For our weekend trip to NYC, I was looking for a Hyatt option that would allow me to use my last expiring suite night award. Our trip was from 2/25-27 and the award expired 2/28, so it was just under the wire. The Park Hyatt is just too many points. I also considered the newer Thompson Central Park, but in the end, based on its location and the generally positive reviews, I decided to give the Andaz 5th Avenue a try. I also booked a Hyatt Guest of Honor reservation for the first night as our younger daughter and her boyfriend would be joining us, and even with a suite upgrade, that’s too many people sharing a bathroom.

I paid 21,000 Hyatt points per night which is an off-peak rate for this Category 6 hotel. It’s going up to Category 7 next month which at 25,000 off-peak and 35,000 peak is a lot of points for this hotel in my opinion, but might be justified depending on the cash rates they can charge right now. It was just over $400 cash plus taxes and destination fee for the weekend we stayed in late February.

One of the things we planned to do was for my wife to visit her favorite art supply wholesaler, which is located as 5th Avenue and 36th Street. The Andaz is at 5th Avenue and 41st Street. It’s also close to Grand Central Station so we planned to take the train to and from the airport. As it turned out, we only took the train to the airport as I explained in the earlier segment.

We arrived around 11:30am via Uber. The front desk (basically just a table in the very small lobby) was dealing with a large group of Fordham alumni. but I didn’t have to wait too long. Our Andaz Suite was not quite ready. We were told we could have a regular room if we didn’t want to wait. I asked if my daughter’s room was ready and it was. The front desk associate allowed me to check into her room so we could store our bags there, which as I thought about it, was probably not the most secure thing. In this case, it was my daughter and she was fine with it. Technically a Guest of Honor reservation is for the person staying in the room and just because the Globalist books it with points, a hotel should probably only give access to the name on the reservation and not the Globalist just because they happen to be there as well.

We went up to my daughter’s room on the 8th floor of the North wing. It’s a separate building so there are two elevators (or stairs then an elevator) to access the room. The room was very nice and a good size for a standard room in Manhattan. She supposedly got an upgrade to a city view, but it was just offices on all sides.

In addition to the nicely laid out room and bathroom, there was a very nice shower area.

Before our daughter and her boyfriend arrived around 12:30pm, our suite was ready, so I moved our things over there. I was impressed they had a suite ready for us that early as often Globalists stay in these suites until close to 4pm (we certainly did on the Monday we checked out).

Our suite was nice, but the bathroom was weird.

There was no actual door between the living room and bedroom, although there could have been. I would have been annoyed with this if I had little kids. It’s hard to describe the mess they made of the bathroom in here. You can see first of all that there’s no door between the bedroom and bathroom even though a pocket door would have fit. Then the shower is just right next to the sink area with no door or curtain or anything blocking the water from just splashing right on to the floor. You could see the TV from the shower, so I guess if you are in a hurry and want to watch the end of the game, you’re in luck! But you’ll also get wet when you turn on the shower controls. On the bright side, the toilet (on the other side of the sink) at least has a door.

I ended up filling out the survey after we stayed there and noted all of these design issues. The GM wrote back and stated that they would be addressing these issues in their upcoming renovation.

On the good side, the bed was comfortable and there were plenty of charging outlets in convenient places. The minibar with free water, sparkling water and soda was restocked by housekeeping after we drank some of the contents. The only free snack was a bag of potato chips.

Breakfast was served in the only restaurant on the premises called The Bar Downstairs and Kitchen. It’s a shame that there’s not a street level or above nice restaurant here. It was apparently a Covid casualty.

As a Globalist, we were supposed to be limited to one cold beverage, one hot beverage and one entrée, but we ordered some side items and everything was comped. We ordered a few different things over the two days we were there with the help of our Guest of Honor daughter and her boyfriend the first morning.

Everything was made fresh and tasted good. The coffee drinks (iced and hot) were made to order. I could see getting a bit bored of the short menu after a few days. You can see the Andaz 5th Avenue Breakfast Menu here. We didn’t order anything from room service while there. We’re in New York after all where anything you want can be delivered quickly.

Overall, the location of the hotel was perfect for our needs, the room and suite were both spacious and despite the weird bathroom in the suite, we enjoyed our stay. The staff in the lobby and the restaurant were all helpful and friendly, not always a given in Manhattan.

Would we stay here again? Probably, although there are just so many hotels in Manhattan that we rarely stay at the same place twice. If they do renovate, I’d be curious to check it out again just to see if they fix the suite layout issues.

Up Next: A Fun Day in Manhattan

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