wilma

I am quite apprehensive about my upcoming stay June 5-8. For the 1st night I had reserved the spa bungalow suite during the 48 hr sale in April. The pre-paid suite included 1 free spa treatment and a 900 sq ft suite in an area away from the main hotel with a private pool. Yesterday they left a message on my voice asking me to call them. This morning I returned the call to Curacao at my expense and the reservation person had no idea why they called and asked if I needed car service from the airport. I confirmed with her that I had the spa bungalow suite, now having undergone a name change called the Sea Tradition Suite but still with a free spa treatment. She assured everything was fine. Then 5 minutes later I get an email from the hotel asking how to call me as they had important change to discuss with me.
I finally talk to another reservations agent who informs me that none of the suites are ready but they have put me in a waterview room for my entire stay, including the 2 nights on points. I pointed out that as a diamond I likely would be upgraded to a waterview anyway so the downgrade from the spa suite to a waterview room is not acceptable. She claimed no upgrades for award nights. She would not let me talk to the manager. She claims the spa bungalow suite never included a spa treatment even though I have the original printout of the suite.

I've wasted time and money trying to straighten this out. Sounds like the Hyatt Curacao is not ready for prime time and I'm wondering if I should just cancel my entire stay.

EDIT: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hyatt...iscussion.html for pre-opening discussion.

Renard

pictures of the resort ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/4155154...7624211405558/

Very remote. Either get a rent a car or arrange the shuttle through the hotel. $30 r/t per person. If you don't rent a car, expect to spend 100% of your time at the resort. There is NOTHING in reasonable walking distance (say 20 mins or so). There are rental cars available onsite...likely $$$$

Checkin. Very little diamond recognition. There is no lounge... disappointing. Diamonds get breakfast in the Medi restaurant. Checkout was very smooth. They even knew how to deal with the Hyatt Costco certs.

Rooms are very nice. Both US and Continental European electrical outlets.

Breakfast. Food was pretty good...nothing special... you can tell they are having trouble monitoring food quantity on the rather small buffet. there always seemed to be some of the hot food containers that were empty. Eggs/Omelettes are made to order and brought to the table.. which was very nice. Very little variance in the breakfast buffet. Sometimes the service was confused... several people asking if I wanted juice...each time I said yes... yet nobody ever brought it. Eventually I went over and helped myself to the juice at the buffet.

Everyone on the hotel staff was very nice and welcoming.

The food at the Swim bar and grill at the food was pretty good. Very expensive even for a resort. (Hamburger was $12 but $18 if you wanted fries with it ) Alcoholic drinks were typically $8...about typical. Menu was very limited and tended too much towards appetizers. They should add more sandwiches etc. Service was good. Food was good. Open until 7pm. Many took advantage of this as it was a casual dining option.

Pool was a bit underwhelming for a resort. More like a big hotel pool than a more typical resort pool as one would find at the Hyatts in Aruba, Maui or Kauai. My guess is that the pool would be overwhelmed when all the rooms are open and the hotel is busy. (Only around half of the rooms were done.) I thought that the pool was in a funny place. There were no ocean views at all from the pool area even though the hotel is right on the coast and the hotel has quite a bit of coast.

The beach was off to the side and pretty nice. I think that it might have even been an enhanced natural beach but not sure. Most of the coast though is not a beach and is a rocky coast.

I would be happy to go back if I could get a decent deal.

el_jefe

Thanks for the photos! The hotel looks practically empty! How many people did you see during your week there, did you ever get bored? Please post a trip report when you have a moment. I have a week stay coming up using BWB nights starting Aug 7. Obviously 60 days is a lifetime when talking about opening day of the property to arrival. I sure hope their ready to go. I'm going there primarily to Scuba Dive - but I would like to enjoy the resort, obviously. Looks a bit underwhelming.

neuro0

I thought this hotel has no beach
I guess I was wrong.

