but not well-executed service.

For instance, Nicolas was professional and proactive, however, the two other individuals I spoke with about the air conditioning unit feigned concern, but clearly figured I didn’t know what I was talking about. We found the food and beverage service at the hotel to be painfully slow: one night we gave ourselves 45 minutes before leaving for dinner to have a drink on the terrace overlooking the gardens, but – despite the terrace being far from full – it took the staff 10 minutes to seat us, another 10 minutes to take our order, and 15 minutes after that the server came by to tell us that unfortunately the glass of wine I’d requested was out – at which point I simply asked for the check, since things were too glacial for our tastes.

Housekeeping service was incredibly thorough – all of our electrical cords were neatly tied together in an almost-Japanese level of OCD packaging frenzy – but also incredibly time consuming, with service calls exceeding a half hour. We were surprised that the hotel gym was so small and so easily overwhelmed with guests.

And speaking of guests, we were somewhat dismayed to find that the hotel was almost exclusively patronized by Americans, almost all of whom were from the greater New York metro area and almost all of whom could be overheard complaining that 9:00pm was simply unheard of! for a restaurant reservation and they would prefer to eat at 7:30pm (when most Argentines are napping). While that’s not uncommon for a luxury hotel in a major tourist city, I would contrast the Park Hyatt to the Four Seasons Hotel two blocks away, which is fresh off a stylish renovation. Surprisingly, the Four Seasons conveyed a sense of modernity, hipness and freshness – and a trendy, young, artsy and international crowd – that was markedly absent from the Park Hyatt. I’m used to Four Seasons being the standard bearer for fussy service and floral-printed rooms, but we found the public spaces to be stunning and the food and beverage service to be exquisite, and the hotel seemed to mercifully lack the throngs of loud, well-heeled, spoiled American families that seemed to be the Park Hyatt’s bread and butter.

All in all, the Park Hyatt Buenos Aires is still an excellent property and a wonderful use of Hyatt points. It has a terrific location in Recoleta, admirable and winning service, a fantastic concierge team, and boasts one of the most historic buildings in the entire city, the Palacio Duhau. The gardens between the modern tower and the palace are breathtakingly beautiful, and the service was always smiling and courteous (which is not necessarily a given in South America). I don’t fault the hotel at all for the a/c snafu, though I wish it had been addressed sooner and didn’t result in us waiting in the lobby at 2:30am while they moved our belongings to a new room (and, frankly, at that point I was a bit surprised they didn’t move us into some sort of suite for our troubles, but we really just wanted a bed and working air conditioning by that time).

But all things being equal, I no longer think that the Park Hyatt is the single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires, as it often has been said. Its decor could use an update and even in the public spaces some of the furniture was noticeably chipped and suffered from wear and tear. While of course we didn’t stay there and can’t speak to the service or the guestrooms (though photos of the rooms look spectacular), I do think that following its refresh the Four Seasons is the top contender in town, and were I paying cash for a hotel room I would probably stay there next time instead.

Conversations (20)
The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.
Type your response here.

If you'd like to participate in the discussion, please adhere to our commenting guidelines. Anyone can comment, and your email address will not be published. Register to save your unique username and earn special OMAAT reputation perks!

  1. Jay Guest

    What's wrong with Chandon?!

  2. DCS Diamond

    @Nick "honey" -- you missed the point. The scale we are operating on is relative: Hilton Buenos Aires, where I stayed three years in row, in a suite each time, is not luxurious in absolute terms. It is just more luxurious than what has been billed as the “single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires”, in yet another abuse of superlatives and hyperbole.

    G'day

  3. Nick OMAAT

    @Greg, I'm confused as to how you chalked this review up to a "Hyatt fanboy"? I pretty much concluded the property is past its prime and had some serious service and communications issues. I also concluded that I would stay at the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires if I were to do it again.

    @DCS - honey, the Hilton ain't luxurious. There are only three, arguably four, top-end hotels in Buenos Aires: the Park...

    @Greg, I'm confused as to how you chalked this review up to a "Hyatt fanboy"? I pretty much concluded the property is past its prime and had some serious service and communications issues. I also concluded that I would stay at the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires if I were to do it again.

    @DCS - honey, the Hilton ain't luxurious. There are only three, arguably four, top-end hotels in Buenos Aires: the Park Hyatt, the Four Seasons, the Alvear Palace (which is a little frou-frou for my taste), and, if you're being charitable, the Park Tower, a Starwood Luxury Collection hotel that looks like the height of sumptuous luxury... in 1991. You might argue the Faena, in Puerto Madero, which is more of an upscale boutique property, should be on that list; sure, why not (though it appears to no longer be hip, nor was it ever well-located). As for the Sheratons, Hiltons, Marriotts, Sofitels, etc. in town -- I'm sure they're perfectly lovely places to stay, but the level of service and in-room amenities you can be expected to receive cannot compare.

