Just completed a trip to SE Asia with a stay here. I highly recommend this hotel, while I havent stayed at the competition, the Park Hyatt looks far better than any of the competing properties I walked into in Saigon.
We took the opportunity to try out the hotel's airport transportation, it's worth the meager price. A very nice car, a Mercedes Benz S Class with about 8000 km on it. Now this is the way to travel. I think it cost $35 to be picked up by the hotel, definitely worth it if you stay at this hotel.
And the hotel is a great find too. I had booked it pretty much as soon as it came online over the summer (they told me it opened in July). I didn’t have much information on it, but I have so far had pretty nice experiences at the other Park Hyatts I’ve stayed at. The hardest part with this place was getting the room I wanted. I had heard they would have several pool suites that opened onto the pool on the 3rd floor, but they were not put into the reservation system until well into November. I finally got an email address for the hotel in September and after a few emails secured one of these. I had initially reserved a basic room at $160 (the “prevailing” rate) and then tried to use some Hyatt points to do the suite upgrade. I think the hotel gave up on trying to deduct the points and just gave me the suite upgrade for free, because the points have never been deducted from my account. Either way, a suite here is a good deal. If you are a Hyatt Passport member, $160 plus the points is great, if not I think the suite goes for $250 and this is still a great deal.
We were put in one of the corner pool suites, it’s more or less the last room that faces the pool. It is nice and quiet over in that corner and you have very good privacy. Even though it faces the pool it's not as if the pool area is very busy. The room has two sets of French doors that open onto a small patio that also opens onto the pool. There is also a good sized bedroom, a limestone bathroom with separate walk in shower and bath and then a nice sized living room. The rooms are very nice, clean and modern, but done up in dark SE asian woods. Our room had dark wood floors with very nice silk rugs covering the center of each room. The walls were covered with a nice taupe and white striped wallpaper with gleaming white trim around the doorways and windows.
The pool area is very nice too, with a nice light sandstone around the pool and comfortable teak loungers. The pool area is quite large, especially for the number of guests who were using it, which is nice if you are looking for a sanctuary from the heat and craziness of the outside city. The pool area is on the third floor on the back side of the building, and since the building is an “L” shape, it does a great job of shielding the noise from outside (and the hotel is on a busy intersection). When you are at the pool you could be anywhere. There is also a nice bar and lounge area near the pool, this only stays open until 8pm, but it has beautiful lighting shortly after sunset. The food is also very good, we had some Vietnamese springrolls, Pho and some beef rolls and they were all as good as what we found outside the hotel, good authentic Vietnamese food with a slight fusion twist. Drinks are pretty reasonable at the pool and service is good, with some twists (more on this later). The Park Lounge on the first floor also had good food and drinks, both some western dishes as well as some good local ones.
The healthclub here is great, with brand new treadmills complete with built in TV monitors. If you use the club you have to ask the attendent to open the shutters so you can look out onto the busy street while you work out. It is fascinating! In fact I would advise doing this your first day, as you will learn a lot about traffic and the lack of any rules on the streets in Vietnam.
The breakfast downstairs is a buffet and we were not charged for this due to my Hyatt Diamond status, it was a great breakfast and a good way to start the day. We didnt try out the Italian restaurant, as we were looking for Vietnamese food.
Servicewise we were very happy with the Park Hyatt. First, the staff spoke english very well. I dont expect 100% fleuncy, in fact I have to say that I think americans/brits expect too much in terms of English fleuncy. Things will improve at this hotel as the staff learn some more common spoken english phrases, but overall I think they do a very good job in this category. The staff to guest ratio is amazing right now, maybe because the occupancy rate is so low. Doors are always held, help given with bags, etc, etc. We had a butler for our suite who would get us whatever we needed. The concierge worked out ticket arrangements with Vietnam airlines and coordinated with the Grand Hyatt concierge in Bangkok to make us dinner reservations for several restaurants in Bangkok. Overall, very nice polished service.
As far as venturing out, the hotel is in a good location. We did a fair amount of shopping, we really like to collect artwork when we travel, so we hit a number of galleries. We found that many had the same artist or at least the same paintings that had been churned out in high numbers. We found a few places here and there that had lower production pieces, some were even good bargains. There were a couple of places that had what I would call US prices for nice work of not yet well known artists, we passed on these. Luxury goods didn’t seem to be a good deal here, nor did electronics, we could get these at home for only marginally more money and have an easier time with warranty issues/etc. But there are plenty of luxury goods places right around the Hyatt if that is what you are looking for.
Foodwise we tried several places in Saigon. We tried Pho24 for dinner one night, it was written up in the NY Times a few months ago, it’s a chain that serves good pho in a nice modern setting. There are a couple of branches near the Hyatt. It was very inexpensive, maybe US$10 for dinner including several beers, and I would venture to say this is a completely safe place even for tender stomachs (my wife was fine here and she tends to have a tough time with stomach issues). We also tried another fusion place near the Pho24 location that is down the street from the Sheraton, with similar results.
Incidentally, we tried the Sheraton for drinks (at the top floor bar) one night and I came away thinking the Park Hyatt is a far nicer property. At the Sheraton, we ordered what was supposed to be a California roll wrapped with shrimp but was instead a California roll with gobs of canned albacore tuna lopped on top of it. It was oily and had permeated the rice, making the roll taste like an old tunafish sandwich. I tried to return it several times, to no avail. What I faced each time was a number of attempts to avoid any discussion of what was wrong, in short, complete conflict avoidance. I would soon learn that some SE Asian service (particularly Vietnamese service) is infused with this conflict avoidance. There is a saying in the US (maybe elsewhere) that “the customer is always right.” That rule is not employed in Vietnam, later I would learn that this was just an aspect of traveling here that I would have to get used to. In any event, I went back and forth with the waiter, first politely asking and then insisting that he take the silly US$6 roll off the bill because it wasn’t what they had on the menu. He went over and discussed it several times with his manager, looking over the menu, his manager shaking his head each time. I finally paid the check (complete with the extra US$6 charge).
But we had a number of things like this happen during our stay in Saigon and I think it is just something you have to get used to. This even happened a few times at the Park Hyatt when things got screwed up because of the language barrier. I thought the staff at the Hyatt spoke very good English, as well as I would hope, but sometimes they didnt quite hear us right. The most common thing is that I would order one drink and they would bring one for me and one for my wife. We also had a problem with our return transport to the airport and I think it was because the concierge didnt understand me. They forgot to book the Mercedes for us for the return and when I went down to talk to them about this, they pulled the conflict avoidance move on me and told me everything would be fine. Well, 30 minutes later they packed us into a basic taxi, without even an apology that they had screwed up the booking for the limo. Not a great note to leave on.
But I wouldnt want to end the review with that note either. This was a real 5 star hotel, maybe a couple of slip ups, but many more positive experiences to make up for these small mistakes.