Wyndhurst Manor & Club Review – A Hyatt Destination Property

Wyndhurst Manor & Club Review – A Hyatt Destination Property

My Wyndhurst Manor & Club review is that it’s a decent property but not worth the high category rating. My wife and I recently stayed at this Hyatt Destination property in the Berkshires, in Massachusetts. During our 3 nights/4 days here, we found the property and room to be quite good overall but needing some adjustments to validate its high category rating from Hyatt.

What’s in my Wyndhurst Manor & Club review: the location, the property itself, guest room, and amenities. We’ll also talk about the staff with pre-arrival, check in, and check out. First, the booking process.

Booking Process

We stayed here for 3 nights. As I’ve mentioned before, to take advantage of the Hyatt Brand Explorer perk, my wife and I book separate nights in each of our names. This helps us each get credit at a new brand with Hyatt. This was our first stay at a Destination hotel.

To get the best deal, we used a combination of points (night 1 from my account, night 3 from my wife’s account) and cash for night 2. Why? We had more points than we’d thought we would have, due to getting points refunded to us from our stay at Park Hyatt Zanzibar. Because we had “extra” points, we were willing to shell out the 25,000 points per night for this property.

Taking advantage of a current promotion, we got $75 back from using my World of Hyatt Credit Card. That brought the cash price for night 2 down to $185 (after taxes and a “$35 per day resort fee” were included). I also earned 1,800 points from that spend. Another promotion offers 25% back on award stays, so we get 12,500 points coming back. Total cost for 3 nights: 37,500 points + $185 in cash.

How we wound up here…

To be clear up front: this was not our first choice for a stay. We visited the New York City area and had to adjust our plans several times. Our plan was to find a place to go snowboarding for a few days and needed to adjust with changing travel rules for NYC and COVID restrictions. We had to find somewhere 1) close to snowboarding & 2) within the NJ/MA/CT area that would allow us to then enter NYC without needing to quarantine.

This became the “best option among limited choices” for a Hyatt brand we hadn’t stayed at that checked the right boxes. (honestly, it was pretty much this or the Miraval next, and boy were those prices a turn off!)  We really wanted to stay at a Hyatt property during this time, so we could take advantage of the double nights promotion. I earned Globalist status because of these stays.

Wyndhurst Manor & Club Review

Now that we’ve booked and notified Hyatt that the 3 nights are the same couple, it’s time to visit the hotel. We’ll look at the location, the property, guest room, and the amenities.

Location

The Wyndhurst Manor & Club is in the Berkshires area of western Massachusetts. It sits near I-90 in Lenox, MA, which is pretty small. The town is quite close to the New York state border and a 25-minute drive from Butternut Ski Area. Given that the location is away from big cities and the highway, it’s quiet and a great setting for getting away from it all.

Property

The Wyndhurst Manor & Club property is massive. It actually sits on the same property as the Miraval Berkshires (also a Hyatt property), which we didn’t realize. The sprawling property includes a club with indoor pool, tennis courts, lots of buildings between the 2 hotels, a golf course, meditation centers, several gyms, restaurants, and more. Lots of open spaces and grassy areas, as well.

Due to COVID restrictions, the restaurants on the property were closed during our visit. Given that it’s winter, the golf course was covered in snow. Amongst the many buildings on the property, there’s everything from traditional hotel rooms to individual apartments. You can pay more or less for not only room type but also which building you want to stay in (The historic main building? Newer building with updated amenities? Apartment? Basic hotel room?).

We found the property impressive. If you visit in the summer and during “normal” travel times, this place has a lot to offer. You could swim and play golf; your kids have space to run around. The layout and offerings are excellent.

To distinguish the buildings, the Miraval guest buildings are all bright white. The Wyndhurst buildings are yellowish.

The original building for the Wyndhurst Manor & Club is beautiful. Originally called The Cranwell Resort, this building is the best part of the property in my opinion.

We didn’t stay in this building, but these pictures show its beauty from the outside, entry, awesome staircase, and some photos wandering in the halls.

Guest Room

We took the cheapest option for our booking. We stayed in the Beechers Cottage building, which was very close to the check-in location. It’s quite far from the Wyndhurst Manor original building.

Beechers Cottage

The building itself is quite large, though smaller than the main building. It faces the golf course and has a large field behind it. It’s near the edge of the property. Despite that, traffic on the nearby road wasn’t noticeable, due to the tree line and some good spacing.