    However, if you want to do a trip report review of the Buenos Aires Hilton, one of the most famous five-star luxury hotels in the entire world (Aman Resorts, move over!), I'm sure Lucky would love to read it.

  4. Greg Guest

    Hyatt fanboys strike again.

    So overrated.

    Hey, good - fewer of you at my hotels.

  5. DCS Diamond

    @Nick

    There is no doubt that Hyatt does do their hotels stylishly and tastefully, but there is nothing about Park Hyatt Buenos Aires that qualifies it as "the single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires". There are lots of hotels in "Paris of Latin America", as EZE is often called, that are much more luxurious than the Park Hyatt, and, based on the pictures, even Hilton Buenos Aires appears to be more luxurious than that Park Hyatt.

  6. Nick OMAAT

    @DCS - also, I don't think people are apt to use hyperbole toward the Hyatt chain. I think Hyatt does stylish luxury a lot better than Hilton and Marriott do. St. Regis hotels are probably more consistently 5-star as opposed to Park Hyatts, but what I tend to find generally in a Park Hyatt chain is a modern, clean sensibility that is missing from some of the stuffier Four Seasons, Ritz, Waldorf-Astoria (lol, let's just...

    @DCS - also, I don't think people are apt to use hyperbole toward the Hyatt chain. I think Hyatt does stylish luxury a lot better than Hilton and Marriott do. St. Regis hotels are probably more consistently 5-star as opposed to Park Hyatts, but what I tend to find generally in a Park Hyatt chain is a modern, clean sensibility that is missing from some of the stuffier Four Seasons, Ritz, Waldorf-Astoria (lol, let's just pretend for the sake of this argument that the Waldorf-Astoria is a true luxury brand... sorry, I don't know if I can suppress my laughter at that one) properties. In cities where stuffiness prevails, like D.C. and to an extent New York, the Park Hyatt is often the best game in town and a breath of fresh air. But where there's competition, such as in Buenos Aires, Hyatt ought to step up their game. I will acknowledge that while Park Hyatt has a general brand-wide aesthetic, it isn't consistently applied. But at least there's a brand-wide aesthetic, which I think other luxury chains lack.

  7. Nick OMAAT

    @DCS -- not sure what about those photos of the Hilton make you think that qualifies as anything other than a mid-range business hotel?

  8. DCS Diamond

    Based on the photos of this property that are shown in this blogpost, that anyone actually thought that "Park Hyatt [was] the single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires" must again be attributed to the usual abuse of hyperbole when it comes to rating anything Hyatt. To see what I mean, please compare the pictures of what was considered the "single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires" shown here with photos of Hilton Buenos Aires...

    Based on the photos of this property that are shown in this blogpost, that anyone actually thought that "Park Hyatt [was] the single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires" must again be attributed to the usual abuse of hyperbole when it comes to rating anything Hyatt. To see what I mean, please compare the pictures of what was considered the "single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires" shown here with photos of Hilton Buenos Aires at the link below

    http://1drv.ms/1zU5T6F

    See what I meant? And Hilton EZE is not even the best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires!!! ;-)

  9. Carey Guest

    Any idea when the Copa Business class article link will be fixed? Doesn't seem to be working.

    1. lucky OMAAT

      @ Carey -- Sorry about that, fixed!

  10. Nick OMAAT

    @Brent - a Samsung Galaxy camera for most of them, though the photo of the garden view is from my iPhone 6 via Instagram.

  11. Nick OMAAT

    @TravelinWilly @pavel -- just to be clear, once the a/c issue got to front desk management level and above, it was handled with aplomb (as it should have been) and apologies were handed out left and right. I guess my frustration was more that it was a series of compounding miscommunications that came to a head. I don't want to blame the engineers who checked the a/c the first time, either, but I should say...

    @TravelinWilly @pavel -- just to be clear, once the a/c issue got to front desk management level and above, it was handled with aplomb (as it should have been) and apologies were handed out left and right. I guess my frustration was more that it was a series of compounding miscommunications that came to a head. I don't want to blame the engineers who checked the a/c the first time, either, but I should say that when a guest complains their room is much too hot and the air conditioning isn't working properly, they shouldn't have to mention it three more times, at least not at the Park Hyatt.

    And it wasn't that we didn't have a wonderful stay at the PHBA, but were I paying out of pocket and not in points there is no question it would be for a room at the Four Seasons.

  12. Nick OMAAT

    @Gyimil -- I hadn't planned to write much about Uruguay or our experiences on the ground in Buenos Aires because I hadn't considered them terribly exotic, earth-shattering or uncovered by other trip reports or magazine articles. We stayed in a small posada in a town called Jose Ignacio, which is about an hour and a half from the Montevideo airport and 45 minutes from the Punta airport. The town itself is very charming and loaded...

