We stayed at the Andaz West Hollywood expecting a typical great stay at Hyatt but came away feeling like it was incomplete.

Booking the Andaz West Hollywood

Official link to hotel: https://www.hyatt.com/andaz/en-US/laxss-andaz-west-hollywood

I had an expiring Category 1-7 free night award to use up. The thing that ultimately is quite frustrating with these awards is that you have to use them within 6 months of earning them. These are supposed to be a reward for reaching 60 Hyatt elite nights. But with such a short timeframe to use them, it’s hard to make it work. We book our travel far in advance and while we can potentially replace nights with these awards, these can’t stack with suite upgrade awards.

Since we had no other use for the award, we instead settled on a staycation. We’ve been wanting to try the hotel, which at the time was a Category 6. (It has since moved down to Category 5.) Under the post-2026 devaluation award chart, Category 5 hotels cost between 15,000 and 35,000 Hyatt points per night.

Cash rates tend to fluctuate between $300 and $400 per night.

Destination fee

The Andaz WeHo unfortunately has a mandatory $32/night destination fee. This fee includes:

• Coffee in the Lobby Lounge (6AM to 8AM)
• Daily Wine Time
• Local Snacks in Lobby Lounge
• Premium Wi-Fi
• Discounts to local businesses

And that’s it. Honestly, this destination fee doesn’t provide much at all. All Andaz hotels give guests free drinks and snacks in their room. And rather than give snacks in the room, they give it in the front. We don’t consider discounts to things like boutique stores and tour buses to be all that much of an amenity. And if everyone gets Premium Wi-Fi, is it actually ‘premium’?

What this boils down to is two hours of free coffee and wine in the afternoon. Many Andaz hotels already have wine in the afternoon for free. Thus, this destination fee feels like a completely shameless money grab.

Of course, what resort or destination fee isn’t?

Earning World of Hyatt points

Full disclosure: in this section are refer-a-friend links where I may earn some points for referring. There is no requirement to use the below referral links to apply but note your offer may differ when going directly to the card issuer.

Chase has a couple of cards that earn Ultimate Rewards points that can transfer to Hyatt at a 1:1 rate:

• The Chase Sapphire Preferred card (refer-a-friend link) has a limited-time offer of 100,000 points for spending $5,000 in the first three months. It has a $95 annual fee.
• There is currently a limited-time offer (refer-a-friend link) on the Chase Ink Business Unlimited that gives an excellent 100,000 points for spending $8,000 in the first three months. There is no annual fee.

The Hyatt personal credit card (not an affiliate link) offers a 30,000 point bonus when spending $3,000 in three months. On top of that, you get 2X earnings during the first six months until you reach $15,000 in spend. At most, this is a 45,000 card for spending $15,000–and most certainly not the 60,000 bonus it claims disingenuously claims. But, on the bright side, if that $15,000 spend happens within the same calendar year, you’ll also get six elite night credits and a Category 1-4 free night certificate.

The small business version of the Hyatt credit card (refer-a-friend link) offers a 60,000 point bonus when spending $5,000 in three months. The main appeal here is the easier path towards earning elite status (5 elite night credit for every $10,000 in spend per calendar year), but it also gives up to $100 back on Hyatt purchases.

First impressions of the Andaz West Hollywood

We arrived during rush hour, with traffic fully jammed right outside the hotel. Just moving one block took about 10 minutes of driving. Whatever you do, don’t drive around here when traffic is at its peak in the late afternoon. The roads around here simply do not seem built wide enough to support the number of cars passing through.

Anyways, we made it over to the valet area, where parking is a whopping $75 nightly for guests. Otherwise, visitors are looking at a $22 charge for two hours of parking. No one said West Hollywood is cheap. If you’re here as a Globalist on an award stay, valet is thankfully included for free. Self-parking behind the hotel, however, isn’t chargeable to the room and thus isn’t covered.

Once inside the hotel, we made our way over to the front desk, hidden in the corner. The lighting over here was a bit dark, but some of that could have just been the dark decor. I’m used the Andaz hotels having more of a lighter, more playful vibe. The agent efficiently checked us in, confirmed parking is covered on my award stay, and told me where to get breakfast. From there, we were off to head on up to our room.

You might recognize Andaz hotels for its free minibar snacks (non-alcoholic), like at the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht. Well, in an effort to save on costs, rather than leaving the snacks in your room, they leave them at the front desk. Perhaps the guilt of someone watching over you will mean you don’t take more than you need?

