Hotel Nikko Princess Kyoto — Attraction in Kyoto

I stayed in the Premium Double room on 12th floor (I think) and the room is clean and large 32m2. Executive Room would mean you’ll be allocated 14th to 16th Floor. For my taste, the furnishings and the design choices of the room is outdated. However, I would have a large clean room, which this was||My impression of the front desk was not great. Both check-in and check-out staff seem a bit cold. Perhaps they felt their English were not good. On the other hand, both concierges (who took my luggage at check-in and looked after my luggage at check-out) were friendly. I went to two restaurants in the hotel and again was looked after well and friendly||Highly recommend the Tempura Kappa Sagano. The chef cooks in front of you fresh meat and vegetables. Think it was about 50GBP (including 2 x beers, tax) and there is no way I could get that quality of food and service for this money back home. The Japanese Restaurant Sagano I had a lunch kaiseki. This was less expensive and the food was less enjoyable than the first restaurant but still good! I didn’t try breakfast at the hotel (Amber Court). The hotel is surrounded by a large number of places to eat. For breakfast, try Japanese congee at Tomikoji Kayuten (about 10 mins walk from hotel). I got there when it opened at 7am||The hotel is situated, which seemed, a quiet part of town. It is nearby a couple of underground stations on two different lines (Shijo and Karasuma). I believe the nearest tourist location, from the hotel, is Nishiki Market, which is about 10 mins walk. I walked from the hotel to Kiyomizu-dera and Gion - about 1/2 hour walk. I read that the Kiyomizu-dera Temple gets very busy, so I had a nice pleasant morning stroll and arrived there around 645am. Even around that time, I could see a couple of tour groups and number of visitors building up. I think if I stay at Kyoto again I will stay around this area. This location seemed more interesting than where the hotel is located in a quiet neighbourhood. I also highly recommend visiting Arashiyama Bamboo Forest / Tenryu-ji Temple and Fushimi Inari Shrine||Oh…on my way back from hotel to Kansai International Airport, I had to stand for 2 hours on the Haruka Express because I didn’t reserve a seat. I think there are 8 cars of the train but only 1 or 2 are for the unreserved. Plus the train didn’t leave the station on time (some accident I believe) and there were numerous delays on the journey. Maybe a day before you leave, book a seat and give yourself plenty of time to catch your...

Apologies I seldom downgrade hotels, despite it is 4 stars. There were many dislikes, despite me choosing it as my One Harmony Premium choice which I regretted. I wrote about unhappiness / unfairness about One Harmony program (can only be used 1 month plus minus of your birthday) to their feedback and they did not even respond. Other similar hotels under One Harmony (Hotel Nikko Kansai & Hotel Nikko Osaka which I stayed on trip) offered freebies such as free newspaper, late checkout, free souvenirs, free welcome drink but none was given for this haughty (proud but arrogant) hotel. We did not get late checkout when we requested (due to our late transport back to Osaka) and no efforts / apologies were made to try to explain why not, just said it is not allowed as others had booked. The hotel was old fashioned still using key (99.9% transited to electronic key card), there were redundant door within door in the room itself (had to prop door open with bag) and the TV only showed Japanese channels (lousy, as we are international traveler not Japanese I cant understand. Other Nikko offered CNN, etc) in an old TV set. The bed was also hard type, it disturb my partner everytime I moved. It is not near to subway (with entrance no. 5, one of 2 without escalator/lift - had to lug luggage up 3 flights of staircase), still have to walk un-sheltered (weak cyclone passing by) 8 mins in the rain when we first arrived, disheveled and slightly wet. The staff did not help to relieve my wet umbrella, instead told me not to put my umbrella at the lobby.

That said I dun understand why it still command rather high occupancy rate. It could be the humble and helpful concierge uncle who ran out to main street just to get taxi to turn into side street for us. Unfortunately I will not want to stay there the next chance I go Kyoto again, choosing perhaps somewhere nearer to Kyoto...

We stayed here and this hotel does not meet service standard of other good 4-star hotel in Japan's major cities. For example, in the breakfast buffet dining area there are no tables set. They take a knife and fork in small rectangular baskets and put four of those on each table. YOU the customer get to use those to set your table.

I think their breakfast buffet is pretty meh (unimpressive)

The staff at this hotel seem not well trained and often get flustered and unsure how to respond to the most basic questions.

Typical experience with staff at this hotel? We needed to add a day onto our stay at this hotel. They wanted to charge us 55,000 yen for identical room that was on the same date offered on multiple hotel reservation websites for 30,000 yen, and this hotel was at that time nearly completely unoccupied.

So I'm supposed to leave their front reservation desk, go sit down in their hotel lobby and spend my time to use Google maps to reserve the SAME exact room for 30,000 yen that their front desk is asking me to pay 55,000 yen for? And YES I am a One Harmony member, but that did me little benefit at this hotel.

Our tip is spend the extra money to stay at the Okura Kyoto. We also stayed at that hotel on this trip and we were super impressed with the Okura Kyoto (which is also a Nikko hotel )

Who am I? I'm a guy who has traveled in Asia on business for 25 years, stayed at hundreds of some 4-star and mainly 5 star hotels. I've been to Japan about six times. Kyoto three...