rossc815
Couples · November 20252/10
Hyatt Regency Kyoto has cockroaches, and management's response is truly disappointing.
-
My wife and I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Kyoto for part of our honeymoon trip to Japan (our stay was 10/19/25-...Hyatt Regency Kyoto has cockroaches, and management's response is truly disappointing.
-
My wife and I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Kyoto for part of our honeymoon trip to Japan (our stay was 10/19/25-10/23/25), and due to management's completely inadequate response to a complaint with our stay - a live adult cockroach in our room - I am now cancelling my World of Hyatt credit card and no longer need to maintain any loyalty to the Hyatt brand.
Hyatt claims that the Regency Kyoto is a 5-star hotel and the rooms do not live up to 5-star standard in 2025. They were likely very nice rooms in the early 2000s but are definitely tired by modern standards. It feels disingenuous that Hyatt is so intent on calling the Regency Kyoto a 5 star hotel after our stay there.
-Cockroach story
My wife and I spent four days in the "garden level" (basement 1) of the Hyatt Regency Kyoto in October 2025. The room is fine if a bit dated, the carpet is dingy.
As we were packing up to leave on the last day of our stay, my wife saw a cockroach in the bathroom. I confirmed, and sure enough, yep that's a live cockroach scuttling around the bathroom. I got some pictures. We were literally packing to leave, so twenty minutes later we got up to the lobby and spoke with Ayane, the manager on duty. I told her about the cockroach and she was very apologetic. She tried to get us a complimentary taxi ride to Kyoto Station but we had a train to catch so we couldn't wait. I understand there was very little possible to rectify the roach situation in that moment, so hey that's how it goes and we were off to our next leg of the trip.
Because we stayed in a room with an unknown number of cockroaches for four days, when we arrived home after our honeymoon, we deep cleaned all our luggage, clothing, possessions, and souvenirs that could have been exposed to roaches or have roach eggs.
I emailed Hyatt looking to get some sort of reimbursement for our stay because of our cleaning costs and general disgust regarding what should have been a nice part of our honeymoon, and the answer that came back was "we're sorry but upper management says we can't refund your stay. We would like to offer you 10,000 World of Hyatt Points."
This offer of points is a pittance, worth $100 USD at most, and I don't accept any reality that the Hyatt can't offer us at least a partial refund for staying in a "5-star" cockroach hotel room for four days. I rejected their offer, and two days later, another email came from a different manager that they really would like it if I accepted their offer of 10,000 World of Hyatt Points. I rejected it again.
I'm not the type to complain about basically any business transaction. I'm usually a very easy customer to please. But in this situation, I feel like Hyatt absolutely does not care about our experience at the Hyatt Regency Kyoto. Their empty responses basically tell me that I should expect roaches at any "5-star" Hyatt hotel, and to not expect anyone from Hyatt to care if I were to encounter another roach at any of their properties again.
The cockroach was one thing - I understand the reality of running a large commercial building, let alone a chain of thousands of them. I was ready to let bygones be bygones about the cockroach and chalk it up to Kyoto being an old city. But, the incredibly apathetic response from management has confirmed to me that they don't care what experience I have at any of their hotels. I will be cancelling my World of Hyatt credit card and abandoning any loyalty I have to the brand going forward.Show More