Also in the lobby is the filtered water and coffee (in the morning only). It’s nice that you can stop by anytime and get filtered water. The downside is there is no water bottles in room, so if you need water at night, you’ll need to make the trek down here.

On our way up to the room, Char had to stop off and check out the collection of shoes because why not?

The room

Our room for this quick stay was up on the 7th floor (#709). At first, the room numbers between the doors confused us a bit until we noticed the small arrows. I’ll say that I prefer more standard indicators.

The bedroom

Our room was a two-queen bed setup, which had rather bare walls. Again, the theme of the hotel seemed to be dark colors and that carried into the bedroom. To us, it felt rather drab, which doesn’t exactly come with a positive connotation.

Across from the beds is a TV, Bluetooth speaker, and the desk. We tried using Chromecast in our room but it didn’t work. Normally Hyatt is pretty good with pairing your devices to the in-room TV but not this time.

Next to the TV was a decorative dog statue. It adds a little bit of flair to the room, I suppose.

Naturally, the kids immediately decided to ride it because that’s just what kids do. They don’t ride regular dogs, but decorative dogs just call out to them.

Underneath the counter is the mini-fridge. As expected, there’s no minibar setup inside.

Near the window is a cozy chair that faces outward if you want to do some people-watching. You don’t exactly get that much foot traffic here, though.

And then across from that chair is another chair that’s awkwardly in its own nook. It’s admittedly a little hard to see the black chair against the black-mirrored wall. They have to really dig into the dark theme!

You’ll see it better in the picture below, where the family decided to pose in this area.

The view outside is of Sunset Blvd. Unfortunately, this room gets a ton of light pollution all night long thanks to that giant digital screen across the street. As regular readers might recall, I like to wake up with the sun. You can’t do that if you need to shut the shades all night long.

Bathroom

Oh boy, let’s talk about the bathroom because I don’t like it at all. First, it’s one of those with a sliding door that doesn’t feel like it locks well.

The bathroom vanity and mirror is fine enough. It’s not the part of the bathroom I would complain about. They didn’t give enough towels for the four of us, but that’s an all-too-common gripe I have with hotels. They should know how many people are staying in the room, and the correct number of towels is a basic way to “get it right”.

But where I have the most problems is this shower. What’s not great?

• The shower/tub combo, which doesn’t feel that luxurious.
• There is low water pressure from the showerhead.
• On top of that, the spray coverage is quite poor.

Guess what? The hotel put up a sign that says they understand there are issues with the shower. Rather than fix issues, they blame the poor shower on California regulations that force them to have a poor shower. Very strange since almost every other hotel we’ve stayed in hasn’t had these same problems. Is it a problem just in West Hollywood? Maybe, but they’re not blaming city regulations and rather state regulations. There has to be more to this story that they’re not saying.

Shower amenities are Byredo Eleventh Hour, which are good. The note behind the amenities say you can purchase some for $75/bottle.

The noise…

First of all, our room was rather close to the elevators, so unfortunately, we could hear the elevator opening and closing through the night. If that was the only problem, we wouldn’t mind it all that much.

The bigger noise problem comes from Sunset Blvd. Yes, you might say that it should be expected that there’s a lot of noise because it’s a busy, popular street in the heart of West Hollywood. But that doesn’t mean the hotel can’t improve its setup. There were gaps in the windows that let in all sorts of noise pollution. Fix those windows and you can fix most of the noise problems at least in this room. We’re not sure how bad the noise is in other rooms.

If you can, try to get a room that instead faces towards the Hollywood Hills West. You’ll be much happier if you do since there’s no traffic off in that direction. Rather than fix the issues in the room, the hotel instead left two pairs of earplugs. The better solution is to use a white noise app on your phone.

Dining options at the Andaz West Hollywood

Riot House Restaurant

Hours:

• Breakfast
  • 6:30AM – 11AM weekdays
  • 6:30AM – 12PM weekends
• Lunch
  • 11:30AM – 2PM Sunday – Thursday
  • 12:30PM – 2PM Friday – Saturday
• Dinner
  • 4PM – 10PM Sunday – Thursday
  • 4PM – 11PM Friday – Saturday

We’ve only been here for breakfast, which is where Globalists and those on Guest of Honor awards eat for free. You’ll find Riot House at the far end of the lobby opposite the front desk.

