Hakone Kowakien Ten-yu

My family and I stayed at this hotel for 2 nights, 5 people and in adjacent rooms. Overall it’s a beautiful place to stay. There are little towns not far from the hotel that you can visit by bus or walk to, just be mindful of the bus schedules. The hotel can be quite busy at the lobby during check in times but otherwise you are able to enjoy the facilities provided in privacy. Do check out the beautiful garden at level 1. I will have to say our first night was slightly unfortunate. We returned from dinner around 8.30pm and excited to use the onsen facilities but returned to one of our rooms smelling like cigarette smoke. At first I couldn’t tell where it was coming from and called reception just to let them know. It subsided but the smoke smell got really bad again and had a feeling this was not going to stop. This time I managed to take a photo evidence of a guest directly below our room holding a cigarette. My husband and I went down to reception and show the staff the photo. The staff at the front desk was polite and apologetic but needed to talk to their manager about possibly changing rooms which may incur extra charge, but they wanted to check what was possible which is understandable so we were happy to wait at the lobby. Someone came to talk to us, they did not introduce their name or their role, only to find out they were the assistant manager at the end of the ordeal. They took a copy of the photo and said that they will talk to the perpetrators and let them know that they should not smoke (warning) or they have to pay a fine the next time they get caught. At this stage, the hotel should have just enforced their rules and request the guest to pay the fine straight up to ensure this behaviour stops immediately. When asked to change rooms, they stated it was fully booked and we needed to pay more to upgrade. So the perpetrators gets a warning but the affected guests has to fork out more money to enjoy their stay? What tipped this over from bad to unacceptable was that the assistant manager said that if the problem persists even after the guest was warned by hotel staff, I should either tell the staff again or I should just close my window. But the whole point of booking this hotel is to enjoy nature and make full use of the private onsen bath which is located on the balcony. As a paying guest, I should not be responsible to police how other guests continue to behave and report back any further misconduct to staff. Especially as I have already provided solid proof the first time. I expect to be provided a productive solution so that I can swiftly return to enjoying my stay, not further burdened with a responsibility to keep another guest in check. In general, the other staff here are polite, friendly and helpful but the way this specific manager handled this scenario was unfortunately not up to parWe do appreciate the subsequent efforts by other staff members to rectify the situation up until our check out which definitely salvage our memory and time here.