Hotel New Otani Tokyo Garden Tower

This review is the warning that we wish we'd seen before we booked this hotel. My husband and I reserved the Garden Tower for 7 nights in August 2024…and not a single night was pleasant or restful. Our shabby, smoke-scented room was 80 degrees Fahrenheit/26.7 Celsius when we entered so we immediately asked the porter to adjust the thermostat. The room remained hot so we called and requested someone to problem-solve our A/C. We showed the problem-solver the moisture dripping from the vent and he offered to rent us a de-humidifier. Um, rent? We explained that we chose this hotel because it had A/C and multiple treadmills in the gym: either move us to another room, fix the temperature or we’ll find another hotel. The problem-solver then agreed to provide the de-humidifier at no extra cost. (He failed to mention that it shuts off every four hours and that we’d have to dump the gallon of water it collected every four hours to re-start it.) The gyms were also a disappointment: like every hallway and common space that was unrelated to commerce and weddings, the gyms were hot and humid. When we saw only one treadmill in the gym, we complained to the front desk that the gym on their Web site had multiple treads. They told us there was a gym we could access with more treads “for a charge.” Like the de-humidifier, we pushed back on the upsell, reminding them that the gym was a key reason we booked this hotel. Only then were we directed to a gym in a different tower that had two treads and no entrance fee. (It was still uncomfortably hot…sigh.) While we should’ve known that my husband’s tattoos would prevent us from enjoying access to the pool, when we tried to order lunch on the pool patio, they refused to serve us a kids’ platter. Via the translation app, we explained that there wasn’t a comparable dish on the adult menu. Our server still refused to serve us so we left to eat lunch offsite (don’t sleep on the sushi or King crab at the nearby Tsukiji market)! Those three unpleasant experiences happened within 48 hours of arrival so we didn’t eat a single meal onsite. On our last night before flying to Seoul, we tried to have a daiquiri onsite at Trader Vic’s, which closes at 10P, but were told by the bartender that there was no more service even though it was only 9:30P. Not even a whiskey, we asked? Nope. My husband and I are 40-somethings who live in Brooklyn and we’ve traveled to nearly 30 countries. Japan has blessed us with some wonderful life memories—Shinjuku in a blizzard, Chef Yamagoshi at Sushi Sei, Taylor Swift at the Tokyo Dome, the soft opening of Good Ole Tennessee Bar, Godzilla at Toho Studios, the Flying Bumblebee in Daikanyama—but the New Hotel Otani isn’t one of them. If you’re a Westerner who’s traveling without kids and you’re under 80, just say no to this place. Plenty of hospitable places with better climate control on which to spend your money.