Once there, you’ll find a large kitchen where you can watch the chefs cook.

Our table was close to the buffet station, with a black sofa and a black countertop.

If breakfast is included for you, you’ll get to avoid paying $44.99 per adult or $19.99 per child for the buffet. Thankfully, Globalist status and Guest of Honor awards cover the 20% mandatory tip and 3% mandatory surcharge. The buffet (along with made-to-order eggs) is the only thing here at the restaurant for breakfast.

We’ll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves. The items at the buffet were perhaps above average compared to a regular buffet. On the downside, there aren’t many options. They definitely went with the quality-over-quantity approach, which isn’t a bad decision. But it also means you might not find what you want.

Overall, it works for us. The food was good and the omelet we ordered (not pictured) was also exactly what we wanted. The breakfast, though small, might be the best part of our stay at the hotel.

Riot House Market

Hours: 6:30AM – 9PM daily

If you just want to pick up something quick, Riot House Market is an option. As you might assume, it’s right next to Riot House om the lobby level. Think of it like an overpriced convenience store. But if you need something and don’t want to leave the hotel, it’s there.

The Sundeck

Hours: 7AM – 10PM daily (when seasonally open)

If you want to just chill by the rooftop pool and order food, the good news is that you can during warmer months. When we were here in February, The Sundeck was closed for the season. But, we imagine it’s a popular option during warm summers. From what I can tell, there’s not an official restaurant up here but rather you can order and they will bring it out to you.

You’d normally expect poolside restaurants to only be open during lunch and the afternoon, but this one is pretty much from sunrise to sunset.

Wine Time

If you’re a registered hotel guest, you can participate in the Andaz WeHo’s aptly-named “Wine Time”. This is a complimentary wine offering (well, to the extent that you call something included in the destination fee “complimentary”).

If you’ve read Andaz’s own Instagram post, you’d come to expect the hours are 5PM to 6PM Sunday – Thursday and 7PM – 8PM Friday – Saturday. Well, that appears to have been incorrect as we were in the lobby around 7:30PM on Saturday night and saw no setup.

Your best bet is to just check with the front desk when you arrive. However, if you’re like us and already have dinner reservations, finding out when it is on arrival might not help. With times seemingly not posted, it sure seems like they don’t want people taking advantage.

The rooftop pool

Up on the Penthouse floor is the rooftop pool. When you exit the elevator, you’ll be inside a foyer with a small set of stairs that take you the rest of the way outside. Not exactly ADA-friendly.

There’s a wall of red flowers before you head outside, and the kids decided to pose in front of it.

Once outside, you’ll immediately see the pool. In the winter, we found the water far too cold to enjoy (it barely felt heated). But we could see how it might be popular during the summer. The pool depth ranges between 3 feet and 6 feet.

There isn’t that much seating up here for how popular it might be during warmer months. Of course, in the winter, there’s more than enough seating.

From the roof, you’ll get a nice view of the Hollywood Hills West area just north of the hotel.

Or, you can look out towards Downtown LA way in the distance.

Fitness Center

On the second floor is the gym, which seemed to be open all day long.

Once inside, you’ll find plenty of exercise machines. There are treadmills that face Sunset Blvd.

And there are free weights and other exercise machines in the other corner.

While here, don’t forget to earn free Hyatt points with Peloton. Just link your Hyatt and Peloton accounts and then log into Peloton from the machine to earn 100 points. Not much but free is free.

Recommendation: We’d pass unless you need to be in the area

We generally enjoy staying at Andaz hotels, but the Andaz WeHo wasn’t our favorite stay.

• The decor wasn’t our thing.
• Noise pollution at night was quite bothersome from both external and internal sources.
• The shower was worse than expected and the hotel seemed content with passing blame.
• It’s expensive, especially if you’re not a Globalist here on an award stay.

That said, the breakfast is tasty and the location is good. But don’t come here expecting a stay close to Hollywood. Hopefully you know that Hollywood and West Hollywood are two distinct areas. If you come here to hang out in Hollywood, you’re going to be disappointed as it’s not walkable to any tourist attractions. Come here for West Hollywood and it’s in a great location.

Have you stayed in the Andaz West Hollywood before?

Suggested reading:

• Bottega Louie WEHO: Great Italian Food for the Whole Family
• The Hits Keep Coming: Hyatt Transfers Devalued from Chase Cards
• Hyatt Guest of Honor: How It Works & What to Know