Hyatt Centric's South American digs make your hotel stay an immersive experience in and of itself

Whether you're traveling for work or for pleasure, trying to make time to balance both in an unfamiliar area can be overwhelming and stressful.

International travel is a whole different ballgame when it comes to planning your trip — the desire to explore and lose oneself in a new world and culture seems to grow, while the ease of doing so only seems to diminish.

And though booking a hotel might seem to be (and, quite frankly, is) a necessary item to check off on the pre-travel to-do list, it can often be the most frustrating and confusing part of planning.

Being able to stay somewhere that does the hard work of serving you the culture you're aiming to explore right to your front door would not only be a major advantage, but a preference amongst travelers trying to make the most of their experiences.

This approach is exactly what Hyatt is trying to create with Hyatt Centric -- a brand that aims to not only choose the best location in each major city for its guests, but to make every guest's stay at each of its respective properties an immersive experience in and of itself.

Hyatt boasts over 760 hotels across 14 unique brands in 58 different countries — an impressive portfolio that, both on paper and off, makes the company one of the most illustrious in the hospitality industry.

With hotel brands that range across differentiating levels of luxury and modernization, Hyatt excels where other large-scale hotel groups seem to fail: The company is skilled at specifying a clearcut vision, concept and execution thereof for each of its respective brands and the properties that each of those brands encompasses.

With Hyatt Centric, each property aims to hit the bullseye between luxury and lifestyle, with a modern overlay that’s unique and characteristic to each individual hotel based on its geographical location and the culture of the city that it inhabits.

The ‘Centric’ in the Hyatt Centric name bears quite a simple meaning — each Hyatt Centric is strategically placed in the center of the action and the most sought-after part of its respective city.

In other words, when you see a Hyatt Centric, you know you’ve found the most bustling, vivacious neighborhood of whichever major city you’re exploring.

The brand’s two newest properties in Latin America— Hyatt Centric Las Condes Santiago (Chile) and Hyatt Centric San Isidro Lima (Peru) — opened just two days apart from each other in May 2018 and after having the chance to check both out, the one-of-a-kind model, mission and allure of Hyatt Centric became indisputable to us.

Location over everything

Just as Santiago and Lima are two completely different cities, each hotel is completely different and reflective of different aspects and features of Chilean and Peruvian culture.

Both the Las Condes and San Isidro districts are urban areas full of businesses, museums, restaurants and residential buildings that all seamlessly bleed into one another.

The centers of each city are lively, animated and innovative all at once, making them the perfect market and location for a Hyatt Centric property.

Exiting the lobby and walking quite literally onto the street will bring you into the heart of El Golf neighborhood in Santiago; doing the same will land you right in the heart of San Isidro, minutes from the famous Parque del Olivar in the Centric's Lima location.

But aside from the fact that both hotels comfortably live smack in the middle of their city's best cocktail spots, shoe shops and business buildings, each Hyatt Centric is strategically located at a convenient distance from the surrounding neighborhoods that completely embody the vibe of the city that they represent.

For the Hyatt Centric Las Condes (which is directly located in the business neighborhood of El Golf), a quick cab ride will get you to Patio Bellavista where you can throw back a few cocktails on a popular block of bars often inhabited by University students and nightlife enthusiasts alike.

During the day, a 30-minute ride will take you to the Lastarria neighborhood, which is characterized by small shops, adorable restaurants and street vendors weaved together in dreamy, manageable environment.

The hotel is also mere minutes from popular tourist haunts like the Gran Torre Santiago (the tallest building in all of South America) or the cable cars that will drive you up Cerro San Cristobal, offering unmatchable views of the Andés.

This geographical model is emulated in Hyatt Centric’s San Isidro Lima location as well, with Ubers (which are legal here, though not in Chile) taking hotel guests 15 minutes to Miraflores for paragliding, surfing and foggy yet stunning rocky beach views.

A separate 15 ride will take you into the city’s well-known bohemian area, the Barranco district. At night, bars and clubs ooze locals and foreigners into the streets through the early hours of the morning.

