Except for the fact that I am not a big fan of the standard suites at Park Hyatt Bangkok, otherwise this hotel has been growing on me recently with significant improvements in service since it opened and fixing a few hardware problems that existed early on.  I am still trying to find the “sweet spot” of value for this hotel so instead of booking an entry level room and ending up in a standard suite as Globalist, this time I tried something different: I booked a Park Exec Suite which is the third category of suites, and let the dominoes fall regarding a possible upgrade.  I received a one-category upgrade to the Diplomat suite which is a nice room and I had another stay with great service, but the value remain somewhat questionable considering the more generous upgrades at other luxury hotels of a similar level.  

The Hyatt loyalty program is generally considered the most generous of all hotel chains for standard suites, but as far as I know the Globalist suite upgrade concept does not apply above that level so technically they did not have to upgrade me at all.  Given that I am a repeat guest and occupancy was low I wanted to know how they would handle the upgrade, if at all.  It would be ungrateful to complain about the one-category upgrade to the Diplomat Suite, but objectively speaking based on my experience, other hotel chains can be more liberal with upgrades when booking premium suites to begin with, among others Marriott, Hilton, and even GHA which gives a 2-category upgrade as a matter of policy even with booking high levels of rooms which can sometimes result in wonderfully valuable upgrades at the top end.  So I was trying to find a sweet spot with Park Hyatt, and my takeaway is that this was probably not it.

Room

The Diplomat Suites are listed at 115-122 sqm versus the Park Exec Suites 93-109 sqm, and compared to the standard suites I noticed marginally higher quality hardware for example the Denon surround system sound system and speakers / subwoofer from Bowers & Wilkins.  As can be expected the living room was more spacious than the standard suites and there was a small dining area with a sink and a full-size fridge and freezer, and the half bathroom near the entrance was convenient.  That half bathroom is something missing from the standard suites, unlike other hotels of this level for example at St.Regis.  I would also note that the toilet in the main bathroom was a Toto washlet, but not in the half bathroom, which is different from Waldorf Astoria where the Astoria Suite has two Toto washlets.  

The rest of the Diplomat Suite was fairly similar to standard suites, the main bathroom has always been a strong point of Park Hyatt, and I like the soft colors and design in the room generally speaking.  The weakness is that some of the hardware is lower quality than other comparable options for example St.Regis and Waldorf Astoria as mentioned above, and also the newly opened Sindhorn Kempinski.  Another issue is that because of the shape of the building, the hallway on the other side of our room was not very far so we felt visually exposed, making it necessary to pull the blinds down in the main bathroom.  For the rest of the suite the sheers were sufficient for privacy during day light hours. 

In terms of size while 115-122 sqm is nothing to sneeze at, the Astoria Suite at WA is 140 sqm and the Grand Exec Suite at Sindhorn Kempinski is 145 sqm, both of which I have been upgraded to in the past from much lower categories of rooms so much more generous upgrade than what I received at Park Hyatt, hence the difficulty of Park Hyatt being competitive at this price point.  Coincidentally, for exactly the same price I stayed at the ultra-luxury Capella hotel earlier this month and upgraded to the Verandah room with an outdoor plunge pool with river views.  At Park Hyatt I took advantage of the current promotion of third night free and stayed there exactly three nights to minimize the average daily room rate, but it was still not enough to provide great value relative to others.  

Service

At every stay at Park Hyatt I notice that service is increasingly better each time.  For this stay they proactively called me at 10am to inform me that our room was ready and that we could come over.  Once we stepped out of the taxi the bellman asked in what name the reservation was and he obviously communicated with staff upstairs on the lobby floor who welcomed us back and greeted us by name as soon as we got off the elevator.  The check-in was very quick without needless formalities since they already had our ID and credit card on file so we were accompanied to our room immediately.  During the stay they checked with me by e-mail to make sure everything was going well and quickly responded to all miscellaneous requests I had including printing documents and bringing to our room.  In addition I always appreciate that this hotel can take care of various errands, they did in the past and once again for this stay I had a package to send by DHL and they took care of it themselves rather than me having to spin my wheels to go to the DHL office.  Allowing in-room dining for the breakfast was a great improvement from before (I am not sure if it’s temporary due to covid only) and not a service provided by all luxury hotels at this point in time.  One morning when they brought the fruit plate I commented that I was glad to have passion fruits, and they brought me several extra a few minutes later which was a nice touch.

Dining

There were previous reports on FT about breakfast cutbacks since covid, but my experience was completely the opposite.  Not only we could have breakfast in the room as mentioned above, but we could order anything we wanted from the extensive a la carte menu as the breakfast benefit.  The menu included several upscale dishes such as blue crab eggs benedicts, an excellent quinoa salad with pomegranate, etc.  If we had to pay for each item one by one our order would have probably been over 3000 THB every morning, and everything was comped as the Globalist breakfast.  In the past breakfast has never been a weakness at Park Hyatt but it’s now gone up to top 5 in the city in my opinion, better than many other luxury hotels.

We also ordered room service a few times as we had 100 USD credit because of the booking with Hyatt Prive, but the hotel converted the credit to 2500 THB while almost all competitors use 3000 THB instead.  Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the 20% haircut on the current exchange rate of 31.0 seems a bit excessive.  

Gym

Both times I went to the gym I was all alone, unlike some other hotels which tend to be more crowded nowadays.  The gym overlooks the pool one floor below and a small park in the distance.  

Wifi

They have upgraded their wifi since last time we stayed at Park Hyatt because I clocked speeds of 85-135 Mbps which was much better than before when it was 20-30 Mbps.

Overall

Overall we had a great stay with very little to complain about: excellent service, spacious suite upgrade, one of the better breakfasts, plus the fact that we could enjoy it from the comfort of our room rather than go to the restaurant.  At the moment in Bangkok many hotels are quite full on weekends and breakfast tends to be more chaotic at cheaper 5-star hotels such as Peninsula, Kimpton, or JW Marriott which is why I wanted to move up in the price range for this weekend stay and avoid crowds.  I guess someone could argue that I cannot have the cake and eat it too: I cannot benefit from a very good price and enjoy a quiet hotel during weekends at the same time.  I must acknowledge the fact that PH is perhaps discounting rooms less aggressively in the current covid conditions compared to some other hotels and it had positives: a quieter experience all around.  I will continue to return to PH in the future due to the ideal location and the other strong points mentioned in my review, but for a similar price tag there are a handful of other luxury hotels which offer a better product based on what I value most, either for standard suites or for premium suites.