Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf is a hotel I stayed in several times over the past decade when it was simply called Hyatt San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf.
 
Seemed a proper setting to eat our first fresh Dungeness crab of the season in a room at Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf San Francisco.
 
While the hotel name and interior design changed in the five years since I last stayed at this hotel, Fisherman’s Wharf still seemed basically the same with its tourist souvenir shops and crab stalls, Pier 39 dining and entertainment and sea lions on the docks, views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate, cops arresting a street person as a nuisance on the promenade, and the Powell/Mason cable car turnaround.
Our room view was Cost Plus World Market, founded at Fisherman’s Wharf in 1958, and across the street from Hyatt Centric in the same location it has been for decades.
Best of all was finding $6.99 per pound fresh crab at Safeway in Northpoint Centre during the first week of the 2017-18 commercial catch.
Arrival
Traffic around Fisherman’s Wharf on a Sunday afternoon was more congested than I could have imagined. I spent 20 minutes through six street light changes simply trying to cross a street. In dozens of hotel stays around Fisherman’s Wharf over the years I never paid for hotel parking. I used to think of myself as the king of street parking in San Francisco. That was then and this is now.
$60 to park my car 24 hours when I pulled into the first garage I could actually get into the entrance. It was the Bay Street garage for Pier 2620 Hotel on the same block as Hyatt Centric whose garage is at North Point Street around the corner.
Hyatt Centric is $59 valet only parking. After the drag of having my car in the city for three days with difficulty finding street parking and the high expense of parking garages at $40 to $60 per 24 hours, I will plan on parking out of the city and taking BART next time.
Northpoint Centre parking garage with Safeway two blocks from Hyatt Centric is only $36 per 24 hours, but cars were lined down the block trying to get into that garage when I arrived.
No fanfare or upgrade at check-in with my World of Hyatt Explorist elite status. First time I stayed at this hotel without a suite upgrade.
 
 
 
The room offered typical Hyatt comfort with all the modern conveniences.
 
One feature I did like about the room is the coffee maker was in the cabinet on a tray I was able to take into the bathroom in the morning. Disposable cup coffee makers are annoyingly loud to me and even more so for Kelley who is usually sleeping when I make coffee.
Swimming Pool and Fitness Center
One of the best features of Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf is an outdoor swimming pool on the 3rd floor. The other Hyatt Hotels in the city do not have pools.
 
Another feature of the hotel is a coin-operated guest laundry room.
The fitness room is on the 4th floor. I went inside, but did not take a photo.
Hyatt Centric Brick & Beam dining and bar
One of the changes in the rebranded hotel is the name change from Knuckles to Brick & Beam for the restaurant bar. Breakfast is served in an adjacent space called the Wardroom.
There is a small market in the lobby, a small business center with two computers and a prominent concierge desk.
Fisherman’s Wharf has all the chain hotels clustered together with Marriott, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Hyatt Centric along two blocks of Bay and North Point. Sheraton is two blocks from Hyatt Centric. The former Radisson and Best Western hotels rebranded to independent hotels.
Fisherman’s Wharf San Francisco Hotel Cluster
While most locals would probably advise against taking a car into downtown San Francisco due to the expense of parking and traffic congestion, we wanted our car to allow us to spend our days in the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, green spaces we enjoy and places that are quite time-consuming to reach with public transportation.
After this recent trip into the city, we both agreed that next time we stay in a downtown San Francisco hotel, our car stays out of downtown.
Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf is a World of Hyatt category 4 hotel at 15,000 points per reward night. I used my Hyatt Visa annual free night good for up to category 4 hotels for this one-night stay.
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