First, let me get this out of the way: There is no affiliation and no relationship between my blog and this property (and Hyatt) whatsoever! See my policy for comped trips: I do not accept them (not that I have been offered any to date lol!)
As you know, I rarely do trip reports in my blog. Having said that, I must admit that I am generally bored reading trip reports unless it is a property I am thinking about visiting or a property I have visited before (as I am a curious creature to learn if the experience was comparable to mine!). Bloggers do these trip reports as it is easy content to produce, makes it easy to justify tax deductions to offset costs of the trip, diversifies the blog content somewhat and certainly takes the focus away from relentless pumping of affiliate credit cards driven content 🙂 And please smack me upside the head if you ever see me do a multi part trip report, oh pleeeease!
Since I wrote my rant on Greece I am more inclined to point out the positives in my home country. And since I fashion myself to be a travel blogger, well, I need to do these trip reports once in a while. I will not get angry at all if you skip reading this post!
HYATT REGENCY THESSALONIKI GREECE
Ok, let’s get this out of the way first: I LOVE this hotel!
I stayed in this hotel again for two nights in late December before I flew back to the United States. It was my third stay at this property. As you know, Greece is undergoing some tough times for the past five years; the word crisis has become one of the most often used words in every day life. I recently wrote about what is going there in not so glowing language I must admit. I called the country “schizophrenic”. This hotel stands out as a gem in a sea of chaos around it! EVERY interaction with everyone in this hotel has been outstanding. I am proud to be Greek knowing that such high service standards can exist in a hotel in my home land!
Each night costs 12,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points.
Every time I have visited I have been picked up at the nearby Thessaloniki airport (SKG for you aviation geeks) on a shiny new Mercedes. Every time I have been driven back to the airport in a Mercedes except one ( driven on a spacious hotel shuttle van).
I should mention that each staff has been incredibly polite and well dressed and many call you by name! You expect that in higher rated hotels….Everyone appears genuinely interested in making your stay as pleasant as they can. Kudos to management for training the staff so superbly!
The indoor fitness facilities are superb (two separate large rooms with weights and cardio equipment and smaller room for yoga floor exercises).
Great indoor swimming pool.
Spa looks very nice but I have never used it.
The outdoor grounds are fantastic. Beautiful and maintained to the highest standards. Very large swimming pool with outstanding outdoor bar.
There are two restaurants. I only used the main one for breakfast (provided as complimentary in my last stay as Platinum GP member).
Fantastic lobby and bar with seats inside and outside.
All rooms are very large! With large bathrooms. And I got upgraded to one with balcony this time. No suite upgrade provided (remember, I am not Diamond…yet).
The hotel provides complimentary bus shuttle rides to the city center of Thessaloniki. It makes three stops and runs about three times during the day (in the winter). It is about a half hour outside of the city (and just five minutes from the airport).
The hallways are spacious.
The whole place is TOTALLY spotless!
This is THE place to stay if you have a flight in/out of the Thessaloniki airport SKG. Well, heck, this is the place to stay in northern Greece period! I love flying in and out of SKG, much smaller airport and fantastic small Aegean airlines lounge (where you are driven to your airplane for boarding; on a bus, not a Mercedes…but still, come on!).
Will I pick this hotel before Starwood’s Grand Bretagne in Athens? Absolutely! I found the GB to be massively over rated!
Will I pick this hotel before the Hilton Athens? If cost in points was not a concern, No… as the lounge in the Hilton Athens is fantastic. Which leads to…
This property does NOT have a lounge, the only negative about it. Hey, you can’t have everything in life!
The hotel entrance was decorated with Christmas lights and it was just beautiful.
They had a jazz night at the small lobby bar and, along with an $15 all you can drink wine deal, it was mesmerizing…
The wifi rocks everywhere in the hotel!
One of the biggest shopping malls in the Balkans is about five minutes away from the hotel. It has plenty of eateries and many shops, along with 11 screen theater. Easily accessible by taxi.
Here are the wikipedia pages about Thessaloniki and its famous White Tower. Thessaloniki is in northern Greece at least five hours north of Athens! Plenty of Aegean Airline flights between the two cities.
