Park Hyatt Buenos Aires Review Park Executive Suite & Park King

Is intuitive your favorite word?!

What camera did you use for these photos?

Would you consider writing about your trip to Uruguay? I am planning a very similar trip, and would love to read your thoughts.

We stayed at the Four Seasons Buenos Aires last December, and I can attest that the refreshed rooms and common spaces are flawless, and the service was above-and-beyond. The FS also has an amazing outdoor pool, with incredible service, that makes you feel like you're staying at a resort while in the middle of a big city. One example of the service: Our pool attendant from the day before greeted us by our names as we walked onto the pool deck, and asked how our dinner at X restaurant was the evening before... we hadn't mentioned where we were eating. There were numerous little touches like that that makes the FS BA among the best city hotels in which we've stayed.

@Patrick
"Intuitive" was used four times in this writeup; "the" is used >100 times, so perhaps that's his favorite word. Really interesting and relevant question, btw.

@Nick
Thanks for the great writeup. Completely agree about top-end hotels providing the ability to control the temperature, and it's a bit surprising that a brand like the Park Hyatt could botch this so badly.

I stayed at the Fours Seasons BsAs, and it is now my go-to hotel there. It is unlike any other FS I've patronized, and as you note, it's not the usual floral-and-chintz-covered FS many of us have come to expect. While I've read all the glowing reviews about the PH there, I'm a creature of habit and the FS still wins, to me. Your review reinforces that.

i would certainly fault the hotel for the a/c snafu. it sounds like you have a fair command of spanish (although at a hotel of this level, english shouldn't be an obstacle) and it seems like they were sort of jerking you around hoping you'd eventually just shut up and deal. unacceptable for a property of that caliber.

maybe it's just because i'm adamant about proper air conditioning due to frequent travel to SE asia, but i would have been pretty damn pissed if i'd received the same indifference. another anecdotal strike against park hyatts in my book.

i do think the suite you were given is gorgeous, though.

@Gyimil -- I hadn't planned to write much about Uruguay or our experiences on the ground in Buenos Aires because I hadn't considered them terribly exotic, earth-shattering or uncovered by other trip reports or magazine articles. We stayed in a small posada in a town called Jose Ignacio, which is about an hour and a half from the Montevideo airport and 45 minutes from the Punta airport. The town itself is very charming and loaded with high-quality restaurants and friendly service. We front-loaded our trip to Uruguay, where everyone we dealt with was nice and warm beyond words, so it was a bit of a shock to then come to Buenos Aires, which had more of the big city hustle and indifference / aloofness inherent in a city like New York or Paris. Anyway, we liked the beach towns of Uruguay very much, but at the end of the day it felt like a trip to Cape Cod or the Hamptons. It feels very comfortable and familiar.

@TravelinWilly @pavel -- just to be clear, once the a/c issue got to front desk management level and above, it was handled with aplomb (as it should have been) and apologies were handed out left and right. I guess my frustration was more that it was a series of compounding miscommunications that came to a head. I don't want to blame the engineers who checked the a/c the first time, either, but I should say that when a guest complains their room is much too hot and the air conditioning isn't working properly, they shouldn't have to mention it three more times, at least not at the Park Hyatt.

And it wasn't that we didn't have a wonderful stay at the PHBA, but were I paying out of pocket and not in points there is no question it would be for a room at the Four Seasons.

@Brent - a Samsung Galaxy camera for most of them, though the photo of the garden view is from my iPhone 6 via Instagram.

Any idea when the Copa Business class article link will be fixed? Doesn't seem to be working.

Based on the photos of this property that are shown in this blogpost, that anyone actually thought that "Park Hyatt [was] the single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires" must again be attributed to the usual abuse of hyperbole when it comes to rating anything Hyatt. To see what I mean, please compare the pictures of what was considered the "single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires" shown here with photos of Hilton Buenos Aires at the link below

http://1drv.ms/1zU5T6F

See what I meant? And Hilton EZE is not even the best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires!!! 😉

@ Carey -- Sorry about that, fixed!

@DCS -- not sure what about those photos of the Hilton make you think that qualifies as anything other than a mid-range business hotel?

@DCS - also, I don't think people are apt to use hyperbole toward the Hyatt chain. I think Hyatt does stylish luxury a lot better than Hilton and Marriott do. St. Regis hotels are probably more consistently 5-star as opposed to Park Hyatts, but what I tend to find generally in a Park Hyatt chain is a modern, clean sensibility that is missing from some of the stuffier Four Seasons, Ritz, Waldorf-Astoria (lol, let's just pretend for the sake of this argument that the Waldorf-Astoria is a true luxury brand... sorry, I don't know if I can suppress my laughter at that one) properties. In cities where stuffiness prevails, like D.C. and to an extent New York, the Park Hyatt is often the best game in town and a breath of fresh air. But where there's competition, such as in Buenos Aires, Hyatt ought to step up their game. I will acknowledge that while Park Hyatt has a general brand-wide aesthetic, it isn't consistently applied. But at least there's a brand-wide aesthetic, which I think other luxury chains lack.

@Nick

There is no doubt that Hyatt does do their hotels stylishly and tastefully, but there is nothing about Park Hyatt Buenos Aires that qualifies it as "the single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires". There are lots of hotels in "Paris of Latin America", as EZE is often called, that are much more luxurious than the Park Hyatt, and, based on the pictures, even Hilton Buenos Aires appears to be more luxurious than that Park Hyatt.

Hyatt fanboys strike again.

So overrated.

Hey, good - fewer of you at my hotels.

@Greg, I'm confused as to how you chalked this review up to a "Hyatt fanboy"? I pretty much concluded the property is past its prime and had some serious service and communications issues. I also concluded that I would stay at the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires if I were to do it again.

@DCS - honey, the Hilton ain't luxurious. There are only three, arguably four, top-end hotels in Buenos Aires: the Park Hyatt, the Four Seasons, the Alvear Palace (which is a little frou-frou for my taste), and, if you're being charitable, the Park Tower, a Starwood Luxury Collection hotel that looks like the height of sumptuous luxury... in 1991. You might argue the Faena, in Puerto Madero, which is more of an upscale boutique property, should be on that list; sure, why not (though it appears to no longer be hip, nor was it ever well-located). As for the Sheratons, Hiltons, Marriotts, Sofitels, etc. in town -- I'm sure they're perfectly lovely places to stay, but the level of service and in-room amenities you can be expected to receive cannot compare.

However, if you want to do a trip report review of the Buenos Aires Hilton, one of the most famous five-star luxury hotels in the entire world (Aman Resorts, move over!), I'm sure Lucky would love to read it.

@Nick "honey" -- you missed the point. The scale we are operating on is relative: Hilton Buenos Aires, where I stayed three years in row, in a suite each time, is not luxurious in absolute terms. It is just more luxurious than what has been billed as the “single best luxury hotel in Buenos Aires”, in yet another abuse of superlatives and hyperbole.

G'day

@Nick Thanks!

What's wrong with Chandon?!