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LA County is home to quite a few Hyatt properties, but a lot of them are in areas that are (how can I put this delicately?) uninspiring, so the fact that we now have a Hyatt west of the 405, not on airport property, and within a short walk of the beach, should be good news.
The newest Hyatt in LA county is the Hyatt Centric Delfina Santa Monica and while the property has been bookable through Hyatt for a few weeks, it was only added to the World of Hyatt on Wednesday 18 September.
Don’t, however, rush to book the property just yet. It’s a Hyatt in name, but it probably has a little way to go before it’s a Hyatt in the way that most Hyatt fans would expect and want it to be.
The Hyatt Centric Delfina Santa Monica
This is the former Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica and it sits on Pico Blvd between Hwy. 1 and 4th St.
It’s about a 15 minute walk to the top of the road leading down to the pier and to the 3rd street shopping area, and it’s about a 9 minute walk to the beach.
Relative to the rest of Los Angeles, this is where it’s located.
Outside of busier times, it’s a 25 minute car journey to LAX, a 25 minute car journey to the heart of Beverly Hills, and a 25 minute car journey to Malibu Pier, so it’s location is pretty good.
The road on which the property stands (Pico) can be and the building housing the property isn’t going to win any architectural beauty awards, but neither of those is the main reason not to book a stay here just yet.
The key reason to wait is that the property is about to get a $16m makeover which, we’re told, will bring a ‘fresh, modern touch’ to the hotels 315 rooms as well as ‘reimagining the property’s dining experience’ with the introduction of a new all-day-dining restaurant and bar.
The renovations will also include the lobby and guest arrival area, but it’s not clear if the fitness centre and the outdoor pool area will be getting a facelift as well.
The hotel will not be closing during the renovations (using promo code 15OFF visitors can enjoy 15% off stays taken through 31 October 2024), so a phased approach starting this fall is the path that’s going to be taken with works expecting to continue into the second quarter of 2025.
Destination fee
Annoyingly, this is yet another Hyatt property that is choosing to add a rip-off fee to bookings, so for any stays made going forward, you can expect to pay an extra $35/night (on top of the room rate) for benefits you almost certainly don’t need or should be getting anyway.
Here’s how the hotel puts it:
A daily destination fee of $35.00 (subject to change) is applied to each room of your stay in order to provide the following services and amenities, which enhance the guest experience. Please contact the hotel directly for more information.
- Premium Internet Access (unlimited devices)
- 20% discount on movie tickets at AMC Santa Monica
- 20% discount on first beverage in restaurant
- Daily Bike Rental
- Daily Game Room Usage
- Beach Towels
- Daily Morning Coffee in Lobby
- Daily Flavored Water Station in Lobby
- Beach Yoga classes (Max. of 2 ppl, additional attendees can join for $25 per person)
It’s hard to know where to start with all of that garbage and I’d encourage anyone being charged this fee to challenge it wherever possible.
The fee won’t be added to award bookings, and if you’re a Hyatt Globalist member you won’t get charged it on cash bookings either, but the mere fact that this property has the temerity to charge for nonsense like discounted movie tickets, flavored water in the lobby, access to a game room, and a bike rental that most people probably won’t use, is very, very, very, annoying.
World of Hyatt details
The Hyatt Centric Delfina Santa Monica has joined the World of Hyatt as a Category 6 property and that means that it will cost World of Hyatt members 21,000/25,000/29,000 points per night depending on the season, and as the property has yet to release its award calendar, we can’t tell just how hard to find off-peak dates will be and how prevalent peak pricing will be.
Right now, Category 6 seems high, and I’d guess that the property’s proximity to the beach is doing a lot of the work here.
The Andaz West Hollywood spent years as a Category 5 property (it only moved to Category 6 this year) and that’s in considerably better repair than the Hyatt Centric Santa Monica, as are the Thompson Hollywood and the Shay in Culver City (two more Category 6 properties that aren’t too far away), so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Final thoughts
Overall, I’m going to be interested to see what Hyatt does with this property as it has made its way through a number of Marriott brands before ending up as a Hyatt Centric, and while I remember enjoying the views from the top floor at an event hosted here about 8 years ago, I also remember thinking that the property looked dated even back then.
I doubt there has been any major work done to it since then, so the $16m that is being spent on bringing it up to Hyatt standards will probably have to go a long way, and as a Category 6 property that’s bold enough to charge an inexcusable ‘destination fee’, it’s going to have to look good.
I should be down in Santa Monica next week some time, so if I remember (and if I have the time) I’ll drop by the property to see what it looks like now (before the makeover) and we can then compare the pictures I take to what the hotel looks like next year when, hopefully, all the works are complete.
Have you stayed at or visited this property in one of its previous incarnations? What was it like?