wilma

I just completed a stay June 5-8. Hyatt Curacao is definitely a beautiful resort. Currently though there are way more employees than guests, I would estimate that <10% of the rooms were filled. The pluses to the low occupancy are plenty of spaces at the pool & beach, and great service throughout the resort. The downside is that sometimes we felt overwhelmed by the attention, everyone knew who we were and what we were doing. Our room was nice and had an oceanview but also had a view of the un-landscaped front area which didn't look that great. The new resort had several annoying features like no ice machines, instant coffee packets but no way to heat or get hot water, and balcony doors that would not shut properly to activate the air conditioning. Everytime we opened the sliding door, we had to try shutting it 8-10 times and then check to see if the air started up.
The beach is not great for Curacao IMHO, much of it is rocky with no access to the water. The beach chairs are set up next to a sandy beach adjacent to the dock/marina area. we tried to jump in the water next to the rocky beach facing the ocean but boats were whizzing by close to shore. It would help if they built a dock and roped off a section for swimming in the exposed ocean side of the resort.
All of the restaurants were excellent with great service and food. The beach and pool service was great and the casual salads, fish tacos, and sandwiches were really tasty. The nicest restaurant-Shor is great for sunset cocktails & dinner. The gelato store is excellent The diamond amenity gives you several choices and we picked the Canvas Chard. and fruit, the fruit consisted of several rock hard & inedible pears, plums, and peaches that never ripened during our 3 days. Nightly turndown provided 2 bottles of water. They have an international staff, Asian, Euros, Caribbean, etc. Very few of the resort staff were locals, hopefully they have some training opportunities for the locals to have some of the jobs.
Check-in, reservation process and checkout were absolutely awful. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my reservation was totally screwed up and required many emails and phone calls to fix, not totally to my satisfaction. Knowing that checkout might be a problem & we needed to leave for our flight at 5:30 am, we checked out the night before we left. This process took almost an hour, about 10 different bills were produced, no one knew how to credit the diamond breakfast which was automatically capped at $21 even though there were 2 of us and we were told the full breakfast was covered. They had no idea how to input any G bonuses so I gave up on that. I will need to contact the Hyatt Concierge to get my stay and bonus credit.
We usually stay at westpunt Kura Hulanda Beach Resort when in Curacao and the beaches are much more beautiful at the west end. Hyatt Curacao is way down on the east end and very isolated. Not sure I would ever stay there again. I like a better caribbean beach for swimming and snorkeling and find the Kura Hulanda an ideal setup for swimming and diving. Kura Hulanda though has terrible service & food, so that is definitely a better feature of the Hyatt.

Steph58

From Renard's photos the beach looks quite rocky. Not a beach where you could put down a towel and spend time sunning! Doesn't even look like you could walk on it . . . Thanks for the pics, Renard.

Wilma posted while I was typing . . . looks like she's confirmed it is a rocky beach!

el_jefe

Renard's photos #026 and #016 appear to show a clear beach access that isn't too rocky and dock jutting out from the beach. Am I missing something?

How far is it (drive time) from the Hyatt to other parts of the Island with better beaches, etc.?

DealDetective

Does this property have a casino as the thread title indicates?

wilma

No casino and never saw any mention of one in my recent visit.

Renard

Yes.. no casino and no apparent spot for one in the future.

Renard

A similar thing happened to me. I was to be in one of the spa suites and they called and said that was a no-go. They put me in one of the regular suites (essentially two rooms connected.). The one they put me in was on the ground floor with little view. Even with such low occupancy they chose to give me the nil-view suite. Mine was a paid stay. Little diamond recognition. I don't think that this will be a great hotel for diamond perks.

best

I seems this hotel has reasonable rates for now, but has issues:
1-little Diamond recognition
2-rocky beach
3--no complimentary airport shuttle.
4--nothing around it.

el_jefe

I am checking into this property on Aug. 7 for a SCUBA vacation. My girlfriend and I are avid divers and typically avoid charters when we can. Can anyone tell us if there are any dive sites near the hotel, or off the hotel's beach? We will have a rental car and we plan on driving and diving the island, but I was curious about close dive sites for night diving. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

wilma

This resort is not suitable for beach diving on-site. You will need to drive to the middle of the island or Westpunt for beach diving. There may be some sites close to the resort but you would need a boat trip.

charlies_angel

We stayed for 4 nights in aruba using 4 free BWB rewards and 3 nights in curacao using 1 BWB reward and 2 point nights.

Curacao was a MUCH nicer resort. The bungalows are up and running now and just opened August 22. We were able to receive a free upgrade without using a Diamond certificate.

Great service all around. Easy check in, good welcome amenity (dutch gouda tasting platter and a bottle of white wine), stunning rooms, stunning views, fantastic breakfast buffets at $22 per person. They were appropriately comped for my wife and I as a Diamond.

The location is about 30 minutes from the airport, about 20 minutes from downtown willemstad, about 10-15 minutes from good nightlife and world famous clubs. The resort is a little isolated but that might actually be a benefit. I would definitely suggest this property over aruba even though there is no club level lounge. The culture of curacao is much more interesting than the hard rock, hooters, casinos of aruba's palm beach. scuba diving in both sites are equal in my experiences. curacao might have more accessible beach snorkeling, hard to tell.

When I was there, I asked, and occupancy rates were at 37% though they had been as high as 60%. Some parts of the hotel are still under construction as they outfit the final rooms and finish landscaping but it was very quiet and we didn’t notice at all until the last day when we were on our way out.