The reviews of the Hyatt are mostly true. The architecture is a dated 70s style and the rooms could do with a little renovation, but the service is superb and the garden is quite special. I'm talking about the Hyatt in Sanur here, not the Nusa Dua one. We had the option of visiting the Nusa Dua Hyatt on the hotel's shuttle bus service, but never got around to it.
We made the mistake of not paying for the hotel transfer as part of the package and ended up having to pay for two cabs because we could not get the three of us and all our luggage into one cab. We were told that there are no vans available through the airport taxi service, which we found hard to believe, but could not be bothered with the hassle of trying to find a van anywhere. We took the hotel van on the way back, which was 127,000rp compared with the 90,000rp he had to pay for each taxi.
The welcome at the Bali Hyatt is full of cheesy smiles and fawning attention, complete with a gong to announce your arrival, a garland of frangipanni flowers and the usual welcome drink.
We had booked the Regency Club, a little extra to pay, but well worth it. The main bedroom is a reasonable size and the bathroom comes with both a bathtub and separate walk-in shower. The aircon worked well the whole time we were there, and was fully adjustable in the room. There is an outside balcony leading onto a small, secluded private area of the garden (we had the ground floor units, the upper floors have smaller balconies but more open views). TV has multiple international satellite channels and there is a broadband cable ready to connect to the internet in each room. The internet is a rip-off though at around 4,000rp per minute! I used the alternative wi-fi connection with my ipad occasionally just to pick up email from home.
The club has a concierge service and each morning you get the newspaper delivered - either the Jakarta Post or International Herald Tribune. There is also a separate Regency Club dining section where you are served drinks and canapes each evening from 5 to 7. There is enough food available for a light meal and we settled for the club snacks on two evenings rather than a full evening meal. Club staff are trained to get to know guests personally and it is a little surprising to be greeted by name on your second visit, as if you were a long lost friend.
Regency Club guests also get provided with breakfast in the club (you can also go to the main restaurants if you wish) and although they call it a continental breakfast, it is the full deal with eggs, bacon, and the works. The pace is a lot slower than the other restaurants and you can sit back and enjoy the ambience while being served at your table.
The Club is open until 10pm each day and is great to drop in for a free coffee and cookies. There is a variety of newspapers to browse or you can just watch the goings on in the surrounding pound or the garden beyond. The pond is packed with fish but also has several resident lizards who swim up and down and occasionally sun themselves on the bank or sometimes on top of one of the statues. Plenty of bird life (of the feathered kind) to watch as well, including noisy little wader birds that are cheeky enough to come up to the tables for scraps.
The only downside we could find was the so-called hotel clinic. Spotlessly clean and well-equipped, the clinic is open 24/7 and is staffed by a resident doctor and nurse. Sounds good, but unfortunately the doctors we encountered seemed very young and just out of med school while the older male nurse seemed to actually run the show. It turned out that the nurse had some decidedly strange ideas about how to treat ailments. When one of us presented with the shivers and the runs, he put it down to having the aircon too low, not to the bali belly that it eventually turned out to be. Perhaps I'm being unfair but I think if a hotel is going to offer a clinic then the staff at least should be competent.
The food in the restaraunts was excellent, but overpriced, as the Trip Advisor reviews state. The Jegog cultural barbecue was disappointing because the performers seemed to be very junior and not to the same skill level of other hotel performers we have seen.
There are two pools, one with swim up bar and the other complete with a small waterfall. Plenty of lounges available and the pool staff will actually go and find lounges and bring them to the location of your choice if you can't find what you want.
There are no touts in front of the hotel, but a gaggle of women perch themselves right on the property boundary and pounce of travellers as they wend their way along the beach path. They can be very pushy and quite aggressive, which is always an unpleasant experience if you are just out for a quiet stroll.
More about restaurants and activities another time...