Review: Hyatt Regency Kathmandu

I think you are able to sleep anywhere now because you are exhausted from your crazy schedule/travel. In your last few reviews you have said something along the lines of "I don't sleep well on firm/angle flat beds, but for whatever reason I slept well."
Your body is so exhausted you could probably fall asleep on a bed on nails.

Lovely hotel. The true conservative or the fake liberal in me wants to stand on that balcony there and tell thousands of starving people below to work harder to rise up and be able to live in such grand places, while the poor sobs die of starvation.

I feel like Paul Ryan!

That seems way too nice to be a Category 1 Hyatt when you consider some of the Hyatt Places in out of the way locations that are above that.

You missed out on one of my favorite hotels in the world. Dwarikas. It's so sad to see you travel 12,000 miles and say Hyatt is the obvious choice. You missed out big time !

Ryan,

The Dwarika is nice but it's also twice the price.

I stayed there in December and got a suite that was a duplex: double height living room area and the bedroom upstairs.

Nice review! Thanks for the additional detail on the bed.

I think the c+p is the better value. If the room is $200, then the redemption value of all points redemption is $200/5,000 or 4 cents per point. On c+p, it's ($200-$50)/2500 or 6 cents a point.

Beachfan -- your assessment of value is incorrect. The $200 the room costs is irrelevant. It could be $300, it could be $400, but the value you get from your points isn't connected to that cost.

The value you get from your points is the room/food/location/etc. of the hotel, all of which is unconnected to the price of the room. For that value, Ben could pay

5000 points OR
2500 points + $50.

Since Ben values the points at 1.5 cents per, that means his options were

$75 worth OR
$87.50

As he said, he paid for the most expensive one (though with reason)

@Credit: I know you're joking, but that is such a stupid comment on so many levels.

Sorry James K, but of course the price is relevant. How could it not be. If the room was $20 wouldn't you pay cash? If it was $2,000 wouldn't you never pay cash if an award was available at those rates

Looked at another way, going all points is an extra 2500 points to save another $50. So you are choosing to redeem those extra points for another 2 cents each.

For the same 5,000 points, plus $100, you could stay 2 nights and get 6 cents/ point. How is redeeming for 2 cents a point more valuable than redeeming for six cents a point.

If you had an infinite number of points, then you would always do as much as possible when the redemption value was above your personal valuation. But no one does. If you only had 5,000 points.

Hi Lucky,

For someone who values his privacy, and who has blogged about how he couldnt work due to people talking on the phone at the poolside, should you have been attempting to overhear peoples conversations? No malice bro, just asking.

@Lucky

Why not ask for a mattress topper? Most 5 star (and above) hotels can 'customise' the bed. If they don't have toppers, ask for extra bedding (duvet/comforter) to be placed above the mattress. I do this often in Asia as they tend to have firmer beds there.

@James K

Beachfan is right. Ben doesn't value points at 1.5c (or 1.8 rather?), that's the minimum floor. We try to save as many points as possible for a redemption more outsized (closer to 3 cpp).

I stayed here a year or so back for one night just before leaving Nepal (seeing it was close to the airport), and I have to say that one of the best features of this hotel is the grounds. Just walking around in the gardens, it is quite apparent what a stark contrast it is to the surrounding city. And it's also really close to some key sights in Kathmandu, which can be accessed via a special path from the hotel.

Are you not going to do a write up about your time in Kathmandu outside the hotel?

After a 3 1/2 week trip through India and Nepal, staying at mostly Taj Hotels and the BrijRama Palace Hotel in Varanasi (highly recommended), the Hyatt Katmandu was definitely the low point of the trip. Rooms were pleasant but not luxurious, service standard but not outstanding, and despite my room on the Club Level, the entire stay was sort of ho-hum: in other words , you could have been anywhere in the world and not really cared.
While this might be one of the better hotels in Katmandu, it was unmemorable and certainly not worth blogging about it's closing IMO.

Has the Hyatt program changed since you wrote this? I think points and/or cash stays all count towards elite status now.