Should you make a special trip to visit this hotel if you are just visiting Athens and the islands? No, it is just too far. But if you have plenty of time you can fly into SKG and spend some time in Northern Greece and rent a car and make it to Athens to then get to the islands.
Some of the pictures below featuring my daughter are from our August 2011 visit.
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first 🙂
You surprise me too, that was almost instantaneous!
Congrats 😉
I kid you not, I was checking out the two SPG properties when I got a notification of this post… Figured I’ll be staying there for abot five days in November to run the marathon – perfect occasion to take advantage of fifth night free, eh. Reading this, you already answere half of my question – guess King George is off the list. Any thoughts on Grande Bretagne or the Radisson?
Whoops, the other way around. GB is a no-go. What about King George?
I have never stayed in King George. It is right next to the GB. Both are of the old grand Athens style. Politician dignitaries stay in these two hotels. Location is the best, you are in the middle of Athens. My stay at the GB left much to be desired…I just don’t get into these old grand style hotels, I much prefer the modern feel.
I loved the Athens Hilton back when it was only 20k per night…I am scared to check how many points it costs now!
You mean the new Radisson Blu? Looks nice, let us know if you stay there. Location may not be the best.
I have stayed at the Holiday Inn by the airport (well not too close but they do pick you up form the airport in a shuttle). It is almost new. And there is a bus stop to downtown right in front of the hotel. May be much cheaper. It was a Pointbreaks hotel a few years ago, a killer deal!
I have stayed in one of the Holiday Inns downtown…Stay away.
The no name smaller hotels around Plaka…well, you get what you pay for.
The Intercontinental is nice too and has reasonable rates. Not in a great part of the city and you are not too far from downtown.
Did I recall you are planning a trip to World Cup games? How is that planning going? (Am thinking of it myself…)
Well I have not heard from my brother on the game tickets situation. I won’t do anything before this clears up. Which probably gets my chances of making it there even less…so it looks like I won’t be going. And it’s just the stupid visa thing to deal with too….So, in other words, the planning is not going 🙂
FYI, EU citizens pay nothing to enter Brazil.
Why do you need to hear from your brother? Just get into the lottery and take your chances. Sure, it may cost you more than it will if your brother scores you some, but when do you think you will ever see Greece in a World Cup game again!?
Also, a visa fee is going to keep you out of this? SMH
I don’t have a good record with lotteries.
I saw Greece in the World Cup here in 1994 and still have nightmares about it.
The issue is many fold: Game tickets and time away from the US…I think I can find my way there someway somehow but can’t really take all this time off. So I am…letting my brother see what he can do to SECURE game tickets…if he can. I guess, deep down, I am trying to find ways to avoid going 🙂
Thanks ABC about the EU citizens needing no visa! I had completely forgotten I now have access to a 2nd passport!
Good luck to your brother on the tickets!
He has some connections with FIFA and the Greek team as he met the coach a few weeks ago. But I think he may be blowing smoke…Or maybe I get there when the team makes it to the 2nd round 🙂
Not really a very prompt comment, but I beat Nick 🙂
I think this is turning into a legendary blog fight indeed!
And you are beating the crap out of him. It is not even close. I wonder if NIck is embarrassed 🙂
We’ll get back to the blog fight later but first things first. George, are there any credit cards I can sign up for if I want to stay at this hotel?
See Steve’s comment right below 😉
You should do a churning challenge on how to get there
“Open up a CSP, CIB, CIP, Barclays Arrival and SPG Amex. Then spend 25000 LH miles to fly from Detroit to Thessaloniki via Hong Kong on Turkish Airlines. Use remaining SPG points to stay at the Hyatt Regency”
Or start a “find five errors game”
Hey Buzz, Have you been to Meteora? Was thinking of starting in Thess, down to the monasteries in Meteora, over to Athens, and then the islands. Was wondering if the trip over to Meteora was worth it.
Thanks!
My hometown is 1 hour east of Meteora. I have been there more than a few times. The Monsasteries is one of those places everyone should visit, just a unique place in the world.
Thessaloniki, going south, stop in Mount Olympus for some hiking, some beaches further south, to Meteora to Delphi to Athens…Nice road trip me thinks. Driving to Meteora going south is not that out of the way so yes, I think it is worth it.
