Hyatt Place San Jose/Downtown

The rooms were nice and came with amenities, though a few felt too tight even for a handicap room. The phone wasn't charging, which made it hard to reach the front desk. In the bar and restaurant, orders got mixed up, some food wasn't fully cooked, and the waiters didn't know which dishes belonged at which tables. Parking was a little pricey and confusing at first. Still, the stay was fantastic overall.

The buffet breakfast was genuinely good, and the service earned the two stars. The room itself wasn’t clean, and the closet door was coming off its track. The whole floor smelled like marijuana, and people in the next room kept yelling and singing for more than half an hour, waking us up. This was our first stay here, and we won’t be coming back.

We spent three nights here while visiting from Hawaii for the Sharks on Saturday and the 49ers at Levi’s on Sunday. The location worked well without a rental car: light rail is easy to catch, and plenty of restaurants and bars, plus SAP, are within walking distance. The staff put our three rooms near one another and were helpful. Our rooms were clean, nice, and quiet. Housekeeping came even though we’d hung the “clean later” tags, but we didn’t mind the extra service. Breakfast was more than enough, with hot coffee, toasted English muffins and bagels, fruit, and hot options like bacon or sausage, eggs, and potatoes. The bar was a nice extra too. Drinks cost a lot, though the service was good. We had a great stay.

I spent six years working as a front desk lead at Hyatt Place while in college, so I know a bit about customer service. Mary checked me in at 10 p.m. on Jan 20, and she was knowledgeable and professional. The trouble began the next day, when I checked out and returned with a new four-day reservation. The person who checked me in on Jan 21 was rushing and didn’t seem to care. She didn’t ask whether I was a Hyatt member or wanted to join. Once in my room, I couldn’t log in to the Wi-Fi. A woman at the desk with tattoos everywhere tried nine times to add my membership number to my account, then said she didn’t know how and didn’t know how Mary had done it. She never tried asking a supervisor for help. I ended up using my cellular data for the whole stay. Having no Wi-Fi and such poor customer service made it feel like I was in some third-world hotel.