History buffs can also get a look at famous museums, historic buildings and government centers through walking or driving tours in each city.

Location is perhaps the most important factor in Hyatt Centric’s properties and its clear how precisely well thought-out and strategic each building is placed.

Delicate decor

The hotels themselves serve as launchpads for exploring the city and its neighborhoods at large — they are places where a modern-day explorer can come back from a full-day or a few minutes of immersion and exploration without ever having to leave the action.

Thus, the entire experience of staying in a Hyatt Centric is a bit of a trip itself — the dynamic of the neighborhood, the culture of the local people, the tastes, sounds and sights from the best of what each city has to offer live within the halls of each floor, on the couches in each curated lobby, inside the hand-painted artwork in every room.

Each hotel has decor and design that is so completely tailored to the city and culture thereof which it belongs to that it’s nearly mind-boggling — iconographies of the Mapuche Indians in Centric’s Las Condes location, walls of hand-tiled Peruvian copper in the San Isidro Lima lobby.

And though both hotels look completely unrelated to each other aesthetically upon first glance and feel, there is a semblance of uniformity and modernization that serves as a template of sorts for all Centric locations globally, something that is also evident in the concierges and hotel staff in each property.

Savvy staffing

At a Hyatt Centric you won’t find your typical well-rehearsed and overtly professional hotel concierges, bartenders or staff members because the Centric guest isn’t your business-focused, uniformity-driven customer.

Hyatt Centric properties are for the millennial-minded customer, someone who wants to be near all of the action outside the doors of the hotel, but still has the comfort of a luxury accommodation with WiFi to connect to so that they can check their Instagram feed when they return to the lobby.

It’s for the person who may have a business meeting in the morning but wants to use their afternoon break to ask the concierge which local bar they should go to for the best craft beer, knowing that the concierge won’t only deliver a quick and helpful response, but a personal anecdote as well.

It’s for the traveler who never wants to stop exploring, even on a business trip — for someone who wants a hotel that gives them everything they need but nothing extraneous that they do not.

Curated cuisine

A major part of this is evident in the mingling and welcoming of locals alongside hotel guests in each property’s common areas and most notably, each property’s restaurant which have become neighborhood staples in and of themselves.

In Centric’s Las Condes location, it’s nearly impossible to get a seat at Talbo Brasserie, where the lunch crowd is businessmen and locals as the majority, instead of hotel guests.

Stocked up on the finest Chilean wines and traditional dishes, the restaurant has become a social scene as much has it is a place to come and dine amongst friends or colleagues.

The San Isidro property boasts Isidro Bistro Limeño, where dishes from executive chef Carlos Testino play on traditional Peruvian flavors with a whimsical, colorful twist, something that guests and locals alike will want to photograph.

Put these alongside the one-of-a-kind cocktails from the restaurant’s mixologist Mauricio de la Puente (whose drinks are known for tasting just as good as their presentation makes them look) and you have a meal that will have guests most certainly eating with their eyes first.

Social media hotbeds

Aesthetic presentation is everything when it comes to the millennial-minded traveler, as there is, of course, an inherent focus on finding moments that are effortlessly ‘Instagramable' throughout their journey.

Certain Hyatt Centric locations have designated photo walls or murals where guests are encouraged to snap their shots and upload with corresponding hashtags, while others locations will have sights that speak for themselves -- clinking of drinks alongside the sleek rooftop pool and bar get the job done for the Santiago location, a slow-motion video of Testino’s pistachio-ice-cream-filled churro tower will do the trick in San Isidro.

With two hotels that essentially serve you Chile and Peru in your face, it’s exciting to think about which cities and countries Hyatt Centric might expand to next.

The brand plans to open 10-12 new properties within the next two years and currently has 25 properties in development (counting those 10-12 new ones that are set to open.)

Though no one can know for sure just exactly what each new property will entail and offer, it’s a guarantee that when guests leave any Hyatt Centric, they won’t leave just knowing about the hotel but knowing the entire neighborhood.

How many hotels can you say that about?