Written by I re-qualified for Hyatt Diamond in October of last year and then pretty much took the last two months off from traveling and mattress running. It was kind of weird having so many free weekends. I almost didn’t know what to do with my time.
I spent the holidays up in the Pacific Northwest and decided to hit up the Hyatt hotels in Seattle; the Olive 8 and the Grand Hyatt. I had never been to the Olive 8 before but had read good things about the hotel on FlyerTalk. This hotel is located in downtown Seattle on the corner of Olive Way and 8th Avenue, hence the name Olive 8.
The outside of the hotel is pretty nice with a blue/silver theme. It’s pretty modern looking.
I found a great promo rate for this hotel on its website. It was $139 and it included valet parking, which normally costs $35/night. I used a Diamond confirmed suite upgrade certificate and was upgraded to a Luxury King room.
Check in went smoothly and the person at the front desk was nice. This hotel is very “green” and I was a little confused when the front desk agent was explaining how the lights work. As soon as you walk in the door, there is a slot for you to put your keycard. With the card inserted, this allows you to turn on the lights. When the card is removed, all the lights turn off after 30 seconds. It really wasn’t as confusing once I saw how it worked. It was actually pretty cool!
The suite itself was more long than wide. Large windows spanned the length of the room and let it in a lot of natural light, which I enjoyed.
There was a frosted glass sliding door that separated the living room from the bedroom. The bedroom itself was pretty standard but it did have His and Hers closets.
The bathroom is pretty big with a huge soaking tub and separate shower. The shower has a standard shower head plus a rain shower. Like a few other Hyatt hotels I’ve stayed at, there was a TV in the mirror. It was pretty awesome being able to watch TV in the bathroom while getting ready for bed or to go out.
As a Hyatt Diamond member, I received free breakfast for up to four people at Urbane, the hotel’s restaurant. I was given a coupon to present to the server in the morning. What I appreciated most about the coupon was that it specifically said tax and gratuity were included. There’s been a lot of confusion on whether or not those two items are part of the Hyatt Diamond breakfast benefits. Experiences vary from hotel to hotel. I ordered the Crab Benedict and it was delicious! My Hyatt experience is not as expansive as others but Urbane ranks as one of my top two Hyatt breakfasts. The other was at the Grand Hyatt DFW. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of the food.
I did have one minor problem at the hotel but the service more than made up for it. I wasn’t receiving any HD channels on the TV in the living room so they had an engineer come up to take a look. After about 5-10 minutes of waiting, I received a phone call from someone at the hotel saying the engineer was outside the door but I had the Privacy hanger out so they didn’t want to disturb me. I wouldn’t have minded if they knocked but I thought that was a really considerate thing to do.
The engineer ultimately decided he would have to reset the stations in my room at his computer and offered me a free movie to compensate for the troubles. It wasn’t necessary but I appreciated the gesture. The computer reset worked and I ended up not using my free movie.
Before checkout, I made sure to check my folio to make sure all charges were accurate. There was no sign of breakfast on my bill but there were charges for valet parking. The charges were removed without any issues.
I did enjoy my stay there and would recommend it for those who are looking for a modern and/or “green” hotel experience. After checkout, I walked half a block to the Grand Hyatt Seattle for the second part of Hyatt holiday extravaganza. It was actually just another mattress running weekend but whatever. Stay tuned for Grand Hyatt Seattle review!