    @Gyimil -- I hadn't planned to write much about Uruguay or our experiences on the ground in Buenos Aires because I hadn't considered them terribly exotic, earth-shattering or uncovered by other trip reports or magazine articles. We stayed in a small posada in a town called Jose Ignacio, which is about an hour and a half from the Montevideo airport and 45 minutes from the Punta airport. The town itself is very charming and loaded with high-quality restaurants and friendly service. We front-loaded our trip to Uruguay, where everyone we dealt with was nice and warm beyond words, so it was a bit of a shock to then come to Buenos Aires, which had more of the big city hustle and indifference / aloofness inherent in a city like New York or Paris. Anyway, we liked the beach towns of Uruguay very much, but at the end of the day it felt like a trip to Cape Cod or the Hamptons. It feels very comfortable and familiar.

  13. pavel Guest

    i would certainly fault the hotel for the a/c snafu. it sounds like you have a fair command of spanish (although at a hotel of this level, english shouldn't be an obstacle) and it seems like they were sort of jerking you around hoping you'd eventually just shut up and deal. unacceptable for a property of that caliber.

    maybe it's just because i'm adamant about proper air conditioning due to frequent travel to SE...

    i would certainly fault the hotel for the a/c snafu. it sounds like you have a fair command of spanish (although at a hotel of this level, english shouldn't be an obstacle) and it seems like they were sort of jerking you around hoping you'd eventually just shut up and deal. unacceptable for a property of that caliber.

    maybe it's just because i'm adamant about proper air conditioning due to frequent travel to SE asia, but i would have been pretty damn pissed if i'd received the same indifference. another anecdotal strike against park hyatts in my book.

    i do think the suite you were given is gorgeous, though.

  14. TravelinWilly Diamond

    @Patrick
    "Intuitive" was used four times in this writeup; "the" is used >100 times, so perhaps that's his favorite word. Really interesting and relevant question, btw.

    @Nick
    Thanks for the great writeup. Completely agree about top-end hotels providing the ability to control the temperature, and it's a bit surprising that a brand like the Park Hyatt could botch this so badly.

    I stayed at the Fours Seasons BsAs, and it is now my...

    @Patrick
    "Intuitive" was used four times in this writeup; "the" is used >100 times, so perhaps that's his favorite word. Really interesting and relevant question, btw.

    @Nick
    Thanks for the great writeup. Completely agree about top-end hotels providing the ability to control the temperature, and it's a bit surprising that a brand like the Park Hyatt could botch this so badly.

    I stayed at the Fours Seasons BsAs, and it is now my go-to hotel there. It is unlike any other FS I've patronized, and as you note, it's not the usual floral-and-chintz-covered FS many of us have come to expect. While I've read all the glowing reviews about the PH there, I'm a creature of habit and the FS still wins, to me. Your review reinforces that.

  15. Riley New Member

    We stayed at the Four Seasons Buenos Aires last December, and I can attest that the refreshed rooms and common spaces are flawless, and the service was above-and-beyond. The FS also has an amazing outdoor pool, with incredible service, that makes you feel like you're staying at a resort while in the middle of a big city. One example of the service: Our pool attendant from the day before greeted us by our names as...

    We stayed at the Four Seasons Buenos Aires last December, and I can attest that the refreshed rooms and common spaces are flawless, and the service was above-and-beyond. The FS also has an amazing outdoor pool, with incredible service, that makes you feel like you're staying at a resort while in the middle of a big city. One example of the service: Our pool attendant from the day before greeted us by our names as we walked onto the pool deck, and asked how our dinner at X restaurant was the evening before... we hadn't mentioned where we were eating. There were numerous little touches like that that makes the FS BA among the best city hotels in which we've stayed.

  16. Gyimil New Member

    Would you consider writing about your trip to Uruguay? I am planning a very similar trip, and would love to read your thoughts.

  17. Brent Guest

    What camera did you use for these photos?

  18. Patrick New Member

    Is intuitive your favorite word?!

Featured Comments Most helpful comments ( as chosen by the OMAAT community ).

The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

Jay Guest

What's wrong with Chandon?!

0
Gyimil New Member

@Nick Thanks!

0
DCS Diamond

@Nick "honey" -- you missed the point. The scale we are operating on is relative: Hilton Buenos Aires, where I stayed three years in row, in a suite each time, is not luxurious in absolute terms. It is just more luxurious than what has been billed as the “single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires”, in yet another abuse of superlatives and hyperbole. G'day

0
Meet Ben Schlappig, OMAAT Founder
5,163,247 Miles Traveled

32,614,600 Words Written

35,045 Posts Published