Doing Nashville in Grand style

As a curiosity-fueled lifetime traveler with a love of country music, my US trip had to lead me to Nashville. As the city’s popularity has surged over the past few years, many major hotel players have arrived or announced their forthcoming entry to Nashville - from W and Thompson to EDITION and Four Seasons. As a World of Hyatt enthusiast, I chose to stay at the relatively new and centrally-located Grand Hyatt Nashville.

Occupying a full city block on Broadway and originally conceived as a big-box Hyatt Regency, the new-build Grand Hyatt Nashville opened in October 2020 to provide the downtown core with a luxury-level convention hotel. The city’s many famous [and wildly rambunctious] honky-tonks, bars, restaurants and music venues are located a very easy five-minute walk down Broadway to the left of the hotel, while the upscale Gulch district with shops, restaurants and residences is located below Broadway in front of the hotel, just beyond the gorgeous Union Station Hotel sitting directly opposite the hotel tower. Whether in town for business, pleasure or both, the Grand Hyatt’s location is beyond ideal.

We drove into Nashville from St. Louis, but Nashville International Airport [BNA] is approximately 20 minutes away.

The Grand Hyatt is a nearly 600-room property with a meetings and convention emphasis spread over a 25-story tower, and as such is positively sprawling. The large, covered driveway opens onto an extensive, double-height lobby with The Continental restaurant and escalators to the meeting facilities immediately to the left and the reception area to the right. Seating is available in the form of benches in the middle of the lobby, while a small covered area opposite the reception on the far left wall has three separate couch and chair setups. A spacious lobby bar, Aurum, is available beyond the reception, with the entrance to the Nashville Grange restaurant on the far left, the grab-and-go Hummingbird in the far center and the keycard-accessible Grand Club on the right wall past Aurum. The entire space is buzzy and swarming with activity, but is warmly decorated and lit to make it seem much more inviting than transactional.

Check-in was welcoming and efficient, and took a few minutes; I was thanked for my World of Hyatt Globalist status, informed of my upgrade to an Executive Suite, and was given a quick tour of the facilities in the lobby as well as other hotel offerings before being issued keys and pointed the way to the elevators.

I was assigned an Executive Suite on the twelfth floor of the hotel, halfway up the tower. Very spacious at 720 square feet, the suite featured a separate living room and bedroom with plenty of room and high-quality furnishings and fittings.

The heavy door opens onto the living room, with a wall-mounted table to the left, wet bar and wine chiller to the right and mixed working/dining table for four in a tiled zone. The living room is just beyond, with a large, comfortable L-shaped couch, table and two square seats set before a 65-inch wall-mounted television. The color scheme is beiges and browns to create a residential feel with an industrial edge, with select artwork referring to the rail tracks outside the hotel. The rail theme permeates throughout the rest of the hotel, as the train yards inspired the overall design concept.

The separate bedroom featured a king-sized bed, additional 55-inch television, armoire, armchair and table. While not a walk-in closet, a distinct zone in the bedroom area contained two spacious cupboards and a dressing table with chair.

The bathroom is similarly spacious with a double vanity and generous counter space, commode and standing shower cubicle outfitted with both a wall-mounted showerhead and handheld wand - always a nice touch. The shower taps are accessible to the opposite wall of the showerheads as soon as you enter, so you can set and adjust your shower temperature before getting sprayed; this is a sensible design feature I wish more hotels took into consideration. Toiletries are by Balmain and offered shampoo, conditioner, body gel and body lotion in miniature bottles, and were of decent quality.

I noticed a lack of an in-room welcome amenity for Globalist members seen in other luxury-level Hyatt properties such as a letter, food offering or wine; I wasn’t sure to attribute this to the hotel being busy nor am I expecting any freebies per se, but have generally noticed most upper-level Hyatts to be very forthcoming in their elite recognition. This isn’t a demerit to the hotel more than it is a general observation.

While the room is clearly high-tech and well-finished, I must vocalize a major criticism: the total lack of sound insulation from the windows. Although we were twelve stories above the city, we heard every backfiring exhaust, every screaming party bus, every frenzied throng and every jarring sound from the streets below late into the night. The heavy room doors feel good, but the sound of them slamming also travels through the floors and walls. Light sleepers: you have been warned - the noise pollution is BRUTAL.

