Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center — Hotel in Portland

Honestly, when I first arrived I was very pleased. The hotel seemed well run, staff were friendly, and the room was very comfortable. My main complaint comes with the fact that they completely mismanage their parking. I was being billed daily for use of the parking garage, but it looks like there was nothing in place to guarantee that people who were automatically charged for parking could receive it. I had to leave the area at around 5:30pm in the evening on Saturday night and when I came back an hour late the lot was 100% full and the valet turnaround was packed with cars that they had been parking there as overflow. I ended up parking my car at the convention center which did not have overnight parking, but I thought I could always come back after midnight when I had to move my car and hopefully the hotel parking would have cleared up a big (perhaps it was full from people using it as public parking and not hotel guests?). Well, by 12:30am that night the lot was still full, there was still no valet capacity and I found myself driving the area at night trying to find another place to park my car that seemed reasonably safe and nearby. There was none. Lucky for me I live within driving distance so I just drove home and slept in my own bed, but seriously to pay for a hotel room and then not be able to sleep there? That is incredibly messed up.

I spoke with the front desk the next day and they did refund the parking charges for the days that I wasn't able to park, but I don't feel like anybody understood how unacceptable it is to have a hotel guest unable to return to the hotel due to lack of parking nearby. What if I had lived further away and couldn't return? What then? I guess I could have parked at a garage a mile away and walked to the hotel alone at 1am but.... that sounds incredibly unsafe and unreasonable.

My suggestion? When you have a hotel guest that you are charging daily for parking then set aside parking spots for those guests so they can expect to actually return. Don't oversell parking beyond your capacity if there are no reasonable...

The location is great if you need to be close to Moda Center and walkable for downtown and Convention Center. The room and building is clean and modern overall. However, the parking garage door usually has people lined up confused on how to open the door. You have to scan your parking ticket then it says wait 3 seconds and open. This doesn’t work, I finally realized if you push before pulling it’ll work but the sign doesn’t explain it. It takes about ten minutes from the floor I was on to get to the car in the garage. Winding maze thru the hotel floor and across a street and stretch of sidewalk. Neighborhood smells strongly of sewer around the hotel on the way. All of the food options just shut down by 11p most nights and there’s almost nothing close by that late either nor do you necessarily want to walk a distance when it’s dark downtown. No on site laundry (though you can send stuff to be dry cleaned, only $4 for a pair of socks lol… I pay less than that for my socks new!!). The staff at the front desk had no sense of humor or personality to any interactions. Bar staff tho was pleasant. Microwaved burrito in market was bad, coffee not a great flavor. Their bar is just a strip without walls around it in the lobby, they did have a solid salad though. The design of bathroom was odd with a glass door enclosed toilet (for privacy I guess but it’s odd and awkward). Auto lights shut off when you’re showering. And there’s no mini fridge or microwave further complicating the no late night dining issue. You get a “chiller” which couldn’t possibly have saved them much over a regular mini fridge? It does cool things enough to drink especially if you put them in cold first - but a sticker warns not to leave perishables in it. It’s a four star hotel but I’ve definitely enjoyed myself much more at 3 star...

Staff were INCREDIBLE! I was having tons of issues with my company credit card, and they helped me sort it out all while being patient and friendly.

The rooms are clean, comfortable, and have blackout curtains. BUT! They also come equipped with some of the most hilariously bizarre features I’ve ever seen.

The light above the toilet will turn off automatically after about a minute unless you are moving a lot. Like walking around moving. So if you are sitting on the can, be prepared for the lights to just go out on you.

The bathroom also has no door. The shower door is opaque to about 5 ft, but above that it is entirely transparent. I was sharing a room with a coworker, and it was weird not having any privacy in the shower. The toilet is walled off with a door, but the wall and door are only mostly opaque. So you can still see outlines and tell whether the person in there is doing #1 or #2.

The beds also all have lights at the base that are ridiculously motion sensitive (unlike the toilet light). As soon as you step out of bed. They light up the room supposedly to guide you around. However, humans spent millions of years developing the whole rods and cones setup in our eyes to deal with this exact issue, and nature does it much better than Hyatt. The light I only enough to see around the bed area, and by the time you have made it to the bathroom, it’s dark and you can’t see the light switch because the beds just killed your night vision. It was ridiculous.

This was not unique to my room. I brought this up at a banquet in the convention center and everyone else had noticed the exact same thing. We all laughed a ton about how ridiculous the whole setup was.

That being said, I still had a good experience. It’s just funny how I’m their efforts to make the hotel modern they made it much...