Re Cove Hakone — Hotel in Hakone

Location: Not perfect but still great. Strongly suggest take the S/T buses to the nearest Senkyourou-mae station even if you need to do a transfer. It'll help a lot if you have large luggage cases with you. Very convenient connection to Tougendai station where you can take the ropeway and the cruise. There's a conveninence store nearby. It helped me a lot when I needed to buy products for urgent needs.

Room & Plan: We stayed in the South Building for the Western-style room. The room is large and spacious. There's a small gap between the door and the floor, so you'll hear people talking when they walk by your room. Remember to select the room plans with two meals. Some international reservation platforms (Booking, Agoda, etc.) only offer plans with breakfast. For great prices, use Japanese agencies like Rakuten, Jalan, Ikyu, Yahoo Travel, etc. Also, they have a special cooperation with Odakyu Travel where you can get even lower prices! Odakyu has an English booking site, but it cannot automatically apply the site coupons offered on 9th/19th/29th of each month. The price is still better than other travel agencies, though.

Meals: Delicious! A large variety of foods offered at dinner. No alcohol, though. Breakfast has comparatively fewer options with both Japanese and western style foods. You can also enjoy a welcome drink and dessert before 5pm.

Onsen: We booked this hotel for the white-colored onsen. The public bath space is big, but the largest baths are hot water, not onsen. Other than that, there are two onsen baths. The small indoor one is the one with the white-colored water. It was not that white during our stay and the smell not that strong. There is also an outdoor bath with onsen water with additional water added. The onsen is located in the North Building, so we needed to go there via an underground path.

Facilities and service: We didn't utilize most of the facilities, but I saw something similar to table hockey. There should be karaoke as well. If I remember correctly, you need to pay for those services. You can store the luggage before checking in/after checking out. I believe there are laundry machines, but I failed to locate them. Staff are friendly and can communicate in English without...

NEGATIVE REVIEW ALERT: 5 STARS ONLY FOR REACH. A Scathing Review of Disservice: Avoid This Hakone Hotel at All Costs

I'm compelled to share my appalling experience at this Hakone hotel, which utterly failed to deliver on even the most basic expectations. As a traveler, I've encountered exceptional service throughout Japan, but this hotel was a jarring exception.

With my family of seven, including a baby and an injured member, we requested assistance with transportation to the train station on a rainy day. The staff's response (that included the manager (named Kay Ayuma) and 2 staff members) was a dismissive "can't help" unless we'd pre-booked. No offer to hail a cab, no shuttle, even though we were ready to pay the price – nothing.

When we asked them to escort us to the nearby bus stop with their umbrellas, saying it wasn't possible. We struggled to carry five pieces of luggage, a baby, and accommodate our injured family member in the pouring rain. We only wanted to be escorted so that the umbrellas could be returned with them, and we didn’t have to get wet in the rain when we returned those.

But what sealed the deal was their shameless attitude when we mentioned writing a review. They giggled and said, "Go ahead, it doesn’t matter!" with an air of indifference. When we asked if they are okay with us writing a bad review, they confirmed mockingly and weren’t ready to stop laughing at us. It was astounding to witness such unprofessionalism in a country renowned for its hospitality. Never have we ever experienced this here in 10 days.

Don't book this hotel. The kindness and politeness of the Japanese people are a hallmark of their culture, but this establishment's behavior was a stark contrast. Our experience left a lasting impression of disappointment and frustration. If you value service and courtesy, look elsewhere.

About the hotel otherwise: it’s too secluded from the main busy area. The rooms are quite dated and eerily huge for two people. The breakfast spread is extensive and delicious, although having limited options for...

First & foremost, they sent us to their old, unkept building on the back side. We were told that If you book on any hotel booking sites you get Re cove’s old building. Huge rooms.||The furniture is dated with torn furnishings, very old towels & creaking bath tub & bath floor. But that we lived with bcos we’d already booked. Their housekeeping is outsourced so they work for limited time without any control by manager. Breakfast spread is good but repeated every day. No complaint. Staying for 2 nights is ok. We didn’t complain for anything, ||But while checking out we experienced what was never expected in Japanese hospitality. ||It was raining heavily & we had a toddler baby in the stroller. We wanted to go to Ueno. For those who don’t know, Hakone is wide spread with spaced out hotels, smaller footpaths. Cabs are rare & they could not organise any. so we decided to walk upto a small bus stop just 50/100 mtrs away & requested someone from hotel to collect hotel umbrellas from us lest we get wet. Their minibus was in the porch but they wouldn’t even drop us at the bus stop. The manager wouldn’t agree on any help. Atlast we then told them that we will post a review of this bad experience & they sneered. As if they liked to see our helplessness as a family with a baby. Finally, one of us had to run up back to the hotel to return the umbrellas as the bus had already come. The bus driver was considerate enough to wait till all our family boarded. ||On second thoughts we should have left the umbrellas at the bus stop. They would have had to collect anyway. ||But our...