It's taken me a while to post this review from 2 stays (10 days + 7 days with Garden route in between) in September. I think because the hotel was quite odd and I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it.

Apologies for my awful photography, but I thought better to include than leave out.

Pre stay I did get the dodgy pre payment form mentioned above which I wish they'd get rid of. I also noticed that availability for this hotel seems to go from high to none and back regularly. I worked out while staying this is because they are big on tour/cruise groups. If you want a suite then be sure to use a SUA, but I wouldn't say it's the best use of one (see below).

To start with, the staff were generally particularly friendly and nice, although weren't always competent.

I am a globalist and arrived early, a little before 1pm. Unfortunately no regency suites were available and even more unfortunately it seemed no standard king rooms were ready. I had to wait maybe 40 minutes for a room to be available, but I wasn't asked to pay for my tea which was nice.

The Standard King room was relatively recently refurbished and was spacious (38sqm) with a good style and bath. Minor design flaw with the blind on the extra window in the end of building rooms which seemed an afterthought and let in a lot of light in the mornings. But the aircon was effective and water temperature and pressure always good. The toiletries were a South African brand which were nothing to write home about, but I wouldn't say particularly worse or better than pharmacopeia - I suspect the choice was more about cost for the hotel.

Standard King photos:

I did ask on check-in if they could put me in a Regency Suite when one did open up, as it seemed like they were only fully booked for the first couple of days of my stay and they agreed. I even checked the day before and they said it should be fine. Unfortunately on the day I asked and there was a bit of an 'uhm' and 'ah' followed by an explanation that they thought the hotel owner might come that day so they'd prefer to keep the suite for him. The suite remained for sale on the Hyatt website/app. It was definitely odd, but they'd been quite friendly so I made no fuss and said it was fine and got moved the next day to one of the not refurbished Regency Suites, photos below.

The Regency Suite was spacious but I would say badly in need of refurbishment and really not Hyatt style or standards. Functionally everything worked just fine.

Regency Suite Photos:

I used a suite upgrade award for the second stay and was put in a different but similarly non refurbished Regency Suite.

Breakfast was generally good / good enough for me. Pretty limited hot food options which didn't really change over the 17 days I was there. Poor juices, but actually really nice pastries and scones. Not amazing but fine. Service was mixed with a couple of really nice staff and one particularly grumpy chap. It always lacked in training though. One particularly memorable moment was when my table was given away twice in one sitting while I was up getting food, despite me having moved things on the table to make it obvious it was occupied. Multiple other times things were cleared prematurely when I took just seconds to go and get e.g. some water.

The lunch/dinner food in the hotel I wouldn't recommend. Some things were nice, but in general it was very inconsistent and more often awful than average. The meat particularly was generally so dry as to be close to inedible.

I required late checkout and on this they were very bad. I asked for it and they said they couldn't do it. I pushed as this is not optional at this hotel for globalists. They acknowledged that I was correct, but again they uhmmed and ahhed until I offered to move to another room. Interestingly the room I moved to was my original Standard King room, this time with twin beds.

All of this left me feeling mainly indifferent to the hotel with lots of bad things but at least nice staff and spacious functional rooms. I move from indifferent to not recommending the hotel because of the Regency Club offering which I can only describe as a scam. The hotel sells club rooms at quite a high cost over the identical non club rooms (at least $50 a night in January, weirdly a lot more for a twin) but has no regency club. The only offering for this is a 2 hour slot each day with really really poor canapés and limited drinks in a tiny section of the restaurant which is really more like the entrance space (see photos). I tried it maybe 4 or 5 times in the 17 days and it was simply undrinkable wine and 9 item out of 10 awful awful food. Had I paid for a club room I would be really mad and the price they charge makes this really unacceptable. I did confirm with the hotel staff twice that this was it for club offerings. I was confused by sexykitten7's description of free drinks from noon in the second floor bar, so I even checked with the hotel on this and they again confirmed it is only the happy hour offering. I am not sure if they offer this to those who complain about being ripped off or are perhaps just not offering it to globalists. I did also use the second floor bar quite a bit and the drinks were very overpriced for South Africa and the quality of hotel. What was further annoying is that this hotel chooses to not give Hyatt Points on alcohol spend, which at the prices they charged (and without a lounge) was a decent amount for me.

Happy Hour offering:

The points rates as a cat 1 are obviously very good but the hotel has some major flaws for me. As a European, Hyatt points aren't that easy for me to earn and so I paid cash rates which were a decent amount more than the Protea nearby which I stayed in previously. The Protea also isn't a great hotel, but the food and beverage offering is much better in my opinion.

Overall I can't recommend the hotel and it would really take particularly low rates to convince me to return.