Grand Hyatt San Francisco Rating: 4.0 Pearls

Union Square, San Francisco, California

A standard King Bed room at the Grand Hyatt

Just half a block from Union Square, San Francisco's upscale commercial center, the 685-room Grand Hyatt has all the standard features you'd expect from a large midpriced city hotel -- business center, free gym, decent restaurant -- but each amenity has surprising qualities that evelate a typical Hyatt into, well, a slightly grander one. And with renovations throughout 2012, the hotel continues to improve it's overall appeal.

Take the business center: It offers secretarial services, audiovisual equipment rental, and a notary public -- useful, no doubt, for the conferences and events held in the hotel's 22,000 square feet of meeting space. The 24-hour gym has top of the line equipment added in 2012, with enough of a variety for a solid one-hour workout. Treadmills, stationary bikes, and elliptical machines have individual TV screens, and the hotel provides warm towels and headsets for free. They also added floor-to-ceiling windows, opening up the previously-drab gym to the highrising San Francisco skyline.

The Hyatt's best feature is the Grandviews Restaurant and Lounge, on the 36th floor. Open from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. (with a limited menu between meals), the restaurant has spectacular panoramic views of the city and the bay -- easily the best views in the Union Square area. The Californian cuisine is nothing exceptional, but many guests take in the view while having a cocktail at the lounge, where a nightly piano player provides an appropriate soundtrack to the twinkling lights of San Francisco.

These nicer-than-usual nuances extend to the rooms, which were part of the 2012 renovation, each of one coming with an iHome iPod dock, Internet TV, floor-to-ceiling windows, and plush "Grand Beds" that have pillow-top mattresses, down duvets, and eight soft pillows. Dark wood furniture and a heavy emphasis on brown and indigo fabrics give the rooms a mature and masculine feel; the musky, patchouli-like scent that greeted me when I arrived furthered that impression. The standard rooms are fairly spacious, at 300 square feet, and have a small dressing area separating the bedroom from the marble bathroom.

Still, the Grand Hyatt still doesn't quite fall into the category of "luxury." That's a designation reserved for hotels like the Campton Place Taj, across the street, which offers over-the-top service and premium amenities. At best, this is a very comfortable hotel with above-average features. A similar hotel, also in Union Square, is the JW Marriott. It's slightly more expensive, but the JW has a few more flourishes, like 42-inch flat-screen TVs in the rooms and an elegant lobby atrium (as opposed to the Hyatt's dark lobby dominated by a massive elevator bank). Then again, the Hyatt has that view.

View on a Larger Map

The Grand Hyatt is one block northeast of Union Square, which is famous for its couture shops. Home to enormous outposts of Niketown, Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany, Macy's, Louis Vuitton, and Neiman Marcus, among others, Union Square is to San Francisco what Fifth Avenue is to New York. Locals don't hang out here much, but the square is great for people-watching nonetheless, and occasionally plays host to concerts, small festivals, and demonstrations. If shopping isn't your priority, you might prefer a hotel in a neighborhood closer to some of the biggest tourists attractions, like the Hyatt in Fisherman's Wharf.

• One and a half blocks from the Powell-Mason and Powell-Hyde cable car lines, which run to Lombard Street and Ghirardelli Square or to Fisherman's Wharf, near Pier 39; a 20-minute ride for $5
• $10 to $20 cab ride to the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and Haight-Ashbury
• Discount day-of theater seats available at the Union Square ticket kiosk
• Plenty of dining nearby, but if you want to avoid high-end hotel dining and chain restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory, explore the blocks leading up to Nob Hill, where there's an abundance of small, locally owned restaurants.
• $40, 30-minute cab ride from San Francisco International Airport
• While Union Square is a safe area, be careful of wandering into the neighboring Tenderloin district (starting five blocks southwest of the hotel), an unsavory area with a reputation for drugs, prostitution, and other crime.