The final stop on our 6 week visit to Kentucky during our 50 state road trip was Lexington.
We’d originally planned to stay 5-10 nights, then those 5-10 nights became 13. Shae subsequently booked an activity near Lexington for my birthday, so we ended up staying there for 16 nights.
We stayed that entire time at the Hyatt Place Lexington. The first four of those nights were paid for with cash, with the remaining 12 nights being booked using points – I’ll explain more why in the ‘Cost’ section later on.
We had a great stay at the hotel, other than one huge flaw which we’ll also come to later. Here’s a complete review of the Hyatt Place Lexington, Kentucky.
Check-In
We were checked in by Theresa who was great and gave us the scoop of everything in the area. The hotel helpfully has printouts of nearby laundromats and restaurants, so she gave us copies of those.
She made sure we were aware of the pet fee and had us sign a pet form. The rest of the check-in process didn’t take long and we were soon on our way up to room 423.
Bedroom
Our room was towards the end of the hall and opposite the stairwell. That was helpful for when I needed to take our dog Truffles out as it encouraged me to walk down and back up several flights of stairs rather than taking the elevator.
When entering the room, it looked like pretty much every other Hyatt Place hotel room in the US. That’s no bad thing seeing as I love Hyatt Places so much (here’s why).
To the left was a dry bar and desk, to the right was the corner sofa, the bedroom straight ahead on the right and the bathroom straight ahead on the left.
The corner sleeper sofa was very comfortable, with a decent-sized ottoman that we used as a table. To the left was a cabinet with the Hyatt Place’s blanket that I love so much.
One big downside of this living room area was that there were no easily accessible power outlets. The only one in that vicinity was behind the couch and had the lights plugged in to them. As a result, I plugged in a power strip back there and plugged the lights into that instead so that I could also plug in my laptop and work from the couch on the odd occasion that the internet worked when sitting there.
On the opposite side of the room was a dry bar with a mini fridge and cupboard beneath. Just out of view on the top of the dry bar was the room’s coffee maker.
Opposite the dry bar was a desk and office chair.
Between the living room and bedroom was the TV. This could be turned in both directions to an extent, depending on where you wanted to watch a show from.
The TV channel selection was OK, but not particularly extensive. Changing channels didn’t work too well at times; we’d thought at first the battery in the remote might be dying, but even using the channel and volume buttons on the TV itself also worked intermittently.
The bedroom had a king bed which was, as usual, very comfortable and the blackout curtains worked well. Unfortunately there weren’t any available outlets by the bed without unplugging other items.
Behind the TV was the room’s closet which contained bedding for the sofa bed, a luggage rack, an iron and an ironing board.
Bathroom
Opposite the bed was the room’s sink and vanity. On the left of that was a short dresser with additional countertop space.
The toiletries were Barney Kenet MD which you’ll find at every Hyatt Place.
The bathroom itself had the toilet and a walk-in shower. The shower had a narrow door which meant that it only covered about 3/4 of the distance across. There wasn’t an issue with water leaking out at the uncovered end, although we did always end up with a puddle on the floor as there wasn’t a good seal between the large 1/2 door and the narrower 1/4 sized door.
One other downside to the shower is that it took a good couple of minutes to get any warm water to come out of it. Somewhat strangely, it seemed like people flushing toilets in other rooms affected the water flow and temperature at times – I’m not sure we’ve had that at other hotels before.
One of the nice features of the bathroom is that the door opened out rather than in. Quite a few Hyatt Places we’ve stayed at have doors that open into the bathroom and don’t leave much space to enter.
Breakfast
There was plenty of seating available at breakfast time. A lot of Hyatt Place properties only have seats available in the lobby area, whereas the Hyatt Place Lexington had seats in the lobby, some in the breakfast area itself as well as a separate room off the breakfast area.
A couple of the hot breakfast options changed each morning. The day that I took the photos, there were sausage links, biscuits and sausage gravy. Other days there were waffles, bacon, pancakes, etc.
I normally like the sausage links at Hyatt Places, but I didn’t care for these ones as they tasted super maple-y. So much so that it was almost like they poured maple syrup all over them before serving them.
They also offered scrambled eggs and garlic-herb medley potatoes every morning. The eggs were fine, while I love these potatoes.
All the other breakfast options were the same pretty much every morning:
A quick note regarding the fresh fruit in the next couple of photos. Several Hyatt Places we’ve stayed at end up with frozen fruit as the frozen surface they’re kept on must end up being too cold. Whatever setting they had it on at the Hyatt Place Lexington was much better, so the fruit was always cold but not frozen.
For drinks, there were fruit juices, milk and water…
…as well as coffee.
There was also a Tazo tea station. There’s supposed to be 8 different types of tea stocked here, but several mornings they were out of English Breakfast Tea. Seeing as I’m English, not having proper tea is tantamount to a breach of my human rights 😉
Amenities
The Hyatt Place Lexington doesn’t have guest laundry facilities. As I mentioned earlier, the hotel has a helpful printout listing a couple of nearby laundromats. The closest one was pretty expensive though at something like $5 or $6 per load.
The hotel has an indoor swimming pool, although there was no whirlpool. They kept the pool a nice temperature, although we never got around to swimming in there despite staying for just over two weeks.
There’s a fitness room with several pieces of equipment, along with lots of weights.
The temperature in the fitness room couldn’t be controlled by guests, although it wasn’t kept too hot in there.
There’s a business center in the lobby which consisted of two computers and a printer.
As with all Hyatt Place properties, there’s a bar area where you can also order meals (those meals can also be ordered as room service). You know you’re in Kentucky when pre-mixed Mint Julep Maker’s Mark is a drink option.