There is ample parking near the Beechers Cottage, as well as a semi-circle drive up to the front of the building for loading/unloading your stuff. The door to enter the building is HUGE—I was surprised that it’s about twice as wide as a normal door. Can’t be for wheelchair access, though, since the building has only steps and no ramp.

The entryway is nice. There’s a Miraval floor mat to knock the snow off your feet, and Miraval-Wyndhurst links run throughout other parts of our stay. Inside, there’s a sitting room that looks nice but seems impractical. I don’t see anyone actually hanging out here.

Down the hall, including a few steps down, our room was at the end of the hall. Room 1318.

Guest Room

First impression of the guest room review: Wyndhurst Manor & Club guest rooms have a nice historic look, good size to the room, but I guarantee it’s going to be cold at night. And I was right!

There clearly used to be a big fireplace along the outer wall, but this is bricked over. The details on the wall around the fireplace are beautiful. The mirror designs above it, near the ceiling, didn’t do anything for me. I’m not a fan of these “is that dirty, or is it intentional?” spots on mirrors.

Bed

The room has a king size bed with a good blanket and big pillows. However, we’d definitely make changes to the bed. First, the pillows were awful. They look huge & fluffy, but the moment you put your head on them, they sink into nothingness. It’s like not having a pillow. Next, there’s some kind of fluffy padding over the mattress / under the sheets. It gets bunched up and awkward when you move around during the night/getting in & out of bed. This becomes weirdly lumpy. I’d throw this thing in the trash and just use the mattress. While the bed looks promising, I’d rank it as “not as good as it looks”.

Views

Our windows faced the golf course. That’s across the parking lot, though, so the room mostly faces cars. Lots of big windows let in a lot of light during the day, though, which is nice.

Draft

Those big windows also let in a lot of cold air. The best word for the room is “drafty”. Even though there’s a heater along the wall, and it was running nearly all the time (the auto setting kicked on constantly), the room was very cold at all times. The bathroom temperature was great, due to not having windows. The bedroom area, though, was very cold, and you could feel air creeping in around the window frames. Because of the high ceilings, all of the heat rose to the top, leaving the area near the floor very cold. It made getting out of bed daunting.

Bathroom

Speaking of the bathroom, it was very good. It’s spacious and has a big tub. We didn’t take baths while here, but you easily could. The shower also had good pressure and got hot very quickly. The bath spout has a constant, slow drip. This created a brown rust stain around the drain.

The step-on towel for when you get out of the shower had some kind of dirt / stain on it.

The sink area had lots of counter space, which is awesome. The amenities are from Miraval. We found them all good at their jobs; the scents were good but nothing spectacular. Large bottles can be refilled easily by staff but prevent people from taking them home. This fits with their Earth-conscious approach at Miraval.

Above the sink, there’s a huge mirror. As I stated, the bathroom temperature was great, due to not having the draft from the bedroom.

Closet

The closet had decent space. It also included 2 bath robes and 2 pairs of fluffy slippers.

Dresser

We didn’t unpack and put our stuff in the dresser, but it had ample space. Behind a door in the dresser, there’s a safe and a mini fridge. Inside the mini fridge, we found this carafe and a water filter. Due to the size and shape of the filter + carafe, you can’t fit it under the sink in the bathroom to fill it up. We refilled it from the bath tub spout.

Room Amenities

Each side of the bed had a night stand. The drawers were spacious. Each night stand had a lamp, which had a good amount of light while still being soft/not annoying. The room has no overhead lighting.

I found this clock on my wife’s side of the bed beautiful.

There’s a desk in the corner, and the wifi at the hotel was blazing fast!

On top of the dresser, there’s a coffee machine and supply of coffee.

A phone call to guest services is all you need for a refill of coffee. They’ll leave it at your door and ask you to wait a minute before opening it, to avoid contact.

The layout of the TV, because they probably didn’t want to drill through the old fireplace, is odd. It’s to the left of the bed. This means you can’t lay in bed and watch the TV facing you. You need to turn on your side and look left.

A chair and small table sit in the corner, near the fireplace. On top of the table, there is a rock pile and Tibetan singing bowl. Why? I get that Miraval is a meditation retreat where you aren’t supposed to use the internet. However, I don’t see these decorations as fitting the Wyndhurst Manor & Club look or vibe, and they don’t do anything for me aesthetically. They are definitely out of place with the Tudor look & feel.

