Hotel Review: Hyatt at the Bellevue

Last month, Kristin and I celebrated our anniversary at the Hyatt at the Bellevue in Philadelphia. We enjoy staying at Hyatt’s since they always have amazing customer service, nice properties, and the award chart is quite generous.

Hotel Review: Hyatt at the Bellevue

A couple of months ago, I wrote about planning our trip to Philadelphia. After booking our stay at the Hyatt at the Bellevue, I was quite excited to stay at this hotel.

Price:

At the time of booking this hotel, the cash rate would have been over $700 for the 2 night stay. Which is just a crazy amount of money to spend for a place to sleep!

Luckily, this hotel is a category 4, which means my Hyatt “free night” certificate was eligible for this stay. The certificate cost $75, since that is the cost of the credit card. As long as you are booking a room that is more than $75 you are ahead when you make your booking.

I get quite frustrated to see people mentioning you have to get the maximum amount of value from your certificated. No, you don’t. You need to make a booking that works best for you and cost more than $75. Enough of my rant 🙂

The other night I used 7,500 Hyatt points and $100, which I cashed in $90 of Discover cash for a $100 Hyatt Gift Card. A great use of Hyatt points and Discover cash.

The total cost for this room was 7,500 Hyatt points, $75 credit card fee, and $90 Discover Cash. A very solid redemption for a room that would have cost $700.

Customer Service:

This is something that definitely sets Hyatt apart from other hotel chains. The service is always great. Hyatt always seems to set the bar high with their customers.

Before arriving the General Manager of the property reached out to introduce himself and let us know he was happy to know we were spending our anniversary at his property.

Once we arrived to the Hyatt at the Bellevue, we initially dropped our bags off, because we were a couple hours early for check in. About 20 minutes after dropping out bags off, I was called letting me know our room was ready. I was very happy to check into our room earlier than expected.

Throughout our 2 night stay, the General Manager reached out multiple times to make sure we were enjoying our stay. I can’t think of another time where a General Manager has done that. It really seemed he cared and wanted us to enjoy ourselves.

Making the stay a little sweeter:

Now I am sure many hotels do this for many of their guest, I think it is still a great way to make customers happy. It also made our stay a little more special and I was very pleased with their gift.

After spending the day out and about, exploring Philadelphia, we came back to our room where we saw:

Now, you can clearly see the fantastic looking (and delicious) strawberries and the champagne on ice. Those were great, but I felt what truly made this gift special, was the card.

The card had a hand written note on the inside from Pina (the General Manager), wishing us a happy anniversary and Kristin a happy birthday. That little hand written note, made it feel personalized. I can’t think of any other time we have received a personalized note from a hotel.

Those little things are what keep bringing us back to Hyatt.

As with all my other Hyatt stays, the customer service was amazing. They definitely went above and beyond when it came to making us feel special for our anniversary.

Our Room:

The room was quite simple. It wasn’t a big room, but I felt it was very nice. We were on the 16th floor of the hotel, which was pretty fantastic. A few floor above us was the restaurant on the property.

The room was spacious enough to where to didn’t feel cramped. There was a table if you needed to sit and do some work. The room itself didn’t have many bells and whistles, but was very suitable for a couple of nights.

The bed was extremely comfortable and soft. There were USB chargers and plugs next to the bed. The fridge and snacks were kept in the black stand.

The bathroom was actually quite small and you knew it the second you walked into it. It was difficult to have 2 people in there at once, because you were basically shoulder to shoulder the entire time. The exception is definitely the shower where you can see it is actually a good size.

It felt like the shower took half the space of the bathroom, which seems nice until you need to wait in line to use the sink!

The view from our room wasn’t anything special, because we were facing the inside of the building. In taking this picture, this was the only time I saw “our view.” The view was pretty much non-existent, which at first seems disappointing, but there are plenty of places to see a view of Philadelphia.

This is your view as you were walking towards the front desk of the Hyatt. I thought this building was absolutely beautiful. We were very impressed with detail of the ceiling.

Rooftop Bar/Restaurant:

The restaurant at the Hyatt was called XIX Nineteen. It was located on the 19th floor, so I’m going to say that’s why the restaurant is named XIX Nineteen :-).

I’m quite the frugal person, so outside of buying a beer from this restaurant, I wouldn’t haven eaten there. I can’t bring myself to spend $30+ per plate, but the restaurant has some pretty great reviews.

The view from the tables outside were amazing.

Just a note about paying with a credit card. The restaurant actually coded at Hyatt, not a restaurant/dining. When I used my Blue for Business to earn 10x, I was disappointed to see that it didn’t earn 10x. Not the end of the world, but something to note if you do eat/visit this restaurant.

Location:

The location for the Hyatt at the Bellevue was perfect. It was right in downtown Philadelphia, with easy access to the train and definitely close enough to walk the city.

While walking the city, there were plenty of art on the side of buildings, which was pretty amazing to see. The parks were well kept and it felt like Philadelphia tries to keep the city clean.

I really don’t think you can go wrong staying in this area. There were plenty of restaurants, shopping, and you were close to many different sites to see.

Overall:

The Hyatt at the Bellevue definitely delivered and it was a great stay. From a points perspective, I think the value for this hotel is amazing. It is a gorgeous building and for only 15,000 points a night, it is a steal.

The customer service is really what sets this Hyatt apart from other hotel chains. Pina really made us feel very special and was extremely attentive. He really seems to care about his guest that stay at his property and I felt it showed.

The room wasn’t a suite, but it was quite comfortable and clean. My only real complaint ( if you can call it that) is the fact the bathroom is too small. Beyond that the room was quite nice.

I would absolutely recommend this hotel to anyone headed to Philadelphia. If we make it back that way, I will definitely be looking to book another stay there.

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