A few weeks ago, Hyatt launched a Monsoon promotion in India, where they offered a flat 50% off on room rates. This forced me to do some advance planning for some of my future travel plans, and I gladly gave them away to Hyatt since it gave me an opportunity to try out properties at significantly less than publicly available prices. One of the places I headed up to was Pune, for some quick rest & recuperation and meeting my brother who currently lives in Pune.

Me and my fiancée got into Pune about mid-day from Mumbai, and we checked into the hotel straight away, after trying out Uber for the first time in Pune. Hyatt Hotels is a full service brand of Hyatt, and in India, the brand was launched after the management of the entire set of Ista Hotels in India was taken over by Hyatt and rebadged as Hyatt Hotels.

The hotel is located in Kalyan Nagar, not very far from the upscale Koregaon Park area and the airport, and about 1 km downstream from the Hyatt Regency Pune, which I was scheduled to stay at next. At about 200 rooms, it is a pretty big hotel, but the way it was done up, it did feel small and cosy, and boutique for all the time I spent there. The lobby area, however, was done in a vast and minimalist fashion, something I always like, along with a massive water wall.

The hotel only has about 4 floors full of rooms, and on arrival, I was informed that I was upgraded to a suite on the top floor, due to my Diamond status. Also, as a Hyatt Diamond, full breakfast was going to be complimentary the following morning and the all-day dining restaurant, eighty eight. We were then escorted to the room by the front office manager, who informed us about our benefits at the hotel. At the end, he enquired about my choice of Diamond amenity (1000 points v/s F&B amenity), and I went with the points.

The first thing that struck me about the room was the pool view. It looked very very inviting and I was glad I carried my swimming apparel along.

Like all junior suites usually are, this one was made up of a living room and a bedroom. Very minimalistic and very appealing to my eyes. Here is the living room, which had a vast L shaped couch and a work desk on the side, along with lots of space to lounge around.

Here is the bedroom, with a walk-in closet as well. They also had a bedside control of all the lights in the room.

Here is the bathroom, which had a rain shower as well as hand shower. The hotel used inara bath amenities, which is from the days it was still Ista.

A whole bunch of other amenities such as toothbrush kits, shaving kits etc. were all the standard Hyatt kits.

The minibar was fully stocked, but like most seasoned travellers, it is an avoid for me.

There were lots of water bottles provided, first during check-in, and then later restocked during the evening turndown service as well, so we never ran out of bottled water to drink during our stay.

We were hungry after a bit, so we decided to lunch at the hotel’s Pan-Asian restaurant Baan Thao, which is pretty highly rated around Pune. They had an awesome dimsum lunch on offer, with unlimited beer and food. We plonked ourselves in the live garden, which gave us a nice view of their outside water wall, and partake in the delicacies. At the end, we had to drag ourselves back to the room after approximately 2.5 hours spent there. The food was spot on, however, as the restaurant filled up, they started taking a lot of time to bring repeats of dimsums and hence we ended up spending a lot longer in terms of time than what we planned. It came to a head when in the desserts, where a particular item was told to us would take about 25 minutes to make, and we ended up cancelling it.

On return to the room, I saw that Hyatt Pune did send me some food anyways, despite the fact that we opted for the points amenity.

This food was good enough to knock me out for a couple of hours, and in the evening, I went about my business, before meeting up my brother for drinks and dinner. We were initially planning to go out, but with it being a dry day, the only way to get drinks was at our hotel (or any other for that matter!). We came back to the hotel, and first proceeded to their lounge Fishbowl, which I did not like, for their music was all over the place, pretty loud and over the top.

We then decided to get drinks and dinner in the all-day dining restaurant eighty eight itself. The food and drinks were good, and service was pretty well-paced as well.

We came back to the same restaurant in the morning, to get breakfast. There was a spread of Indian and Western food items, along with an eggs and south Indian live station. My chief problem with some of the breakfast this morning at the buffet stations was that it was lukewarm and not hot.

Perhaps the best part of the breakfast however was the Waffles that came in at the end… so special mention for those! Also, the chef was pretty hands on, and came and have a long chat with me about the food at both the restaurants, and how they do some great stuff on other days of the week.

The hotel also had a very nice spa, which was attached to the swimming pool. While I did not manage to try out their spa, I did manage to get a quick dip in the pool before I headed out for the day. I received a late check out at 1 PM.

It was a lovely stay all in all, and I loved the fact that with a reasonably big hotel the service was still personal. They do however need some work to get better with their restaurants.

Related Posts:

• Hyatt announces free internet + breakfast at 5 new hotels in India
• Hyatt Flash Sale: 19 India properties at 50% off

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