Living that island life doesn’t have to drain your points balance! Here at thePointsPage, we sent our resident beach bum (yours truly) to experience the Waikiki magic of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa to give you the run-down on whether it’s worth the visit, or if you should look elsewhere. (Spoiler alert: it’s a pretty solid option!). Grab a Mai Tai, kick back island style, and let’s dig in to how this property stacks up.
The Basics
Hotel Booked: Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach
Date Visited: March 14-18, 2024
Booking Type and Cost: Points; 80,000 Hyatt points and a Suite Upgrade Award
Hyatt Status: Globalist
thePointsPage Rating: 8 / 10
Reception and Customer Service
First of all, this is a bit of a confusing place when you first arrive. If you’re driving you’ll be met by the valet at the main entrance where you can grab a ticket for a whopping $70 per night, or opt for the self-parking option at $55 per night. Both options allow you in and out privileges during your stay, though, so there’s a silver lining.
Once you’re past that piece of check-in, you’ll walk through a bustling atrium filled with a convenience store, quick service eateries, a dispensary (yep!), coffee shop, and more people than you’d expect for any hotel lobby. It’s a busy place! Head up one of the few flights of stairs you’ll find along the way, turn some corners, and you’ll finally arrive at the front desk for check-in.
Aside from a brief struggle to figure out how to get there, the check-in process was quick, easy, and full of good information about the hotel. The representative who took care of my check-in welcomed me, thanked me for being Globalist, calmed my cost-conscious nerves by confirming that the valet cost and resort fees ($40 per night) would be waived due to my Globalist status (whew), and then offered the option of either a silicone wristband as my room key or a plain standard keycard. My girlfriend and I both opted for the cool looking wristbands which we knew would come in handy for some of our upcoming all-inclusive stays the coming year.
About 10 minutes after arriving, we were all checked-in, versed on the perks we received as Globalists, and sent on our way to the room. We were offered assistance with our bags from the bell team, but declined since we typically travel extremely light.
The Room
We hopped off the elevator on the 30th floor after about a 4 or 5 minute wait at the lobby and took a quick walk down the hallway to our upgraded “suite” we secured using a Suite Upgrade Award. I say “suite” because it was just 2 adjoining rooms with a lock-off door between them. Had I known this was going to be the setup I would’ve saved that SUA for another stay. I digress…
The walk to the room was quick and the layout getting there incredible easy to understand. The lobby for each floor consisted of a simple square layout with room doors located on the outer side of the square. You can’t get lost, and you don’t have to make 7 lefts and 3 rights to find your room, which is quite the perk for those that were here to party.
As you can see, the room itself was clean, bright, spacious, and had incredible views of the ocean from the balcony. This was only one side of the lock-off, though, as the other side was basically identical.
A nice and environmentally friendly perk from Hyatt were 2 reusable water bottles for the stay that we could take home. They also had refilling stations on every floor of the hotel, as well as in the main lobby and restaurant areas.
Once we made our way out on the small-ish balcony, the views were incredible! We had front row seats to the pacific ocean where we were able see whales spouting out in the distance, boats coming in for excursions, surfers catching waves, and beach-goers relaxing in the sunshine.
This is right up there with some of the best views from a hotel room I’ve been able to snag on points, and would make the trip back worth it any time.
The Grounds and Pools
The hotel grounds themselves were clean, bright, open air, and bustling. This was a crowded place with people all over who were trying to either make their way to their rooms, to the restaurant, to a shop, the pool, or to the beach!
We were able to walk around and explore quite a bit while we were here, though, and popped into quite a few shops both inside the hotel and on the strip just out the front door.
The pool itself was a bit small, but enough space for anyone who wanted to jump in and take a dip (not many, as it turned out). The hot tub was on the larger side for a jacuzzi, but it was packed with people anytime we went over to hop in. We ultimately decided to skip the hot tub and mosey on over to the beach instead.
Inside the hotel and on the main floor you had plenty of shops to choose from for all sorts of knick-knacks, but one in particular was extremely nice to have: the ABC Store.