We stayed at the hotel during Mother’s Day and they offered free donuts that morning which was a nice touch.
All Hyatt Place hotels have a drink and snack bar and the property in Lexington was no exception.
If you want somewhere to meet with friends, family or colleagues, there are a couple of seating areas in the lobby…
…along with some outdoor seating next to the pool area.
Pet Policy
The Hyatt Place Lexington is a pet-friendly hotel. They have a $75 pet fee regardless of length of stay which is pretty good. Most Hyatt Places charge $75 for 1-6 nights and $175 for 7+ nights. Seeing as we were staying 16 nights, this meant we effectively saved $100 compared to what other Hyatt Places would normally charge.
The other part of the pet policy is that dogs have to weigh 50 lbs or less. If you have two dogs with you, they have to have a combined weight of 75 lbs or less.
There are grassy areas all around the hotel, with a dedicated pet area at the rear of the hotel.
Pleasant Ridge Dog Park is a couple of minutes down the road if driving and about 15-20 minutes if walking. One thing to be aware of is that it’s just one park – there aren’t separate large and small dog sections.
Seeing as the dog park was only half a mile away from the hotel, we took Truffles quite a few times during our ~2 week stay. Whenever I see her around larger dogs, I’m always reminded of quite how small she is.
Service
Service at the Hyatt Place Lexington was fantastic. From Theresa at check-in to Robin at the front desk who bought Truffles a special dog treat to all the other staff members, they were all friendly and helpful.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
The check-in time was 3pm, while the check-out time was 12pm. As I have Globalist status, we were able to get a 4pm late checkout on our final day with no problem.
Wi-Fi
Hyatt Place Lexington Wi-Fi – how much do I hate you? Let me count the ways.
This was hands down the worst part of our stay. The Wi-Fi at the hotel was awwwwwwwwwwwwful. Sorry, it deserved that many w’s.
The speed was appalling and the connection would frequently cut off completely. Here’s the speedtest I did one time while the internet was actually working:
For comparison, here’s a similar speedtest from the Red Roof Plus+ in Ann Arbor we’re staying at right now.
The difference between the two download speeds in particular is night and day. The Wi-Fi at the Hyatt Place Lexington was therefore virtually unusable, something which isn’t helpful considering Shae and I both work online.
The connection was better down in the lobby, but I didn’t want to have to work down there all day, so I just suffered through the crap speeds and dropped connections each day.
The speeds above were achieved when sitting at the desk which was where we had the best connection. I prefer working from the couch but that simply wasn’t possible a lot of the time as there was no internet connection when sitting there.
This might not be a huge issue for most people, but for me it’d seriously affect whether I chose to stay at the Hyatt Place Lexington again as it was immensely frustrating and made everything take significantly longer when working.
Location
The location of the hotel was pretty good. It’s just off I-75, so it’s convenient getting somewhere further afield and it’s only 15 minutes from downtown Lexington in no traffic. There’s also a shopping mall, Costco, movie theater, etc. a couple of minutes away.
Traffic around Lexington wasn’t great and there seemed to be traffic lights every couple of yards. That meant it sometimes took 20-25 minutes to drive 6 miles to the nearest Kroger.
It’s in a safe area with a few other hotels nearby, so I always felt safe walking Truffles around at night.
Parking
The hotel has quite a few parking spaces at the front of the hotel, as well as plenty more out back, all of which is free.
Cost
We booked our stay in a couple of ways. Our first four nights, we booked a paid stay. At the time, Hyatt Place and Hyatt Regency properties had a ‘Buy 3, get the 4th night free‘ promotion going on. We were therefore able to book the first four nights for a total of $362.14, an average of $90.54 per night which was good value. Even better, Shae had a Hyatt Place Chase Offer on one of her credit cards which earned us a $38 statement credit, making our net cost $81.04 per night. For those paid nights, I earned 2,516 World of Hyatt points.
The other nights we booked using points as the room rates were higher (closer to the $145 per night mark) and the ‘Buy 3, get the 4th night free’ promotion ended before the end of our stay. The Hyatt Place Lexington is a category 1 property and so only costs 5,000 points per night, so our following 12 nights cost 60,000 points.
What made things even better is that there was a separate promotion offering 1,500 bonus points per night when staying at a Hyatt Place, even on award stays. That promotion ended before we checked out, but we still earned 24,000 bonus points along the way.
That put our net cost at 33,484 points and $324.14 for 16 nights, or an average of 2,093 points and $20.26 per night. That’s excellent value and is a deal I wish we could replicate all the time now that we live in hotels and Airbnbs!
Final Thoughts
For the most part, the Hyatt Place Lexington was a great place to stay. The staff was friendly and the room was comfortable overall.
There were several aspects that reduced how enjoyable our stay was though. Primarily, there was the internet issue in that it was unusable at times and painfully slow the rest of the time. The shower door leaked, there were no available power outlets in convenient locations and the TV remote (and TV itself) weren’t very responsive.
A couple of those issues are probably just down to the particular room we were in, so I don’t hold those against the hotel. However, the internet is a big problem and one they need to sort out.
Truffles Approval Rating
Truffles loved her time at the hotel. Our room was extremely quiet, so she wasn’t disturbed from her slumber. She also got lots of attention from the front desk staff, especially Robin who she took a particular shine to.
Our Rating
Room = 4.4 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 3.8 / 5
Food = 4.5 / 5
Location = 4.5 / 5
Service = 4.9 / 5
Overall Value = 4.6 / 5
Total = 4.45 / 5
Address
Hyatt Place, 2001 Bryant Rd, Lexington, KY 40509
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