Keeping it Short and Suite at the Park Hyatt Tokyo

Mrs. Selfish and I stayed at the Park Hyatt Tokyo twice before – once during the Selfish Year trip, and a second time during our trip to the Maldives. It’s one of our favorite hotels in the world, and one I was looking forward to sharing it with Baby Selfish.

During our first two stays, we had temporary diamond status (back when Hyatt was overly generous with their diamond trial), which meant we had free room service breakfast, access to the sauna, and free admission to the NYC bar during the diamond happy hour. Amazing benefits, to be sure, and ones which we were not going to get this time around as lowly Platinum members.

Upgrading to the Suite & Guest of Honor status

Since I still had a diamond suite certificate to burn, I booked the three of us into a king suite for two nights on a severely reduced paid stay using a combination of the Best Rate Guaranteed 20% discount and buying Hyatt gift certificates at 15% off.

In the end, we ended up paying something like 55% of the rack rate for the room and were upgraded to a suite. Pretty great.

Since we wanted to spend a total of 4 nights at the PHT so Mrs. Selfish’s parents could recover from jetlag, I booked the remaining two nights in a standard king, transferring points over to Cousin Selfish’s account so we could try out the Guest of Honor status.

If you’ve never tried Guest of Honor status you basically get to partake in a diamond member’s benefits if they book the room for you with points. Hyatt’s transfer policy is fairly generous, though a member can only receive points from another member once every 30 days, so make sure to transfer all your points at once!

I was secretly hoping that the Park Hyatt Tokyo would give us the best of both worlds and keep us in the suite for 4 nights while giving us diamond status, but didn’t have high hopes since this IS Japan after all. As expected, they followed the rules down to the letter.

Baby Selfish enjoying the view.

The Room

Since I’ve already covered the other aspects of the Park Hyatt Tokyo in previous posts when we stayed in a deluxe room and a view room, this post will focus solely on the suite experience.

The suite is… pretty friggin’ great, actually. And huge. Way bigger than the top floor of our tiny SF home.

The entryway allows access to a walk in closet and the bathroom before passing the bedroom, which is separated by a thin, folding screen that separates the hallway from the bed. It looks great, but is not as sound-proof as someone with an infant would want.

From there, you walk into the living room.

The living room is a decent size, with ample lighting. The décor at the PHT is little dated when compared to more modern hotels like the Conrad Tokyo, but is still in great shape. Like the other rooms, the suite’s living room came with a Nespresso capsule coffee machine, which I partook of several times a day.

From there, the living room connects into the bedroom. Unfortunately, Mrs. Selfish was feeding Baby Selfish at the time so I could only take a shot of the TV – fail!

The bedroom itself was quite nice (sorry, again!). Since I had requested a crib ahead of time, the PHT staff placed it right next to the bed. They also gave Baby Selfish some sweet amenities and a Teether Sassy Toy!

Last, but not least, was the bathroom, which in my experience is usually the focal point and best part of any Park Hyatt hotel. The suite at the Park Hyatt Tokyo did not disappoint, and of course came with the standard Aesop products.

*Fun fact* the Aesop lotion that you find in the Park Hyatt Tokyo retails for upwards of $100 a bottle for 17 oz, which puts the value of one of the sampler bottles at $10 a pop. I’m not suggesting we hoarded them or anything *cough cough.*

Downgraded Diamond Status Perks

Thanks to Cousin Selfish’s diamond status, we were able to enjoy the high life once more for our last two nights. Although the deluxe room was not as nice as the suite, we definitely enjoyed the Japanese breakfast and free access to the sauna every morning.

One negative point, however. The Park Hyatt Tokyo no longer has their diamond Happy Hour in the fabled NYC Bar, but has instead moved it to the Peak Lounge.

We were unable to partake, given Baby Selfish’s sleep schedule, but it was a disappointment nonetheless since the NYC Bar is pretty incredible. Hopefully this is something they change, but it seems doubtful since I’m sure they had good ($$) reasons for the move.

Conclusion

The Park Hyatt Tokyo is still an awesome hotel in a great part of Tokyo, and the suite was definitely worth the cost. That being said, I can understand why some people think the brand is overrated without top tier status.

The two nights we spent without status had a completely different feel to the two nights with the additional perks and it did cheapen the experience (though admittedly we were spoiled in the past). Will we stay there again? Yes, probably – though hopefully after we’ve made enough qualifying stays to regain diamond status.

Otherwise, I would strongly consider taking my business to the Conrad Tokyo since gold status is much easier to get with Hilton. And by “taking my business,” I mean, spending my points and avoiding paying cash as much as possible.