Hyatt Place Colorado Springs / Downtown — Hotel in Colorado Springs

Worst Hyatt experience I've had, and I've stayed hundreds of nights at Hyatt properties. I literally would have been better off sleeping in my car.

I was travelling to pick up my child from camp. Since I was arriving late and since they had been staying in the mountains all week having a late checkout was essential and why I selected this hotel versus one closer to my driving route. My plan was to sleep a few hours, pick them up, and return to the hotel so they could take a hot shower and rest a bit before we flew home.

Pros/Cons of the property and my stay:

This is a fairly new property. The rooms and layout don't 'pop' as much as the very best Hyatt Places, but it's a much more modern hotel than a converted AmeriSuites Hyatt Place.

The breakfast was a bit elevated over the brand standard and stayed open for 10 minutes past the listed closing time, which is always appreciated.

I knew I would be arriving very late. I selected the "late check in" toggle at booking, added a note to the reservation about my late arrival, and called the property right before my plane boarded and was assured my room would not be given away. Despite this, the hotel gave my room away. Thankfully the late-night front desk host was able to let me in to a room and figured out how to generate me a key a few minutes later, but this still cut into my already short sleep time.

At my (meager) level of status I receive a 2pm checkout. At check-in I was assured I had my late checkout (and even that it was extended to 4pm). At 12:40pm I was taking a shower after retrieving my child from camp when I suddenly heard a voice from inside my room talking to my child. The front desk had directed the housekeeper to check my room, and the housekeeper had opened the door (disregarding the do-not-disturb sign) and was lecturing my elementary-school-aged child on the standard checkout time. It's clear that the culture at this hotel is to aggressively turn rooms (likely to cut down on housekeeping costs), but while I'm no hospitality professional I do know that you cannot simultaneously a) not properly record late-checkout times; b) ignore do-not-disturb signs; and c) enter rooms where the guest hasn't manually checked out. And unequivocally what cannot ever happen is for a hotel staffer to enter a room, see a child in the room, and not immediately exit.

During my conversations with both host K__ and housekeeper B__ both staffers refused to ever give a simple, direct apology, and instead engaged in a series of whataboutisms to deflect blame away from themselves. I understand in an era of overly-entitled Karen/Ken guests the hotel can't simply say the customer is always right, but I was not asking for a refund or any sort of compensation, simply an apology and for the hotel to be more careful in the future, and instead I was given, no exaggeration, five different excuses from the staff.

Smaller issues:

This hotel is valet only, and it's an expensive valet at nearly $30. Colorado Springs is not an especially large city. While this isn't the only Hyatt Place with no on-site self-parking, the vast majority of properties don't require valet. Personally I think if the hotel wants to be valet-only it should rebrand as a Hyatt Centric was the associated higher standard of other amenities.

I'm not a fan of the front door system where guests enter into a locked vestibule and have to page the front desk one story up to be let in. I know many hotels lock the front doors at night, but the standard layout has the doors within sight of the front desk in case there's a problem. With this layout it would be easy for a bad actor to follow someone into the vestibule and trap them there.

As others have mentioned in their reviews, the hotel did not offer the promised elite member waters...

My stay at the Hyatt place started off great. We checked In June 25 and checked out June 28. We walked in, the lobby/bar area was beautiful, the room was large and clean. Beyond that, the experience was poor.

The first day, the hotel staff gave another family a keycard to our room. I’m laying in bed around 5-6 pm when a stranger opens the door. That’s completely unacceptable. No one from the lobby comes to our room to apologize or figure out the error. Then around 11 pm, someone is pounding on our room door, not identifying themselves. I was obviously asleep and will not answer the door when I’m in an unfamiliar town and not expecting company. Then at midnight, we receive a phone call from the lobby stating that we need to come down and figure out the room issue. Essentially upon check-in, the clerk gave us key cards to room 711, but assigned us to room 727 in the computer. Again, so unacceptable. Why should we have to wake up at midnight and go to the lobby for staff error?!

The entire time we were there, housekeeping did not visit the room. We did have the do not disturb sign up for one day though for full transparency.

We booked our flight/hotel/car bundle with southwest and paid through southwest. Then upon check out, I walk up to the clerk, hand her my key cards and state what room I was in. She says okay and then tells me I’m all set. So I leave and head to the airport. While at the airport, I decide to check my bank account and see that the hotel charged me $559.51. I was never told that I was being charged and I assumed the bill was paid by southwest. When I called the hotel the same day, I was told southwest never paid, so “someone has to pay”. So I understand that’s not the hotels fault, however why would the clerk upon check out not tell me what my card is being charged?! Why would I not be offered a receipt?! When I spoke with the manager Lauren on the phone, I asked “is it common practice to just charge someone’s card and not give a receipt?” Lauren replies “well did you ask for a receipt?” How can I ask for a receipt if I did not know I was being charged?! I was eventually emailed a receipt.

The whole experience was very frustrating and the lack of professionalism was astounding! DO...

I've stayed here a couple of times since my child goes to nearby Colorado College. This seems like a relatively new hotel--overall, it seems pretty fresh. The rooms are spacious. The breakfast buffet does the trick. The location seems okay, although we didn't walk to many places nearby. ||The last time we visited, we used the coin laundry. There is only one washer and one dryer and, unfortunately, the mechanism to insert coins malfunctioned and jammed repeatedly, necessitating a number of calls to the front desk staff, who did not know how to fix it. Although I think I stayed pretty calm under frustrating circumstances, I was strangely asked to "give grace" to the manager who would be coming from another hotel later in the day and should be able to fix it. I thought this was a bit odd. If you have to wait hours to get your laundry done, you can really run into issues with having enough time and with running into conflict with your other plans since you are probably not just sitting around your hotel all day and night, and there is always the possibility that another guest will come along wanting to use the machines of which there is only one set. I was made to feel like the staff thought I was really demanding a lot in terms of wanting to use the laundry they advertise. In any case, they finally got the machines fixed and our laundry got done--it was just more stressful and time consuming than one would want. ||One other kind of odd thing is that there is valet parking for a cost and some cars get parked in the garage, but the garage is small so some cars get parked in the neighboring open-air lot. The valet told us that they own the neighboring surface lot and that it is patrolled, but it certainly "felt" less secure than the garage. Also, don't count on having a roof over your car in the...