A video review of the Hyatt Manchester Grand in Downtown San Diego, California. I stayed in this hotel for one night a did a little video review of the property and the inside of the Grand Double Club room.
The hotel is located in Downtown San Diego, less than 10 minutes driving from San Diego Airport, less than a mile from San Diego’s historic Gaslamp district, and almost adjacent to the San Diego convention center. The Hyatt Manchester is one of the tallest hotels in Downtown San Diego (40 floors) and one of San Diego’s most iconic hotels along the bay-front. Almost every picture of Downtown San Diego has the Hyatt in it.
The Hyatt Manchester is a big hotel with 1,628 guest rooms — so it has a “big” convention hotel feel. The club lounge on the 33rd floor is one of the biggest Hyatt lounges that I’ve been in (it seats 180). With the hotels great location on the San Diego Bayfront, the view is definitely one of the main reasons to stay here. It’s also really close to the convention center, which makes it great if you’re in San Diego for a convention.
We checked in at about 4pm… while there was a line, it was pretty short. They had a separate check-in line for “VIP Diamond and Platinum” members. Check-in was pretty painless… I was given my room-keys and directed to the elevators for the “Harbor Tower.” The hotel has two towers, the Harbor Tower, and the Seaport Tower. To get up to the guest rooms you have to use the keycard in the elevator, and there are two sets of elevators to reach the different floors in the hotel.
As a Diamond member we were “upgraded” to a Club Room on the 29th floor. Honestly I’m not sure what makes it an upgraded room, other than it has a nice view? It seemed like a regular room to me with a couple extra bottles of water for “VIP” members. The room itself at 340 sq ft was relatively nice, with a pleasant seating area by the window. The only negative of the room is our previous houskeeper clearly didn’t do a good job cleaning the bathroom as there were quite a few hairs (not ours) in the bathroom tub, floor, and sink area.
The Club Lounge itself is quite nice, with sweeping views towards Point Loma. The evening appetizers and deserts were simply “OK.” I recently stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Phoenix, and you could easily have dinner in their club lounge, so maybe I had high expectations. When I rolled in to the club lounge at 8:40pm during “desert hour” there weren’t ANY deserts out. I had to ask the lounge staff to bring out more deserts. That’s pretty lame if you ask me.
The hotel has two swimming pools, the “main” pool of the fourth floor, full of kids in the summer and really much too small, and the “adult” pool on the third floor which is much more “serene” but also quite small. There is a really neat “sport court” area on the fourth floor with a basketball court, volley ball court, and two tennis courts. The sporting courts were a pretty neat and unique amenity for a downtown hotel. The gym is huge, well appointed, and with windows facing the outside.
