THE KNOT HIROSHIMA — Hotel in Hiroshima

This place is GROSS (See Pics)!!! Find another place to stay and thank me later!!!

It started with a male staff member eyeing me up and down like I was a piece of meat at check-in [BEWARE ladies!]. Thankfully there was another female staff member next to him who was more hospitable, although he refused to let her take over the check-in conversation.

Then, we got to our room and it was DISGUSTING (See pics if you haven’t already). There’s urine build-up on the toilet that’s clearly from multiple different guests. On top of it, the bathroom smelt like it had urine build-up and mold and mildew build up. To make matters worse, the shower (which is separate from the toilet) literally has visible mold and mildew growing on the shower curtain. Unfortunately, my camera couldn’t capture the mildew growth super well, but the black mold was easy to snap a picture of one of the areas with the growth.

You’d probably think, “Oh, this reviewer is overdramatic. Just call housekeeping and get on with it.” I thought that too, until I found out that there’s a 3300yen (~$20USD) fee for housekeeping to come through and actually CLEAN the room! So I guess in order to get a clean room here, you not only have to pay the room rate, but then you have to pay for housekeeping to do the job they were supposed to do in the first place (or maybe four, five, or six guests ago as the piss was continuously dripping down and staining the front of the toilet. Exactly what you want your garments rubbing on when you use the bathroom, or worse, your legs rubbing on).

To put the cherry on top (and I would’ve considered ourselves blessed if this was the only issue we had), the shower head only runs at a 45 degree angle into the wall or mold/mildew-lined shower curtain LOL.

There was a bottle of air freshener hanging directly above on the coat rack when we entered our room. We were thankfully only staying two nights, but we quickly found out why there was air freshener left in our room. Upon our first return to the room, the mildewy scents from the toilet and shower filled the entryway. What a lovely aroma to arrive back at your room with and have dig into your belongings and assault your sense of smell.

Overall, look elsewhere for a place to stay. Hiroshima is flooded with better alternatives that a quick Google search...

I'm someone who spends hours researching cities and hotels in order to find the best location/hotel combo. Trust me when I say this place IS NOT IT and is the only place throughout our 4 week adventure through Japan we wouldn't have rated a 9 or 10 out of 10. I believe there must be some floors with adequate rooms but it's not worth the gamble. We had 1 night (it was meant to be 3) in room 616. This room is on the inner side of the hotel and very sheltered from the light of day, as are rooms ending in 17 and 18 to my understanding. The location was nice but like many others we found it odd the reception was on the top floor. Our bathroom smelt of urine and our toilet had hair left over from previous customers (yes that kind of hair) on it upon arrival 🤮 Mildew and mould around the shower which many other have mentioned. As well as stains over all the carpets, curtains and bed throw. The whole room smelt and had a dusty under tone to it. They had installed an air filtration unit that looked newer than everything else in the room, we could only believe they were trying to cover up the inhabitable state of what we were given. The receptionist we dealt with whilst trying to resolve these complaints was great and super apologetic, we moved rooms to one where the toilet was actually cleaned (although the dust and mildew smells still remained) and she let us know it would be up to management the following day to help us. The management wasn't much help at all as I think we'd all but made up our minds to part ways and move onto another hotel closer to Hiroshima station that worth every penny and one of the highlights of our trips. Disappointing a hotel in this location would be the one letting us down, we felt guilty moving on but you have to do what you have to do. I would strongly recommend anyone sold by the location to think again, no one within my circle heading to Japan will ever be staying at the Knot Hiroshima, I hope I can save you the hassle too. If you have any doubts please read any of the other numerous low reviews, I...

We stayed here for one night, and we were glad that it was just that and not any more.

The good The location is right next to Hiroshima peace park so great if you want to see the peace museum and the atomic bomb dome.

The staff were responsive (more on that below) and assisted with parking our car in the parking lot which was one of those vending machine car parks. It cost 3000 yen for one night (nearly double local car parks on the same street).

There was a good laundrette in the building which had automatic fabric conditioner and cleaner applied. It was 500 yen for a clean and dry for a large bundle of clothes (coin operated).

The hotel is attached to a restaurant named (more than) which is separate. The food was very good and the service was attentive. My husband had the pizza (which was fired in a large stone oven) and I had the octopus spaghetti. Both were excellent - we would eat here again. The price was high but given the calibre of food, it was worth it.

The bad The room was small with the double bed pushed against the wall so it wasn’t easy for both of us to get in and out of the bed without disturbing the other.

The room was heated to a minimum temperature of 23c (73f) with no option of cooling the room below this. The window didn’t open so we had to request that a staff member manually recalibrate the temperature dial (beyond what a guest would be authorised to do) to allow the air conditioning to get lower. A staff member attended our room to reset the air conditioning to allow it to go below 20c (still quite high). Unfortunately (without our knowledge) they set it so that the air conditioner turned off after 3 hours so my husband had to wake up routinely to turn it back on throughout our sleep. This was incredibly disruptive!

All in all, we definitely wouldn’t stay here again - regardless of the location and facilities, our sleep at a hotel is paramount and being in a hot small room is just not...