This is the equivalent of your local drug store around the block at home, but also carried some Hawaii-themed souvenirs for you to bring back for the family. Their pricing was pretty reasonable for most items, they had travel sized medicines, toiletries, and ready-to-eat-meals in both coolers and hotboxes, too. If you’re looking to save a few bucks on alcohol, they had a huge selection at what seemed like state minimum prices.
One thing you’ll need to prepare for, though, is the long elevator waits during the busy hours of the day. They had a bank of 4 elevators, but it always seemed like only 2 were operating at any given time. The lines would sometimes wrap around the elevator area and out into the hallway for people waiting to go up to their rooms, and it could take upwards of 15 minutes of standing around before you can get moving.
Food and Beverages
This is the part where things could have been improved a bit…
The hotel itself had an extremely nice looking restaurant which spanned a large space indoors as well as outside under a few canopies, but pricing was extremely high which kept us finding our meals elsewhere. To their credit, the buffet options they had looked incredible and were stocked with steaks, crab legs, fresh fruits, vegetarian options, sushi, fried foods, and a whole table dedicated to desserts at any given time. Yum.
So, on to the negative part. As a Globalist you’re given complimentary breakfast when you stay at a location, and that meal is typically offered in the on-site restaurant. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case here, as this particular Regency had a dedicated ‘Regency Club’ where we were pointed to grab our breakfast. The offerings were pretty sparse and consisted of some picked over fruit trays, rolls / scones, oatmeal, eastern-style soups, some type of egg each day, and some type of meat each day. I didn’t starve, but definitely was considering dropping the $45pp for the full buffet just right around the corner after day 2.
Aside from the Regency Club breakfast buffet we didn’t sample any of the other meals or drinks on the property.
Activities and Excursions
While not strictly having to do with the hotel itself, we did take some time to get off the beach with an activity we booked with my Chase Sapphire Preferred Ultimate Reward points through the UR booking portal.
Pickup at the hotel is relatively easy, but make sure you get cross streets from your vendor as there are just too many entrances / exits to make sense of them in such a short visit. I was constantly getting turned around in the main lobby and heading in the wrong direction of where we needed to go.
When we finally got to the right exit, we were greeted by our friendly driver and loaded into a shared small-group sized tour van to head out to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. We were walked into the main area of the memorial then basically let go to roam around until our scheduled ferry ride to the USS Arizona. While the grounds themselves were fascinating and the history incredibly intriguing, the tour company itself could have advertised their inclusions a bit better to state they were pretty much providing transportation only. On that note, if you rented a car for your trip you should just drive yourself to the memorial and save the money / points you would have spent on a tour.
Lastly, make sure to stop at the Bowfin submarine exhibit before you leave the memorial. There’s a small additional fee to enter, but it’s very, very cool. I promise.
After you board, you’ll walk across part of the deck then down the stairs to the torpedo room for your first glimpse at the inside of this monster. From there, make your way through the entire inside of the sub from front to back (bow to stern?) with the included audioguide explaining every room along the way.You’ll get to learn all about what life was like onboard, and how each room functioned when in operation before being led back up to the deck for a last look at the artillery and sonar they used during the war.
After our tour, we headed back to the front gate to meet our guide and get shuttled back to the hotel making a stop or two along the way.
Getting to the Point
We strayed just a bit from a review of the hotel and the hotel only, but feel the extra content might just give you a little something to spark your wanderlust for Waikiki. Make sure you follow us on Instagram to see more pics from this awesome trip to Oahu!
That said, I felt the property itself was a great pick, especially for using points and an upgrade certificate for our stay. The cash rate for the room was around $490/nt on average, and rightfully so with it being so close to such a fun area and right across the street from Waikiki beach. Comparing that cash rate to the points we spent and our valuation turned out to be just under 2.5cpp, which I consider to be pretty solid value from my points.
If you’re planning a visit to Waikiki I’d highly recommend the Hyatt Regency Waikiki for your stay, just be aware of some of the extra costs that may come your way (resort fees, parking, and breakfast), and the “suite” upgrades before pulling the trigger. Aside from these issues, we felt we were in one of the best locations for our trip and were completely happy with the incredible service we received from each and every employee to make the stay great.
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