Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Trip Report
Last year I did a 2 part review of The Grand Hyatt Baha Mar, check those out if you’re looking for a detailed review. This is more of a quick overview of my yearly Christmas trip to the Bahamas. This report applies only to the Grand Hyatt and is in no way a reflection on the Bahamas (which is easily one of my favorite vacation spots.)
- Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Review Part 1: Will this be Bahamas New “It” Resort
- Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Hotel Review Part 2: Casino, Restaurants and Service Issues
Last time I visited the resort had just opened and there were a lot of kinks that needed to be worked out. Well, one year later I’m sorry to say the sitch hasn’t happened. The only area where things have been much improved is service. The restaurant and pool service was good this time around.
Room Issues
For a new resort, the rooms are showing way too much wear. First the sliding doors separating the shower from the bedroom were broken as was the toilet. What really got me was the roach crawling into my shoe in the middle of the night. Yep, a roach!
RELATED: 5 Ways To Reduce Your Food Cost At Baha Mar
Logistical Issues
In a 3 night stay I had to have keys reprinted twice. It was pretty obnoxious to have to walk all the way to the front desk each time, especially since there’s an unused front desk area in the West Tower. (I have nothing against walking but I’d rather be walking to the beach.)
We had to switch rooms due to the roach and the manager’s initial offer was to have them fumigate the room while we were out for the day. This is insane to me because no one wants to sleep in a newly fumigated room and have chemicals sprayed near all of their stuff. She offered me a small hotel credit ($150) which I accepted but she never made a note of it or told anyone so I had to argue for it at check out.
They initially tried to charge me a resort fee on my award stay which is another front desk issue we had two years in a row. Resort fees are waived on Hyatt Award Nights.
One other Disappointing change was increased drink prices. last year my favorite place to grab a drink was the El Jefe food truck for around $12, this time the prices were up to $14.
Last, the quality and quantity of the Club Lounge went down a bit. The lounge had far fewer food and drink options than they had last year. They even switched the water from Evian and a nice sparkling brand to just Dasani. (Cue the entitled brat comments.) 🙂
Conclusion
Baha Mar is a beautiful place with a massive casino and some pretty cool wildlife features but in no way lives up to the Grand Hyatt brand standards. I will definitely be back but will not be staying at Hyatt. Rosewood and SLS are both options and I’m looking forward to visiting those in the future.
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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Any recommendations on where to stay…east or west. We boooked a king with fountain view.
Thanks for the review Bethany. Yikes, this is giving me pause.
However, we’re going later this month and are using a Globalist Suite Upgrade.
Which area of the hotel (West or East) would be best for a family with kids age 5 and 8 who want to avoid the smoke from the casino?
Forgot to add that I asked for compensation and they were going to give me 5k points. I countered with 10k and got that. I didn’t think it would be ongoing when I got home!!
I ended up with multiple problems also. I’m explorist and used a cert for lounge access. The first room only had a juliet balcony, so we went back down to ask for a full balcony, which they were happy to change. But then our key didn’t work. It took going back down twice and then they sent 2 maintenance guys up who said that wasn’t the problem. When we finally got into the room, then we couldn’t get into the lounge! So back again. They also charged us resort fees and we used all points. That was taken off. Then someone was charging restaurants on our bill, so we had that taken off. All these things continued for 3 days. We checked out and only saw our charges. We got home and saw more restaurant charges with a separate bill. I called Hyatt accounting and they took care of it. But what a disorganized mess!! At least we did end up really enjoying the lounge. Can’t say I’d go back though.
Wow sounds exactly like my 2 trips there as well. I had really hoped they’d work it out by now. But I’m more than happy to check out the other hotels especially since Rosewood offers a lot of promos with Amex
Word on the street is they’re changing to a category 4
That would be nice
3 years ago visiting the Atlantis we had a chatty cab driver tell us the long saga of the construction problems, shotty plumbing work, water damage, worker deaths, funding problems etc. that occurred with the building of the resort now known as Baha Mar. I remember thinking to myself not to ever stay there once it eventually opened. I honestly don’t remember the details, but I remember thinking they probably cut a lot of corners in the electrical and guts of the building that didn’t sound like it could be fixed without starting over. I’m sure Hyatt is responsible enough to have had professionals assess the structures, but I pretty much made up my mind that I didn’t want to stay there ever.
I heard they imported something like 10k Chinese people to build it instead of hiring locals. I visited the casino when I was staying at Atlantis. It’s very nice but I’m not really in to all that. Like typical “luxury” destinations you can find 10 places to spend $100 a meal but good luck finding a place to get a bottle of water. Getting a quick sandwich is out of the question. Both places will give you offers of free rooms and $200 daily dining credit with a modest amount of play in the casino. Although last time I went to Atlantis they picked me up at the airport and gave me free room and food and I still got billed $150 for a 2 night stay.
That’s also how I learned about Bahas history! Love our cab driver
*over the bed
What the heck is in the picture over Thebes? A coconut?
Hmmm, think so. Lol
I’ll also skip it based on your review. The creepy crawly must have been very unpleasant, I wonder how much that influenced your review?
Yes it was, but the worst part for me was the way it was handled. Seems to be the way they run things there
Bethany, we’ve been considering this property ever since it was mentioned five or six years ago(during construction and numerous delays). But burning up huge amounts of either Hyatt and/or Ultimate Reward points made us very hesitant. Add in astronomical food and drink prices plus terrible Trip Advisor reviews has essentially made us likely to never go. Thanks for the follow up review.
I would agree but it’s a beautiful place so I will give SLS a shot next time