HOSHINOYA Tokyo

The architecture is beautiful, and that is where the positives end. We booked this hotel more than six months in advance, yet on arrival our family was split across two different floors. In a hotel built around the idea of shared communal spaces on each floor, that matters. It immediately took away the ability for us to enjoy the stay together as a family in the way the hotel’s own concept is meant to work. What made it worse was that, rather than taking responsibility or showing any real understanding, the blame was effectively passed back to me. No effort was made to even attempt to correct this. The biggest disappointment, however, was the service. On our first night, my wife asked for help with a restaurant and some basic assistance, and instead of being properly helped she was dismissed and left to work it out for herself. For a hotel at this level, that is simply not good enough. The whole place seems designed around minimalism at the expense of function. The lighting is poor, the bedside socket placement is badly thought through, and even simple things become unnecessarily awkward. The communal coffee areas sound nice in theory, but in practice they are fiddly and unreliable. On two floors the espresso machines were not working, and when I went to make a coffee there was no milk or creamer available. Basic details were repeatedly missed. Other irritations kept adding up. The lifts are painfully slow. Booking an airport transfer was more difficult than it should ever have been. Staff often seemed unknowledgeable, and to top it off, the front desk shuts at 9pm, which feels absurd for a hotel of this supposed standard. We were even made to come down to reception to settle a taxi bill, only to then be told that we would need to pay the driver ourselves the next day. Even as we were leaving in a hurry, staff kept asking for the room keys back. Because our family had been split across floors, we had been given more than 12 keys in total, and the whole exchange felt as though we were being treated with suspicion. It was ridiculous and a poor final impression. This is a hotel that looks special in photographs but does not work properly in reality, either in design or in service. Behind the attractive architecture, the actual guest experience was deeply disappointing.