Review: Park Hyatt Toronto

Posted by Nick on September 2, 2010

I recently spent two nights at the Park Hyatt Toronto hotel. The hotel is located in the trendy Yorkville area of Toronto, near the University of Toronto. High-end retail stores line most of the surrounding streets.

Review (this review is my opinion based on my 2-night stay at the hotel)

I booked a room with two queen beds and was given a room on the 12th floor of the North Tower. The room has the two beds in it, a desk and chair, two sitting chairs by the window and a large flat screen TV. The bathroom was large, with a soaker tub.

In-room amenities included a fully stocked mini-bar, complete with snacks, two robes, two pairs of slippers, a lint brush, shoe shine kit, mending kit, hair dryer, David Graves toiletries – shampoo, conditioner, lotion, body wash & flax seed soap, a loofah and free high speed internet access.

Overall, the room was very clean and pleasant. And all of the hotel employees I encountered were nice. The view from the room was of an adjacent building and part of Avenue Road at Bloor. However, it was lacking a coffee maker. There was also an ice bucket but no ice machines are available in the hotel. Instead, you must call room service to get ice or coffee. Each of those I find unacceptable.

Parking options are to self-park at the Four Seasons across the street on Cumberland St. or have valet park you there. Hotel website states that it is $38 CAN either way but a TripAdvisor review puts it at $44 per day. Keep driving down Cumberland and you will first pass a garage with a $16 CAN price and then a slightly cheaper garage. Go for it. It is the one with green signs. I parked there and saved something like $25 – $35 CAN for my stay. That garage takes cash, Visa and Mastercard.

The lobby seemed stuffy and uninviting. It was not the sort of lobby you would want to spend any time in. The on-site restaurant was incredibly expensive and offered only a limited menu. I was also disappointed in the “desk chair” in the room because it was not a desk chair at all. It was more like a sitting chair and for a luxury hotel I was expecting more of an executive desk chair.

Fortunately, there is a Whole Foods Market just up the street from the hotel. And a Tim Horton’s is just a few blocks down Bloor to the west of the hotel.

In general, I did not find a lot of redeeming qualities in the surrounding area. It was difficult to find just a market or bodega that was open past 9pm to get some bottled water. The restaurant choices in the immediate vicinity were not to my liking either. The best options nearby were Tim Horton’s and the Matisse restaurant in the Marriott at 90 Bloor, just a few blocks away.

For a wider variety of more reasonably priced restaurants, I suggest walking east on Bloor and heading down Yonge St, towards downtown. You will immediately find loads of restaurants and markets.

While the hotel was clean and the front desk staff was pleasant, I would choose to stay elsewhere if I found myself in this area of Toronto again. In fact, I would probably check out the Yorkville Marriott.