The Park Hyatt Milan – Highs and Lows

I stayed at the Park Hyatt Milan this past December. It was just a small part of a great New Years trip!

• Wildly Inefficient American Airlines Checked Bag Policy
• Review: American Airlines 767-300 Business Class MIA-MXP – Pretty Good!
• The Park Hyatt Milan – Just the Highs and Lows
• Thoughts on My First Ryanair Flight
• 3 Nights at the Andaz Liverpool – The Highs and Lows
• The London Edition – One Night Only
• The Fuster Cluck: British Airways 777-200 Equipment Change

But let’s focus on the The Park Hyatt Milan for now! I had a great experience and I look forward to telling you more about it, but this will not be a typical hotel review.

See, I recently realized I have problems with the idea of an all-encompassing, comprehensive hotel review. These reviews are overdone, unrealistic and create information overload. Not to mention, they can be kind of boring (both to read and write)!

Quite frankly, there are people out there that can (and do) do a much better job in covering every little hotel room detail – all the way down to folding of the bathroom tissue – but I’ve decided I am done with those type of posts.

Instead, I am going to stick to a much more fun “best and worst” type of post. This will allow you a peek at the hotel properties I visited with some highlights and low-lights along the way, and without all the unnecessary clutter! Without further ado…

The Park Hyatt Milan… The Highlights

Location, location, location!

The property is located very close to Milan’s Duomo, is practically in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and is walking distance from most (if not all) of the most popular sites and attractions. I cannot think of a better place to be when staying in Milan!

The Room

For our 2-night stay, I booked one room on Points+Cash and the next using just points. These 2 nights were on separate reservations, but I communicated with Hyatt Concierge via Twitter in order to link the 2 reservations to ensure the hotel noted the nights as one stay. I also direct Twitter messaged to use one of my Diamond Suite Upgrades (DSU) to upgrade first night. I figured that the PH would most likely not force me to change rooms, and therefore the DSU would apply to the pure award night as well.

Our Junior Suite was a corner room on the 5th floor overlooking the streets of Milan. Overall the room felt very much like the Park Hyatt Paris. As this was a junior suite, the room was quite spacious, though if you are in a standard Park Queen room, you should expect much less room.

I realized that not everyone has Hyatt Diamond status (which will become Globalist status when Hyatt implements their new status program March 1^st… or Explorist status if you failed to requalify like me!) and the accompanying DSUs. Remember though that Hyatt allows suites to be booked on awards, albeit at a higher redemption rate, so this room is attainable to those without top tier Hyatt status!

The Breakfast

In true Park Hyatt fashion, the breakfast was on point! Whether you opt for an a la carte dish or the full buffet – you cannot go wrong. I will warn you though, this can get pricey…

 

With my Diamond status, my wife and I enjoyed free breakfast. While I definitely would not have forked over 50 euro for the full buffet, I would have chosen something a la carte if I was paying, as everything looked delicious!

AYP tip – If it is free breakfast you seek, consider booking a Visa Signature or Amex Fine Hotels rate that includes breakfast!

I hate to complain (do I really?), but it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops…

I present, the Low-lights!

The Concierge

When I think of luxury hotel concierge, I think of service. Whatever the ask, whatever the need, the concierge is there to fulfill your needs! To the best of their abilities and within reason, of course!

Our one asks of the concierge was to help us with booking our transportation from Milan to the Bergamo Airport, where we would catch our Ryanair flight to London. We did some research on our own and confirmed with the concierge that the most direct method to get to Bergamo Airport was to take a bus transfer.

After much back and forth and much confusion, it turned out that the concierge could not actually book the tickets for that bus transfer from Milan Centrale to Bergamo Airport. Weird.

I am still unsure as to why they couldn’t since it seemed like a fairly easy process that my wife ended up doing online. Not a huge deal, but just something I would have expected a luxury hotel concierge to take care of…

Trouble with Hyatt Check Certificates

I earn 3x Citi Thank You points by using my Citi ATT Access More credit card to pay my mortgage. With no more Citi Prestige or Citi Premier in my wallet, I have found redeeming Thank You points at 1 cent per point for Hyatt Check Certificates to be a good option for my travel habits. They are perfect for covering the cash portion of a Hyatt Points+Cash award booking!

The problem is that every Hyatt I visit, nobody seems to know how to apply these to my bill! Am I the only one who uses these things!? Hyatt Check Certificates really do seem to be a hassle for Hyatt to handle.

While it extended the check-out process by 20 minutes and almost caused us to miss our bus, the Park Hyatt representative was finally able to figure it out and we were on our merry way.

Distance from the Airport (MXP)

I am being nit picky here with this one, as it is not really the fault of the Park Hyatt Milan, but rather the civil engineer who planned out this city and its airports! Maybe I am spoiled living a quick 8 minute drive to my home airport of TPA, but I just want airports to be close to the cities they serve!

To get to the Park Hyatt we took the “Malpensa Express Train” about 40 min to Cadorna (approximately 13 euro per person, and paid with my #2 favorite card to use abroad – the Barclaycard Arrival Plus!). Upon arrival at Cadorna we grabbed a 10-minute taxi (for approximately 7 euro), who dropped us off directly outside the hotel.

Overall it took us an hour, so not major, but inconvenient enough to land the 3^rd low-light spot!

Final Thought and Overall Impression

The Park Hyatt Milan is a classic Park Hyatt property that will not disappoint. If my wife and I were dentists, then 2 out of 2 dentists could recommend this hotel property! If I ever find myself back in Milan, I will definitely make this place home for my stay.

I hope you enjoyed the little peek at the Park Hyatt Milan and appreciated my highlights and low-lights, without the cluttering details of a full hotel review. My goal was to cut down post length and even with that in mind this post is over 1000 words!

This is my first attempt at this type of post! Let me know if you appreciated just the highlights or if you prefer details galore!

Dying for more details surrounding this hotel? Check out Angelina Travels for more!

Happy Travels!

DW