Hyatt Centric Buckhead Atlanta — Hotel in Atlanta

Hyatt centric Bucktown

Short: This is a rooftop bar with a hotel built into it. No I wouldn’t stay here if I had a choice.

Longer: I stayed here for work a couple days, meaning I didn’t have a choice, they just booked me at this hotel.

First of all, I read a lot of the reviews, a lot of the negative reviews seemed a bit excessive. Lots of reviews about staff being judgmental about the way you dress. Did not pick up on that at all and I don’t dress up for work. Hoodie and jeans. Seemed fine.

To start things off, the staff is a mixed bag of friendly and condescending/rude. I would say a solid 50-50. Ultimately that was really the least of my concerns.

The lobby is small and has a big restaurant/bar that takes up most of that floor. The rooms themselves are ok. Terry standard issue for most hyatts/hiltons/marriots in this price range. What did stand out to me in the room was the little plaque/sticker on the bedside table saying “We know this isn’t your home and you may experience different sounds than normal, we have some ear plugs in the lobby”. (Or something to that effect). Which to me just seems like a pretty weak attempt to counter all the negative reviews complaining about noise levels from trains/traffic/party people. On that note though, I didn’t have any noise issues at all. I live in hotels over 200 days out of the year and this was fine.

In the bathroom they’ve clearly installed on of those trendy low-flow filters in the shower, so water pressure is practically non-existing. Other than that, the room was fine.

The wifi is decent. Normally I don’t talk about wifi in a review, but it’s only free for 3 days, so that in itself is laughable. Then they want to charge you $12.99/day after that, and for the speed itself I would say you’re better off just tethering your phone to your devices. I laughed when I read that.

The gym had dumbbells up to 70 lbs, cable machine and a couple bikes and treadmills, so big fan of the gym, any hotel gym with dumbbells over 50 lbs always gets my thumbs up!

I didn’t check out the pool, but you can see it from the gym… and you can see the gym from the pool I discovered as a bunch of 18/20 year olds were dancing and videoing themselves by the pool, dancing in time with my peddling on the bike…….).

Location is pretty horrible. There’s a big shopping mall right next door, so ultimately there’s no convenience store that isn’t overpriced (hotel and mall) that’s within walking distance. There is a nice trail by the hotel, path 404, which is great for running/walking. Ultimately it’s Georgia so it’s just not very pedestrian friendly. In terms of bars and restaurants, you have the food court in the mall or the lobby floor restaurant at the hotel. And the rooftop bar.

The rooftop bar. I never went, but once 6pm rolls around the hotel is PACKED with people heading to the bar, leaving the bar or out for a smoke. It’s pretty ridiculous, that’s why it feels like it’s a rooftop bar with a hotel built in, kinda like a side note.

So here’s how I averaged the stars in my review:

Room: 4. WiFi: 2. Staff: 2.5 Amenities: 3. Location: 0. Gym: 5. Vibe: 2. Walkability: 1

Average: 19.5/8 = 2.4375,...

Myself and my mother had an unacceptable experience at this hotel.

The main concern was the housekeeping. On our third day when we returned at 3pm from being out, our room was not made up. We wanted to rest after a long day so we put the 'do not disturb' sign on and figured we would make do with the towels available to us. We did, however, have to request more toilet paper as they only provide one extra roll (which, by the way, is horrible quality).

The next day we went about our business in Atlanta and returned to our room around 3pm. Our room was still not serviced. There was no 'do not disturb' sign on our door. At this point we were out of towels, our garbage was full, and we had no more bottled water, coffee, hand soap, etc.

In addition, for this day and age, the Wi-Fi was horrendous. If you want faster speeds, you have to pay which is very predatory. For free users, we are limited to 1 up/1 down, which, for our purposes, was fine, but I would hate to be on a business trip here and have to do zoom calls etc. I was constantly disconnected on the free service. Plus, the free service only lasted 3 days. We had 5 devices in our room and we had to reconnect on all of them after three days, and for one of the devices, reconnecting to the '3-day' plan was impossible. The hotel login page would just not load. I spent an hour trying to reconnect on my windows laptop after this 3 day period until I gave up.

Do better with your wifi.

The night before we left, I went to the Spaceman bar on the top of the hotel. I was met with incredible hostility and was almost laughed out of the bar for ordering whiskey which was quite bizarre. The bartender, after asking her to do a room charge, automatically assigned a 20% tip on top of my one drink. She was incredibly rude and did not even present me with the bill, nor ask me what tip I wanted to leave.

A couple final points: They did not offer any kind of artificial sweetener at the hotel bar (main level) other than stevia. No splenda, etc. When we called down to the front desk asking to borrow a pair of scissors, they said they would bring it up right way. A few minutes later they sheepishly called back and asked us to retrieve it from the front desk. I've had to do trips to the gym downstairs just to replenish my water bottle with filtered water because housekeeping just did not service our room.

For the amount we paid for this hotel, this was really a bad experience. We are currently on our last night and our garbage is piled up near the front door because of the lack of housekeeping.

Do better,...

I stayed at this hotel for the weekend with my wife and two young kids. Despite claiming to be a 4-star hotel the quality and cleanliness could have been better, and in my opinion as a Hyatt Globalist member who has stayed at Hyatts throughout the US and Europe, this hotel is probably more like a 3-star. Also, while it is technically in Buckhead which is a well-to-do area, the hotel itself is at the far end of an older mall’s parking lot, and in hindsight not the best area if you’re traveling with young kids like I was. I also didn’t receive a room upgrade as a Hyatt Globalist (or if what the hotel gave me was an upgraded room then I hate to imagine the standard room). Finally, I booked and prepaid for the hotel through Amex Travel (which itself provides an upgraded room irrespective of my Globalist status), and the hotel refused to honor the $100 dining credit that was part of the package I booked. I discovered this later on when reviewing my credit card statement and saw that the hotel charged me. When I reached out to the hotel I was told that despite the fact I booked the package through Amex which the hotel confirmed included the $100 credit; despite having prepaid for the stay in full on my Amex Platinum card; despite having received an envelope at check-in from the front desk that stated I booked through Amex and advised me of the benefits including the $100 credit; despite asking the front desk if I could use the credit at the in hotel restaurant; and despite the waitress confirming that if I charge the bill to my room I will receive the credit; the hotel manager later advised me that the credit will NOT be honored. I was advised that despite prepaying for the room in full on my Amex Platinum, that because I used my World of Hyatt Visa Card to pay for the incidentals—i.e. two nights of parking which was the only incidental—that somehow voided my prepaid reservation package. Notably, I went back and looked at the reservation’s terms and conditions and there is NO requirement to have also used my Amex card for the room incidentals (again, limited to parking and my erroneously billed restaurant visit). While I can’t recommend this hotel due to its location and disappointing room cleanliness/quality, the poor customer service is just the icing on the cake. I wasn’t planning on leaving a review regarding the hotel at all, but the issue with the $100 credit was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There is another hotel in the immediate area, a luxury one by another brand but for a comparable price, and in hindsight I should have stayed...