Wi-fi is free for World of Hyatt loyalty members, with a chargeable premium option for faster speeds. This is also free of charge for elite members; just be sure to notify the reception to waive the charges if see them on your final folio. Coverage was generally decent throughout the hotel, but kept dropping on the last day and annoyingly, needed to be logged into everyday of my stay despite selecting the “duration of stay” connection option during initial login.

Due to my Globalist status, we had automatic access to the Grand Club lounge which included breakfast, all-day snacks and beverages, and happy hour from 5 to 7 PM every evening. We took all of our food and beverage in the hotel at the lounge during our stay.

Breakfast included the same selection daily, and included hot options such as scrambled eggs, meats such as sausage and bacon, potatoes, oatmeal and individually-prepared and wrapped breakfast sandwiches, small cold options like parfaits, chia bowls and smoked salmon, and breads and pastries. Coffee, tea and juice is available, as well as complimentary, limitless mimosas.

Afternoon snacks consisted of cakes and bags of chips, as well as a fridge of soft drinks, water and yogurt.

Happy hour is the best I have seen in a US-based hotel, and consists of a rotating menu of two hot options [i.e. on one day, there were vegetable empanadas and mac-and-cheese and chicken balls, another day there were pigs-in-a-blanket and mushroom quiches], a cheese and charcuterie board, and cold canapés like hummus with crudités and individual servings of pasta salad. The highlight is complimentary alcohol: two red wines [Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon], two white wines [Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay], a sparkling wine and multiple kinds of beer. No spirits are offered, but the wines and beers are of good quality. Pours are extremely generous and the staff are very diligent about keeping glasses full.

In a day and age where more and more guests seek alternatives, I would recommend that the hotel dedicates more effort to offering guests more variety in food choices [perhaps with swapping the cold dishes at breakfast, or featuring a signature dish that changes, i.e. fresh avocado toast, eggs Benedict, pancake station], as we grew somewhat tired of the same options everyday of our three-day stay; longer-staying guests would most certainly get bored of seeing the same selection for an extended period. More meat-free options would be welcomed as well, as on our first day, both hot options were meat-based.

The hotel’s fifth floor features an outdoor swimming pool that is heated during the winter months, gym, spa and changing facilities. I stopped by to check them out, and while the pool closes after sunset, I believe the gym is accessible 24 hours a day by keycard. It isn’t the largest gym relative to the hotel’s size, but the equipment is high-tech and the place was empty when I popped in.

The hotel places an emphasis on meetings and conventions, and receives a lot of traffic for that given its new status, professional service and downtown location. The meeting facilities were slammed with large-scale events everyday of our stay, but we didn’t once feel like we were mobbed given the smart design of the meeting facilities being given separate access into and out of the hotel via dedicated escalators.

The hotel’s service really shines, especially for one that sees so much traffic; the staff are genuinely warm, proud of their property and enjoy what they do. I would like to thank Brock at the reception for his welcome and explanation of the hotel’s facilities, Joe and Ralph from the bell team for being personable, helpful and prompt with the movement of our luggage and loading/unloading in our room and car, and Adam in the Grand Club lounge for running a tight ship and being friendly. Extra special mention must go to Gökhan and Carolina in the Grand Club: not only were these fresh recruits dynamic and hard-working, as evidenced in the way they tended to the general space and each guest, but they went above and beyond in connecting with us personally, taking care of our every need and by being so generous with the hotel’s offerings. I genuinely hope the hotel pays attention to this review, as this young talent deserves recognition and nurture to take on greater responsibility and in turn generate a larger audience of happy guests like us.

I was wrongly billed for premium Internet charges despite being informed over the phone that they were included for World of Hyatt elite members and at check out, yet received a charge for it on my credit card after reviewing a zero-balance folio… but I’ll attribute this to an error somewhere down the line rather than anything malicious.

Grand Hyatt Nashville is an oasis in a mad city, offering new spaces, clean and high-tech rooms, professional and polished service, and the best club lounge experience I have experienced thus far in the continental United States - all in a most central location. If and when travel brings me back to Nashville, I will not consider anywhere else to stay in the city given the wealth of facilities at this fabulous property. Now if they’ll only invest in a little more sound insulation…