Hyatt Regency Delhi review (Premier Suite)

A review of my recent stay at Hyatt Regency Delhi

I booked a standard room. After applying a DSU to the booking, I received an e-mail confirmation with the updated room type (Regency Suite King).

Suite guests enjoy a complimentary transfer to and from the airport and the hotel, so I e-mailed the hotel in advance to arrange for a car to pick us up from the airport to the hotel.

There was a representative for Hyatt Regency Delhi and Gurgaon in the Terminal 3 arrivals hall. After our names were checked against a list of guests, we were escorted to the car. The driver was polite and friendly.

Around 20 minutes later, we arrived at the hotel. Like many hotels with foreign guests in India, there was a visual inspection by security guards of our car before we were allowed to drive inside the hotel compound. At the entrance to the lobby, all of our bags had to go through an x-ray scan and we had to walk through a metal detector.

A friendly member of staff was waiting for us in the lobby. After we had gone through the security checks, she welcomed us and asked for our passports (which she left at the front desk to be scanned in accordance with government regulations, and which were returned to us later in our suite). She then escorted us up to our suite for an in-room check-in.

Hotel lobby

Once in the suite, we were asked to sign a registration form which was on the writing desk and then she wrote down the number of the credit card on which the front desk would put a hold.

The Diamond 1,000 points welcome bonus wasn’t mentioned at check-in; however, at check-out, the front desk associate proactively told us that the welcome bonus would be posted with our stay.

There was a bowl of apples on the coffee table in the living room when we arrived.

Although no-one informed us that we had been further upgraded from a Regency Suite King to a Premier Suite, I discovered this later when I looked at the photos for the different suite types on the Hyatt Regency Delhi website (a 360 degree virtual tour of the Premier Suite living room can be found at http://www.delhi.regency.hyatt.com/en/hotel/home.html > View Photos > Rooms > Premier Suite (click the image with the loop in the centre)).

The Premier Suite (75 sq m) consisted of a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom (with doors to both the bedroom and the living room/entrance area) and a pantry.

Living room (with the door to the pantry in the far right)

Bedroom (we requested the two duvets)

Bathroom

Luggage storage area (on the left) and wardrobe (on the right)

More photos of the living room (taken during the day)

View from the room (main road – Bhikaiji Cama Place)

Pantry (with a Lavazza espresso machine, kettle and sink)

The suite was clean and comfortable. Wi-fi speed was good. A newspaper was delivered every morning. One slight complaint however was the noise from the main road. As you can see from the picture above, our suite was facing the main road, so there was quite a lot of honking from cars (even at 4am!). Fortunately, we were able to sleep, but if you are a light sleeper, I would strongly recommend requesting a quieter room facing the swimming pool/inner garden rather than the main road.

The Regency Club Lounge is situated on the 6th floor. A range of drinks and light nibbles were available during Happy Hour from 6 to 8pm.

There was a small breakfast buffet spread, with eggs made to order.

The staff in the lounge were generally very friendly. The ambience in the lounge was pleasant and it wasn’t overcrowded, even during Happy Hour.

Regency Club reception

Regency Club Lounge

View of the swimming pool from the Regency Club Lounge

A more comprehensive breakfast spread was available between 6:30am and 10:30am (11am during the weekend) in ‘Cafe', situated on the ground floor. There was a range of Western cooked/continental, Indian and Oriental food items to choose from the buffet. Eggs and pancakes were made to order. Fresh fruit juice was also available free of charge.

The hotel has an outdoor swimming pool, gym and spa, though I can't comment on these as we didn't use them.

There is a small shopping arcade inside the hotel to the left of the lobby mainly selling jewellery and clothes, although there weren't many customers when we walked through it.

Overall, we enjoyed our stay at Hyatt Regency Delhi. The staff were mostly friendly (with the exception of the front desk manager when we enquired about key card access to the Regency Club floor – he reluctantly asked another member of staff to escort us without advising us that it was possible to request another key card at the Regency Club reception to access the floor in future, which we only found out about later when we asked the Regency Club receptionist).

As mentioned above, I would recommend requesting a quieter room (facing the swimming pool/inner gardens, rather than facing the main road) as there is a lot of noise from cars honking, even in the early hours of the morning.

Another thing to point out is the 'Luxury Tax' which has been mentioned in this thread. The Luxury Tax is 15% of the published rate of the room in which you stay (and not 15% of the rate that you actually booked). In our case, we booked a standard room at a nightly rate of less than 8,000 INR, but because the published nightly rate of the Premier Suite was 27,000 INR, the 'Luxury Tax' alone was around half of the nightly rate we had actually booked! The hotel only disclosed the published rate at check-out, so we didn't know the total cost of stay beforehand. This is something to bear in mind if you plan to stay here, particularly if you intend to use a DSU or if you are upgraded.