After spending a couple of nights at the Hana-Maui Resort and then driving the Road to Hana, we spent the rest of our week on Maui at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa.
The hotel was fine and had some great features, but there were also lots of frustrating elements that felt like they were needless. Considering the resort was charging more than $800 per night for the five nights we were there, some of those things were inexplicable. (Side note: we booked with World of Hyatt points rather than cash, with four nights costing 25,000 points per night and the other costing 30,000 points).
Rather than publishing a regular hotel review like I normally would, I thought I’d do things a little differently. So here’s a list of the 10 things I hated about the Hyatt Regency Maui, but also the six things I loved.
10 Things I Hated About The Hyatt Regency Maui
1) No information when checking in
We got off to a bad start when checking in. The front desk agent was nice enough, but seemed a little confused by things and it took longer to check in than expected.
The hotel was completely out of leis to greet guests with; that wasn’t an issue for us, but I’ve no idea how a resort in Hawaii that’s part of a major chain runs out of leis considering you can buy them at a local convenience store.
The biggest issue with the check-in experience though was that we weren’t provided with any information. There was no map of the resort provided, no information about the benefits we were eligible for as someone with Hyatt Globalist status, no information about breakfast, nor the Club Lounge, nor the hotel’s amenities, etc.
After getting our room keys, we headed off towards our room. We got in the elevator with a couple of other people, only to discover that the elevator didn’t go to the floor we needed. That meant we had to ride up with them as the doors had already closed by the time we realized, so then we had to head back down to the lobby.
Looking around, we couldn’t work out where we needed to go, so we had to make the long trudge back to the front desk (the first floor of the hotel is massive). We eventually got directions from a bellhop; it turned out that we were in a different tower and so had to walk much further back through the hotel to get to the elevators we needed.
At the Grand Hyatt Kauai, they have a bellhop take you to your room. At the Hyatt Regency Maui, they didn’t even tell us how to get to our room initially.
2) Rubber bracelet room keys
Rather than having regular credit card-sized room keys, the Hyatt Regency Maui provides rubber bracelet keys. That way you’re less likely to lose them, plus they’re waterproof and so you can keep them on you when swimming.
On the one hand, that’s awesome. However, I wasn’t a fun of the rubber and how thick it was, as wearing it out in the heat of the day made my wrist feel extremely sweaty.
The Grand Hyatt Kauai had a similar key concept, but their wristbands were made of thin fabric.
Those keys at the Grand Hyatt were therefore much lighter, more comfortable and barely noticeable compared to the rubber ones at the Hyatt Regency Maui. I really disliked the rubber texture, so I carried it around in my pocket instead.
3) Pentagonal tables in the living room
I’d applied a suite upgrade award to our stay which meant that we were in an Ocean View Suite. That gave us a separate bedroom and living area which was lovely, but there were several aspects of the suite that we disliked.
One of those was in the living room. In fact, it was two of them – pentagonal coffee tables.
For their function as a coffee table, they were fine. The problem was that having five sides meant having five corners that jutted out at awkward angles. We therefore had to give them a wide berth as otherwise it was easy to knock our shins or knees against their edges.
4) Poor painting job
I forgot to take a photo, but when the suite was painted most recently the maintenance crew didn’t bother removing the artwork from the walls before painting. They didn’t get paint on the frames, but instead left gaps between the frames and the new paint job where you could see the old paint.
5) Plastic-feeling sheets
We slept in 300+ different beds over the course of our 7 year, 50 state road trip and I rarely had any issues sleeping comfortably at night. The Hyatt Regency Maui was a rare exception because they had sheets that felt like they were made of plastic. Sleeping on plastic never feels good, but in a warm climate like Hawaii it’s particularly awful.
6) Motion sensor floor lights
Both the bedroom and bathroom had motion sensing floor lights. In theory, that can be good if you need to get up at night to use the bathroom as it enables you to see where you’re going without needing to turn on a lamp or overhead light.
In reality though, it sucks.
For starters, the floor lights felt particularly bright, rather than being dim enough to show your way around the room without needing to cover your eyes.
In the bedroom, I was able to stick pillows on the floor to cover the sensors so that they lights wouldn’t turn on. However, in the bathroom I wasn’t sure where the sensors were, so those always turned on ay night.