Search for a few award tickets on AA to see if the addition of USairways opened up new opportunities. One a related note, USairways flies PHL to TLV, should we expect this flight to continue once the merger is done?
I need to get over this major hurdle in my real job, working on finishing annual reports…
No clue how long PHL – TLV will last. My wild guess: it’s gone by end of 2014
Apropos of nothing, Scotty G at MileValue has seen fit to delete my provocative comment about the 35K USAir offer vs the 30K offer.
You too?
I should start a “Blogs To Avoid” list and make that blog the only entry in it…
He would’ve censored Gary’s post if he could’ve
Seems the lack of AA and US lounge access hasn’t stopped the usual crowd from incessantly pimping the Amex Platinum card
Lots of bloggers who would never in a million years would fly Delta trying to rationalize a card that essentially is $250 to get Delta lounge access and a few other minor benefits
But the card does pay a huge commission….
I think this card has the highest commission, Ink Bold/Plus cards come next 🙂
Really? AP gave me access to a lounge at every airport I traveled to last year. Only one of them being Delta. Of course, 25K bonus don’t make this card a winner, on the other hand, it won’t cost you more than $50 either if you know what you’re doing. $100 credit for Global Entry isn’t a terrible thing either, me think. Hardly useless, I’ll be missing this card in 2014 since I have to close it soon.
I was talking about after the first year
The point being, lots of bloggers aren’t just talking about how they are keeping the card.
Priority Pass is useless if the lounges are nowhere near the gates you need to fly out of
One of the benefits of Admirals Clubs for those of us who fly AA a lot is that there is often a correlation between where my AA gate is located and where the AA lounge is located
It’s nice that they have a PP lounge in terminal 1 of JFK…. if you’re flying Aeromexico. Not as nice if you’re flying AA, JetBlue or Delta
*aren’t keeping the card…. for the 1st year
I’m still a bit torn on the Amex plat, even though I got squat as compensation for losing Admirals clubs.
Although Amex CS is always good in my experience, Plat CS is exceptional. So that’s worth something to me.
The DFW Cent lounge is worth $100/yr to me easily as an AA flyer.
Delta clubs are worth zero. Priority pass… Maybe $50 for the small airports that only have non-airline lounges.
And National status is worth a little – maybe $25 for my very infrequent rentals.
So it’s close. Definitely tempting to try for a retention bonus.
And George, loved the Greece post a couple posts back. 🙂
Seems like you’re still $75 short, factoring in the $200
Obviously the math changes if you spend a lot of time at DFW and/or LAS and can take advantage of the Centurion lounges
Priority Pass is a black hole for those of us AA flyers who are NYC based
I am keeping it for now and hoping that they will come up with some new benefit. I just got $200 in Southwest gc credit. I was also pissed they offered me nothing as compensation for the huge AA/US lounge access loss….I was too lazy to call them up asap after I heard of it.
If it was only me, I would have closed it the day after the $200 credit came through.
But I use this card different than everyone else!
Ok I’m no lawyer but
“There is no affiliation and no relationship with this property and Hyatt whatsoever”
Followed by
“Each night costs 12,000 hyatt gold pp points”
Sound fishy to me. Are you sure that the property isn’t affiliated with Hyatt? Wait Til you you get DP’d by this latest slipup young man.
Good catch, I need to add TBB in there obviously! I am going to edit that sentence…proudly 😉
You implied you used points, and said that you’re a Hyatt Plat member and got free breakfast. I have a stay booked here and wanted to confirm this, since the hotel staff member I emailed said that breakfast was not given on award stays. It would be great to have breakfast for 4 people for 5 nights.
I am NOT sure! I did not think I was to get free breakfast so i never really asked for it. During this stay I pushed a little harder than usual for a suite upgrade and then I expressed my disappointment (always nicely) and maybe the front desk person took a pity on me and gave it to me. BUT from her manners I am guessing it may very well be offered to everyone! As only a Platinum I did NOT push for clarification. It was a nice surprise indeed!
I was alone too so that may well have been a factor too. Check in only by yourself and not have the whole family with you, that will increase your chances. As everything with how these things go: be nice, smile, have a genuine chit chat and push gently. The worst thing they can say is No 🙂
I think I enjoy this property more because it is in Greece and the services is so unlike Greece!