Hyatt’s Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London (Mini-Review)

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Earlier in the year (further back than I care to admit), Joanna and enjoyed a short break at Hyatt’s newest central London property, the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, and what you’ll find below are a few comments about the property and quite a few pictures. This isn’t a full review of the Great Scotland Yard as the Covid restrictions that were around at the time didn’t allow us to get a full feel for what the property has to offer, but the pictures and commentary that you’ll find in this post should give you a good idea of what the Great Scotland Yard Hotel is like.

Headline Information

• Stay length – 2 nights (weekday)
• Cost to me – 25,000 World of Hyatt Points per night
• Cash cost of the same night (at the time of booking) – £312/$430 per night (inc. taxes & fees)
• Elite status held during the stay – World of Hyatt Discoverist Status (courtesy of card_name)
• Does the property have an Executive Lounge or equivalent? – No

Location

The Great Scotland Yard Hotel has a very central London location and is within walking distance of a significant number of London’s key visitor attractions (Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, The Houses of Parliament, etc,…).

If you’re visiting with a view to walking around London, you will struggle to find a better located hotel.

A Brief Introduction

The check-in area a the Great Scotland Yard is in keeping with the persona of a boutique property that the hotel portrays. There’s no big entrance hall with a grand reception desk, instead, the small-ish area just past the front doors is decorated with memorabilia depicting the property’s law enforcement past (Scotland Yard was the original home of London’s Metropolitan Police Force)…

…and the reception area itself is just a couple of desks with armchairs for guests (the Gritti Palace in Venice has a similar setup).

At the time of this visit, I hadn’t yet earned the World of Hyatt Globalist status that I now hold (I had Discoverist status courtesy of my World of Hyatt Credit Card) but that didn’t prevent the hotel from upgrading us from the standard King Bed room that we had booked to a King Bed City View room.

A King Bed City View Room

Our room was located on the 3rd floor of the hotel (the property goes up to the 6th floor) and the corridors leading to the room were bright and welcoming (I hate dark hallways).

The layout of the King Bed City View Room is pretty standard – a small hallway leads to the sleeping are and the bathroom is off the hallway.

There’s no desk in this room but it offers a small table with two chairs which can double as a desk (there are power outlets close enough to the table to make a reasonably practical place to work if you need to).

The main part of the room is dominated by a King Bed and in this room’s case (other King Bed City View rooms may be different), there’s very little space on either side of the bed.

To call the areas on either side of the bed “tight” would be an understatement.

Opposite the bed are the room’s table and chairs, a large flatscreen TV, and a cabinet which as you’ll see in a moment, is home to the mini-bar.

The hallway is where the room’s storage area and closets are to be found and the in-room safe is hidden away within one of the drawers.

The bathroom comes with a good-size shower but no bath (considering the size of the room, this was a good decision by the designers) and is decorated in a style from years gone by.

The design of the bathroom may date back a few years but the design of the toilet does not – this room has one of the increasingly popular Japanese style toilets that are appearing in more and more London properties (some of the rooms at the Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill also offer a similar toilet).

Importantly, while the shower may look like it comes from the middle part of the 20th century, its performance is from the 21st-century so we had no complaints about the water pressure.

At this point, you may be wondering what the view of the city was like from our “King Bed City View” room and what famous London landmarks were visible from the property. Well, this was the view we had:

The room looked out on the street the hotel sits on (also called Great Scotland Yard) and towards the building across the road. This wasn’t so much a “City View” room as a “Street View” room and I suspect that the only reasons the property calls these rooms City View rooms are because “street view” sounds bad and the lesser ranked rooms don’t have a view of the outside world.

Tip: For a short stay (or a stay during the winter when London is often rainy, overcast, and dark), I would probably turn down an upgrade to a City View room and keep the standard King Bed room which according to the property’s website, is almost 20 sq ft larger.

The Bar

The 40 Elephants Bar at the great Scotland yard Hotel is a beautiful space that’s open from 11:00 to 23:00 Sunday through Thursday and 11:00 to 24:00 on Fridays and Saturdays.

There’s a nice atmosphere in the bar, the cocktails are good, the staff members are friendly, and the decor makes you feel like you’ve been taken back to a less complicated time. It’s a very easy space in which to relax and that’s not something that you can say about a lot of hotel bars.

The Yard

The main restaurant at the Great Scotland Yard is called The Yard and this is where breakfast and dinner are both served.

At the time of this visit, buffets were still not being offered (a breakfast buffet may be offered now) but the breakfast menu on offer was more than adequate and the food and coffee that we tried were very good.

If you like a good poached egg, this is definitely somewhere you should try.

Overall

Negatives

• The room wasn’t unusually small for a city center hotel, but the way it was laid out made the room feel a little confined and the small space left on either side of the bed would make getting in and out of the bed a challenge for people of size or who aren’t fully mobile.
• The “city view” wasn’t a city view at all, and not only is this likely to lead to some disappointment but it could also be considered a little misleading.

Positives

• The location is excellent for anyone hoping to walk around the center of London and to visit a lot of the main sights on foot. If walking isn’t your thing, there are two underground (subway) stations, not more than a 7-minute walk away.
• The decor of the property is nice and it doesn’t feel like a big-chain hotel so this is probably as close as you’ll get to a boutique hotel experience in London that you can pay for with points.
• The bar is beautiful and a great place to enjoy a drink and relax after a day of wandering around London.
• All the members of staff we encountered were welcoming and friendly
• The upgrade to a room with good natural light was a nice touch considering my relatively lowly elite status.

If you’re looking for a hotel with a boutique feel and with a fantastic central London location the Great Scotland Yard Hotel should definitely be a property that you consider. From a Hyatt point of view, however, I would pick the Churchill over the Great Scotland Yard.

I prefer the room layouts at the Churchill, I like the fact that the Churchill is in an area where it’s easy to escape from the tourists (despite being well located for a lot of what London has to offer), I like the more spacious feel of the Churchill, and I like the fact that the property offers an executive lounge and that the rooms offer a desk at which I can work.

If you’re looking for a smaller, cozier property, the Churchill probably won’t work for you, and if you want a short walk to some of London’s most famous sights the Great Scotland Yard will serve you better. But considering both properties charge 25,000 points/night and considering that cash rates are often higher at the Great Scotland Yard than at the Churchill, the Churchill will probably be a better choice for most Hyatt fans reading this review.