This hotel is very basic. It has everything you technically need, and if you don’t care much about the vibe, how a place makes you feel, or the overall atmosphere, then this hotel is okay. But if the feeling and mood of a hotel are part of your travel experience, then this is only a 2-star hotel to me.
The staff rarely greet you. Most of the time, they seem to ignore you unless you actually look directly at them, and then they might say hello. The front desk staff don’t seem interested in serving or interacting with guests. I never really felt welcomed here, and I didn’t feel like I was on vacation while staying at this hotel.
There also doesn’t seem to be any security at the entrance to the residential/guest area. Anyone can seemingly walk in and out of the hotel and access the guest floors, even though the individual rooms use electronic key cards. Again, everything just feels very basic.
I completely understand that not everyone in Japan speaks English, and I don’t expect them to. But for a hotel serving international guests, there should at least be someone at the front desk with enough English to help when communication becomes difficult. During one phone call, the staff member couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand her. She simply stopped speaking and left me sitting in silence on the phone without explaining what was happening. After an awkwardly long silence, I had to use ChatGPT to read the Japanese kanji aloud before she finally responded. A language barrier is understandable. Leaving a guest sitting in silence with no attempt to communicate is not. That feels unprofessional.
Whether a hotel has two stars or five stars, hospitality and professionalism still matter. I didn’t rent some random five-square-meter room in a sketchy alley. This is a hotel, and I expect to at least feel like I’m staying at one.
Overall, the energy here just feels drained. There is very little warmth or enthusiasm from the staff, and the hotel lacks the feeling of hospitality that I expect when I travel. Everything functions, but that’s about it. The biggest problem for me is not the room or the facilities. It is the lack of hospitality, enthusiasm, and feeling of being welcomed as a guest.
