I have to say I was excited and looked forward to my stay. At the end. I don’t think it was worth it. And it was because of what Hoshinoya Tokyo is, it is a ryokan, not a hotel, and it is a Japanese chain. It was not imbued with the spirit of providing utmost comfort and pampering to its guest. It is more focused on the onsen, the Japanese culture, and the provision of daily meals.
It is not where you should stay to hear a lot of Yes. No concierge service, so they won’t help you get a reservation because they provide meals in the ryokan (which hotel doesn’t?). No early check in or courtesy late check out. If you want to check out late, it’s 9,000 JPY per hour - even when it doesn’t cost the hotel anything. No currency exchange service. If you want to order meals, you have to place the order the day before. No bathrobe provided, and when asked, first they said they didn’t have them, then they provided but warned me I should only wear them inside the room (I don’t remember a time in my life when I wore bathrobe walking around any hotel), and that since the quantity was limited, they would not change the bathrobe during my stay - it all sounded like a conversation I would have with my school principal, one that was not so friendly.
The fancy picture of the centerpiece which flooded Instagram was one place on the hallway, first floor, where we took off our shoes before entering the hotel. Reception is on the second floor, and the interior was a mixed in style, I don’t know how to call it. It was dated and furnished with uncomfortable sofas and chairs. We and other guests were not allowed to checked in until 3 pm (regardless whether a room was available) so we could see several parties, some with small children hanging out on those sofas like at a train station. Not all of us can time our flight to arrive at the hotel at exactly 3 pm, so it was a tiresome wait during which we were provided with one cup of tea per person the whole time. After that long wait, the welcome ritual with snacks at the lounge on our floor became quite pointless. We already did not feel welcomed. Service at Hoshinoya Tokyo was also not great and definitely not 5 star. As a guest pointed out, it’s difficult to get to the entrance via taxi. The basement entrance was dark. Room cleaning was not reliable - we left the room for 3 hours in the morning, came back at 1 pm and the room was not cleaned. But if you stayed in (which well, what you are supposed to do at a ryokan), they wouldn’t go in to clean or even asked if you wanted the room to be cleaned. On such a day, I asked if I could get new towels when we left for dinner, the staff said yes, but nothing happened when we came back and no follow up call to let us know why. There’s no view from our room (executive room at the corner). The hotel is surrounded by other taller buildings. When we opened the window screen, we could see people from the other building office and they could see us. It’s all grayish.
Staying at a ry
Fabuloso
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