The Gotembakan — Hotel in Gotenba

The hotel was in a good location. You can take a bus and it is just right off the bus station - JR Gotemba. We stayed here primarily for it's location being near Mt. Fuji and the Gotemba Premium Outlets. We had a family reunion in Japan and there were 29 of us. We occupied 15 rooms in the hotel for 3 nights each. The hotel is really old. The wallpapers are peeling off, the carpet have a lot of stains and smells bad, so much dust that one of my cousins had an asthma attack, the beds are old and lumpy. The rooms are super small, but then again most hotel rooms in Japan are small. I was staying at an end suite and my room had a sofa. The sofa had a hole in its upholstery and to hide it, they put a blanket over it. The worst feature of this hotel though is the very bad customer service. We had to deal with a "manager" in the front desk and he was very rude. We run out of green tea in our room and my daughter requested some from this manager and he said "no" without any explanations. When my daughter told me this, I was confused, I thought that maybe he just did not understand her. So I went down myself to the lobby and asked for the tea myself and I got the same response "no". At this point I was very annoyed since I am supposedly staying at a suite and it wasn't as if I was asking for a great deal. I told him that If it wasn't free then I will pay for a pack of tea since it was late and I did not want to go out and buy outside. And he relented and handed me 1 packet of tea. The following day we were all checking out but we wanted to go to the outlets before we left for Tokyo. The day before, we spoke to the person in the front desk notifying him that we will be leaving our luggage from 10am to 3PM, when we have to take the bus to Tokyo. He said no problem and it shouldn't be a problem since this is common courtesy for hotels to store luggage for the day for customers that have to check out early but are not leaving yet the city or area. The following day, we encountered the rude "manager" in the front desk and he told us that we cannot do that. At this point, we cannot leave earlier because the bus tickets we purchased for Tokyo are for 3:30PM! We cannot also take our luggage to the Gotemba outlets because we have to take a bus there and we cannot be walking around with the all the luggage. So we complained, we asked for the manager and he claimed that he is the only manager and then we asked for the owner and he said he is unavailable. So at this point, we decided that we will just all do a late check out - all 15 rooms we were staying at, just to hold our luggage. He said we can put all our luggage in my room provided we pay Y10,000 (yen) which is equivalent to about $100. He claimed that the room they have for storage cannot accommodate the luggage and I told him, that in that case, what small / boutique hotels will do is leave it in the lobby and tie a string around it and cover with a blanket so it is still secure. We did not want to argue anymore and paid the $100...

We left our luggage with staff when we were informed that our room wasn't ready. The hotel appeared nice from the reception. We were so wrong.||||When we came back and got our keys we headed for the elevators to the 8th floor. The elevator reeked of cigarettes but we hoped the room would be better. ||||I almost wretched at the smell. The wallpaper was ripped, the carpets were stained and the stench made our eyes sting. We went back to reception to request another room. We were asked why? And asked if we had used the washroom? ||||Speaking of washrooms, it was yellowed and stank worse then the room itself. ||||We were given a room on the 5th floor. After inspection we had to walk away from our reservation and lost our money.||||I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS HOTEL. Stay far away from it. It needs to be renovated from...

Receptionist was rude. No greetings, nothing when we entered the hotel and we were the only ones in the reception. The arm gesture he made to us was uncalled for. Water heater and toilet bidet doesn’t work. Offered to pay more to change room but they said no, hotel was full but as we checked on trip.com there were rooms available. Will never come back to this hotel again. They don’t welcome foreign tourist, that’s how we felt. The only good thing about this hotel was the location of the train and bus station to Kawaguchi. Next time I would book Toyoko Inn for a peace of mind. Not worth any photos. Book at...