Regency Club now open?
 

If so, I can bid goodbye to the 2500 point closure bonus. :(

Wow, it really sounds like this place has chronic issues. I find it hard to believe that there are still as many issues as there are. We stayed there 2 1/2 years ago and it still seems to have problems.

I stayed at the HR Jacksonville for a weekend with my girlfriend. They treat GP members as VIPs. Car was valeted and kept up front, instead of in the garage. RC is closed on the weekends, but Edgar took care of breakfasts. His level of service was on the level of a 5-star hotel. The room itself was nothing special, we stayed in a premium king on the 17th (out of 19) floors. The premium king had a refrigerator is a larger room with a sitting area. The view of the river was beautiful, we had an LCD TV, fresh robes, comfortable bed with clean sheets - so no huge compaints there. The hallways are outdated - the doors to the rooms look like they were taken out of a motel 6 circa 1985. The rooftop pool/spa can get busy because it's a small area and they were dirty (I saw a clump of hair floating in the pool). Their high-end steakhouse restaurant is no longer open so fine dining isn't an option on the property. All of the staff were very accomodating with requests from reservations and directions to sending up tonic water! Would stay here again if I had a reason to be in Jacksonville.

Regency Club open...and impressive
 

I am staying here now, and although I have always been a fan of this property, they have really stepped up thier game.

The regenecy club is now open, and it features snacks all day that are...dare I say it...better than the usual. The mid-day cookies are of a gourmet quality and they offer a huge variety of pop (including my favorite...Diet Dr. Pepper) juices and a new coffee / capp machine that I haven't seen in RC.

The club has a nice area with computers in case you want to print stuff or if you have kids that want to play on the internet. Unlike other clubs, there are at least four computers in there - not the usual one.

They treat Diamond's as VIPs, as all the Hyatts do, but I seem to get more attention here than I do at other properties.

Other than that the hotel has kept up to expectations for me with thing like cleanliness, views from the rooms, service... just glad to see the RC open again.

This is the way to go if you are in Jacksonville. The Hyatt Place near the airport is nice to, but it's just your standard HP.

Has anyone stayed here recently? I would like to make an award booking (can transfer points from UR), but it won't let me see how many points to book a room unless I have points in my account. I don't want to transfer my points from UR if I'm not going to stay there.

Can anyone look and see what the points needed are for 1/1-1/3 for the Hyatt Regency Riverfront? Thanks!

The property is a category 2 - 8,000 points per night. However, the hotel is sold out for at least one of the nights you want, so the award is not available (only Diamonds can force revenue room booking at $300 a night).

Thanks for looking! Guess I'll just go with another chain instead.

I should've looked for another chain too. I was away from the room for 7 hours during the day while going to the Gator Bowl. That's obviously not enough time for housekeeping to do the rounds. My room as of 4:40 this afternoon has not been serviced. This is a management issue and it generally shows a lack of concern for the guest. Hyatt Place gets a bad rap on this forum but at least I've never been stiffed by their housekeeping like this.

You pay premium rates for premium service - this hotel does not deserve to be branded as a Hyatt Regency with service like I've seen here. This hotel has a great location but they can't handle a crowd.

For the few on this board that may frequent this hotel, I revive this thread only to report that today a Jacksonville newspaper (Financial News and Daily Record) reported that the property was foreclosed on by lender in 2011 and was scheduled for public auction on Jan 11, but parties have agreed to postpone sale to April 25 while owner (located in San Francisco) continues efforts to renegotiate terms. With 950 plus rooms (what was Adams Mark thinking when it built that many rooms in a small market before Hyatt rebranded the hotel 6 years ago), it's a tough situation. General manager says hotel will continue to operate as usual pursuant to a long-term lease and will not cease operations. Here's hoping it works out.

Thanks for posting this. While it's disappointing news, there isn't really any significance to us (guests at the property). It is highly unlikely that the property would close down (shuttered) since the hotel I'm sure covers it's operating costs (but probably not the mortgage payments). While it is possible that the lender or whoever the ultimate buyer is would want to change flags due to relationships etc, it's not really any different from any other regularly operating property. FWIW, I used to work in commercial real estate finance and dealt with such issues numerous times. Also, my local Mattress Run property, the HR Cincinnati, was foreclosed upon in 2010 (IIRC - but could have been 2009), and it's still operating as it always has been at least from a customer perspective.

Super Bowl. Let's just say that the city of JAX made it worth it for Adam's Mark to build that hotel....

Recent Stay - 5/12
 

My family and I recently stayed at the Hyatt Jacksonville for a long weekend. Below was our experience;

Cons:
-Check-in was a bit of a hassle. It took us probably 45-1hr to get checked in due to problems/issues with our room rate and the use of our suite upgrade (I am not sure if the error was on the hotel or the diamond desk end). After finally getting checked in we couldn't get into our room (the keys - we tried 3different ones and made 2 trips to the front desk) wouldn't work. They had to send maitenance up to break into the room. Based upon the start of our weekend, I honestly would have initially written a pretty poor review of the place.
- We had a parlor room connected to a king bedroom. The rooms are dated, but fine. Bathrooms are very small. The main negative to the room(s) to me was lack of windows. The parlor didn't have any windows and the bedroom had only one small window (with a bad view)...so the rooms felt closed in and dark. In addition, we didn't quite receive as far as the room goes what the front desk had previously promised us when I had called a couple of weeks ahead of time to find out what type of suite we had been booked in.

Pros:
- The lobby is very nice
- They offer a nice option for diamond breakfast when RC is closed. We got a full buffet breakfast and they even kindly allowed us to use room service for one morning when we had to be out of the room early. That was great! The food selection was good, overall taste was alright.
-When we checked out I had a very nice staff (Monica) help with fixing some of the problems (room rate, etc) that we had during check-in. She was great. Honestly, she was so nice and helpful that she helped make up for the check-in process being difficult. I left the hotel with a much more positive feeling overall. As a result, if in the area, I think it is a good hotel to stay at and would consider using it again for my family.

I actually prefer the Hyatt Place JAX. Regency is outdated. The Hyatt Place is the newer style with the corner suite rooms for diamonds!

One night midweek stay in late June 2014. 20% occupancy, Regency club closed, both restaurants closed. Only food was an extremely limited menu in the bar. Virtually no restaurants within walking distance. Decent views of downtown and the river, but nothing else recommendable about this location.

Never again.

Midweek stay. Given a nice top floor river view as a diamond. Great staff; without exception every single staff person I ran across was superb.

One gripe about the club - no warm breakfast options, not even a steamer tray of powdered eggs. I'm still a fairly recent convert to Hyatt but this is the first time in at least two years I've seen a concierge lounge of any brand that does not have at least a basic warm breakfast offering.

As previously stated rooms are comfortable but dated- have the whole "80's Florida" look.

The downtown Jacksonville area in general appears to be having a serious "occupancy" issue. The streets around the hotel were a virtual ghost town. Many restaurants (including the Einstein Bagels and the Steakhouse in the Hyatt property) have closed down. A walk over to the nearby "Jacksonville Landing" yielded a bunch of closed restaurants and shops. (Walked over to the advertised sushi restaurant but found it had been shuttered the month before.) It's a shame because the downtown area on the river really is quite nice looking.