Hakone Sengokuhara Prince Hotel — Hotel in Hakone

We stayed at this golf club resort hotel as part of our Essence of Japan Tour with Titan and I thought it was absolutely lovely and would have devinitely loved to stay another night.||The hotel is in an isolated position and it wasn't until the next morning that we realised that it is actually located within a volcanic caldera ie a crater formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano. ||We stayed in room 276 which is accessible by lift or stairs. Our balcony overlooked the golf course and also had a beautiful view of the mountains beyond. The room itself had a very different layout to any others that we had stayed in as there were approx. 3 steps down to the beds, table and chairs. On the upper level are wardrobes and a washing area separate from the WC. I would therefore recommend that guests might like to leave a light on at night in case they need to use the loo.||The beds were exceptionally comfortable. ||Food: Prior to arrival we were informed that there was only a buffet dinner available at the hotel and that it was best to pre book a table. My husband is not fond of buffets or smash and grabs as he calls them and we had previously checked and discovered that there are no restaurants in the immediate vicinity. Therefore we took our own food and had a bedroom picnic. Most of the people on tour seemed to do this but the few that paid for a buffet seemed to have enjoyed it-sorry but don't know what they had.||Breakfast is provided in an exceptionally spacious room and the buffet was laid out over a wide area so avoiding any crush. There was a good choice but like most of the hotels that we stayed in the fried egg and bacon were almost cold.||There is a shop within the hotel selling a good quality range of products including some very nice ladies clothing.||And now more about the feature of the hotel that I loved best!||Because of the volcanic nature of the area, one of the assets of the hotel is the hot spring Onsen, and I really would recommend travellers to set aside their instinctive modesty and to experience the absolute pleasure of naked bathing in either the inside or outside immaculately clean pools. There are separate pools for male and female, and having done it three times now, my experience is that no-one goes in the pool to stare at anyone else. You don't swim in an Onsen and you don't wash yourself in one. Having already removed clothes and cleansed your body and hair, you simply relax in the wonderfully clean and warm water. The facilities were absolutely marvellous-exceptionally clean, lovely towels provided, lockers for clothes, security lockers for valuables, shampoo, body wash, hairdryers, hairbrushes. Basically you can just walk in and all will be provided for you. Like me, a few of the tour group rushed through breakfast so that they could make use of the Onsen before we left.||So please don't be shy-this really is a wonderful experience not to be missed, and I thought this particular Onsen was absolutely lovely.||If you have your own transport and are looking for something to do, you might wish to take a 10 minute drive to Togendai port, Lake Ashinoko, where you can take a harbour cruise on a "Pirate ship". We found this to be a very pleasurable experience. You could also ride on the cable car and if you are fortunate there are wonderful views of Mount Fuji, or you could take a Duck tour-I would have loved to travel on one of these if we had been travelling independently.||So all in all, the Prince Hotel was lovely and the area was fantastic and beautiful and I'd definitely return given the...

Overall my experience at this hotel was good.

BUT there are some caveats.

I'll start with a list of the good:

-Staff are very accommodating. To give an example, we asked one of the reception staff if she could book a restaurant for us as we didn't want to spend the 7,000 or so yen each on the buffet dinner. The staff member proceeded to show us a list of nearby restaurants, identified a great little authentic Italian pizza restaurant called Solo Pizza, called them and booked us in and then provided us with a map and instructions on how to get there. Very helpful girl and we really appreciated her help.

-The hotel is kept very clean and you have the option of doing the 'eco friendly' thing where they give you a 500 yen voucher per day that you opt to not have your sheets fully cleaned. We did this as it was a nice way of getting a discount at the gift shop for souvenirs.

-The views from the rooms are good and the view from the restaurant is excellent. A really refreshing change from the mega cities of Japan.

But now to list the bad:

-The buffet breakfast is quite limited in its selection for Westerners. Given the price of the hotel, I would expect an improvement here. Also some very strange decisions in the type of food offered, for example why is pasta carbonara served every morning? This is not a breakfast food. Same goes for the cheese croquets. Also waffles are provided but without maple syrup? Waffles should always be served with maple syrup! I think maybe this is a translation issue or a lack of understanding from hotel staff of what a good western breakfast actually entails.

-The hotel rooms are quite dated. Apparently there was a renovation in 2015 or so but I'm not sure if this really shows.

-They have a no tattoo policy for the public baths (onsen). Tattoos are not taboo in Western countries and so it is a bit of a slap in the face to find this out that because of some harmless ink on your skin that you're literally banned from bathing in the onsen. I know that culturally tattoos are seen quite differently in Japan, but this is still very backwards seeming from a Westerners perspective.

-The hotel is a bit of a challenge to get to. Be prepared to catch a public bus from Odawara station, get off at Sengoku-Kogen station and then walk about 10 minutes to the hotel. It's definitely not impossible to manage on your own with a bit of google mapping, but it does require that bit of additional effort on your part.

-The hotel dinners are priced exorbitantly. Be prepared to seek out nearby restaurants and go to them instead. I recommend 'Solo Pizza' which is pretty close by if you don't mind catching a bus and walking for a bit. Luckily the hotel staff are very accommodating about this and will even make bookings for you...

Overpriced for the quality level of the room. Beds were comfortable and otherwise room was very clean but I can’t justify the price we paid for our two-night stay. Plus, the front desk does not have a microwave oven which I find incredibly absurd for a supposed 5-star hotel because every hotel I ever stayed always had a microwave oven but I think this is a tactic of the hotel to force you to eat breakfast and dinner at their very overpriced restaurant, and so lacking a microwave, will discourage people from getting food and bringing it into the room. Nevertheless, we found a way around that and we were able to avoid the expensive over priced breakfast and dinner options, nya ha ha. Sengokuhara, please do better! When you don’t offer alternate options to your patrons they’re just going to read my review and go somewhere else!

UPDATE 07/25

To mgmt.: thank you very much for your very thoughtful and lengthy reply to my review. But please do not try to appease me by saying that you are going to install or consider installing a microwave in every room. You know you’re not going to do that ! It would be simply too expensive to equip every room with a microwave. (Of course, with your unreasonably high priced services maybe you can afford to install microwave in every room.) At the very minimum, all I would expect is that you would consider installing one at the front desk. How hard is that?

Regrettably, I will not be coming back to your hotel again. There were just too many negatives that gave me pause, and with so many other hotel options in the area its best for us to consider somewhere else.

Again, appreciate your reply, and it means that you definitely care about your...