I’m always up later at night than Shae and she can be a light sleeper. When I’d come to bed, I was able to come in the bedroom quietly and not wake her up. However, opening the bathroom door automatically lit up the bedroom, often times waking her up.
7) No drinking glasses
The living room had an electric kettle, coffee maker, reusable water bottles and paper cups, but for some reason there were no drinking glasses. If we stay in a Holiday Inn Express I certainly don’t expect those, but Hyatt Places and Hyatt Houses always have drinking glasses, so I’ve no idea why an $800 per night Hyatt Regency resort wouldn’t bother providing those.
That meant Shae had to drink wine and I had to drink whiskey out of paper coffee cups which is never a great experience.
8) Unable to access the back of the TV
This will be a minor issue for most people, but it was a little annoying for us. We travel with our Fire TV Stick so that we can use apps like Netflix, Peacock TV, Willow TV, Paramount+, etc.
We weren’t able to do that at the Hyatt Regency Maui though. The TV was mounted directly to the wall without being able to move it, so we couldn’t access the HDMI ports in order to insert the Fire TV Stick.
9) Incinerated bacon
Having Globalist status in the World of Hyatt loyalty program meant we had complimentary access to the hotel’s club lounge. There was always bacon available at breakfast in the morning, but it was some of the worst bacon I’ve experienced in my entire life.
It was apparently cooked on the surface of the sun for 17 hours on each side, so if you dared to glance at it the bacon shattered into pieces. I didn’t think to get a photo of the bacon until the final morning, which happened to be when it was just about edible as we could pick it up with tongs without having to treat it with the care like you would a nuclear rod.
10) Construction late at night
For some reason, the hotel decided to allow construction inside the hotel late at night. More than once we could hear drilling in a room nearby or above us at 11pm which is far too late to be doing that kind of thing.
6 Things I Loved About The Hyatt Regency Maui
OK, now that you’ve humored me with my whining, here are six things that I appreciated about our stay at this property.
1) Thermostats in both the bedroom and living room
During many of our hotel stays where we’ve been in one bedroom suites, there’s only been one thermostat covering the whole suite. What’s often ended up happening is that the bedroom will end up being very cold, while the living room will be very hot, or vice versa.
In our Ocean View Suite at the Hyatt Regency Maui, there was one thermostat in the living room and one in the bedroom. That meant we could adjust temperatures accordingly which was particularly handy at night when I was up working and Shae was sleeping.
2) Rainfall shower
Our bathroom had both a bathtub and walk-in shower. The walk-in shower in turn had both a regular shower head and a rainfall shower head.
The rainfall shower head was superb. It had four parts to it and excellent water pressure, so it was a pleasure having a shower each day.
3) Ocean View Suite Views
Being able to use a Suite Upgrade Award for our stay came in clutch. Not only did it mean that we were upgraded to a one bedroom suite (and thus had a lot more space), but we had great views too.
Our living room had a balcony that overlooked a mountain…
…while the bedroom had lovely oceanfront views.
4) Electric kettle
Neither Shae nor I like coffee, but I do drink tea. On our road trip I’ve brought a travel kettle with me to boil water as hotels in the US normally only have a coffee maker. The Hyatt Regency Maui was a very rare exception as it had both a coffee maker and an electric kettle.
5) Water dispensers & ice machines on every floor
In every room at the Hyatt Regency Maui you’ll find a couple of reusable water bottles. In addition to those, every floor of the hotel has water dispensers and ice machines which was nice as that made it much easier to fill up, compared to some hotels where ice machines are only on odd or even-numbered floors.
6) Towel caddy
A nifty little feature that I’ve not seen at any hotel we’ve stayed at before were the towel caddies you could find in at least a couple of locations around the property.
If you need towels for the beach or pool, you simply scan your bracelet room key, grab the towels you need and then return them to the same machine later in the designated return openings.
Final Thoughts
Overall, our experience at the Hyatt Regency Resort & Spa was fine, especially considering we were able to lock in a suite upgrade ahead of time and could book our stay using Hyatt points.
However, there were a surprising number of negative things that we experienced considering it’s an $800 per night hotel. Poor service when checking in, shoddy painting work, awful bed sheets, no drinking glasses and inedible bacon are all simple things that shouldn’t be that way, along with other factors that I didn’t enjoy like the style of bracelet room keys provided and the irritating floor lights.
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