Wyndhurst Manor & Club Staff Review

How was the staff during our stay? Here, I’ll cover our interactions with staff prior to arrival, as well as during check in and check out.

Prior To Arrival

3 days before our arrival, I received an email from guest services. They provided information about COVID protocols, such as what’s open and closed at the time. They also outlined the mask policy and arrival procedures. The email included a map of the property, showing where to check in and indicating that the Wyndhurst Manor & Club check-in area is closed. Instead, we should check in at the Miraval welcome center. This is when we learned at they share a property.

I replied to the email confirming that our 3 nights in separate names were together. Wyndhurst staff replied that Hyatt’s Twitter team had notified them in advance, and we wouldn’t need to check out or change rooms.

We also had a box of stuff that my parents sent from FL to the hotel, and I replied to the email informing them. I provided the tracking number, and they said that they would be happy to put it in our room or just give it to us at check in—our choice.

Check In

As instructed via email, we checked in at the Miraval welcome center. To avoid people congregating and to avoid unnecessary contact, we remained in the car & honked the horn. “You must be Ryan!” We were the only people who hadn’t checked in yet that day, so they knew who we were and greeted us by name. We received our box, room keys, and a welcome letter.

With a really friendly smile and warm greeting, the guest services employee thanked us for our Hyatt loyalty. He also confirmed our stay details and then indicated the location of the Beechers Cottage, where our room was located.

He also told us that the restaurants were closed, unfortunately, so there was no breakfast option for us on the property. “If you need anything at all”, though, we could just call the front desk for more coffee, to ask questions, etc.

Despite the restrictions and limitations placed on him, we found check in really friendly and warm.

Upon arriving in our room, we also had this letter thanking us for coming in this weird time with all of the changes / restrictions.

Check Out

We repeated the same process for check out. Stay in the rental car & honk. There was no one in the building, so we had to wait for 2 minutes. However, an employee arrived with a “Miraval Resort” van and parked out front. When he got out, he asked if we had been helped yet. We told him we just wanted to check out, he took our keys, and that was that. He probably assumed we’d left a credit card on file at check in (we had) and that nothing more was needed. About 20 minutes later, I received an email with our bill for the 1 night we paid cash for.

The employee at check out wasn’t as great as the check in employee, but he was still friendly and told us to be safe on the road, since it was starting to snow.

Overall, the employees are doing their best with legal requirements and company restrictions. I found them friendly and helpful while doing a difficult job at this time. They’re still providing good customer service.

Resort Fee

I mentioned a $35 per day per room resort fee. What did we get for that? The list is here. If I’d really looked through it before our arrival, I might have considered staying somewhere else. Given the pigeon hole we had to work with to go snowboarding and not need to quarantine in NYC a few days later, maybe we wouldn’t have found anywhere else to stay.

The resort fee gave us access to the tennis courts, putting green & outdoor pool that were closed. We paid for access to the sauna, jacuzzi & steam room–all closed. Additionally, this fee included select mini-experiences at Miraval that were also not operating at the time. The indoor pool was included & open, but we didn’t use it after snowboarding all day wore us out. Wifi & self-parking are included in the fee. Yeah…we apparently paid for wifi and parking our rental car in the parking lot out front.

The coffee & tea in the room were included in this fee, also, so I’m glad we drank some of those. No way we drank $35/day worth of that, though. If you stay here in the winter and/or during COVID restrictions, this fee is ridiculous. I don’t think anyone reading this can see how the $35 fee is justifiable right now. My 2.5 stars score for the “amenities” section is not for lack of them but for paying for amenities that aren’t available right now.

Final Thoughts

Overall Wyndhurst Manor & Club review: it’s a good hotel. It’s not amazing or great, but it’s a good hotel. The property is impressive, but the room needs some work. The draft needs to be fixed. We alerted the hotel to the bath tub drip, and the layout of the TV isn’t ideal.

Things that aren’t “broken” but could be improved include the pillows and mattress pad, as well as the rock pile/Tibetan singing bowl that don’t fit the look & feel of the property.

Lastly, we paid a “resort fee” and I just don’t see what we got for that. The property is a category 6, and I am glad that we went in the low season for a lower price on our cash night. The points price could possibly be reduced, because I don’t think the category rating from Hyatt is justified. It’s a good hotel, but it’s not better than “good” if you aren’t getting free golf (I don’t play anyway, and the golf isn’t included in the resort fee) and have a super cold bedroom. I didn’t hate it, but I also would choose to stay somewhere different if visiting the area again.