Kobe Meriken Park Oriental Hotel — Hotel in Kobe

Location is nice, in the heart of Kobe’s animated port with attractions, restaurants and nice walk paths. Must walk a small distance in order to reach the subway station, but the hotel provides a shuttle. The hotel also provides a lot of amenities - too much as they add some every day - and bottles of water, tea and coffee daily and there is a free drink spot next to the reception desk, and a small but very convenient store on the ground floor.

Mass hotel dedicated to the overwhelming Chinese tourists tsunami hitting Japan right now, quantity is preferred to quality, a very sad phenomena which is happening pretty much in all Japanese major city hotels. Get ready for some loud and rude behavior from most guests.

After a quick and nice check-in with friendly staff, the first room we got was simply disgusting (see pictures): moldy AC, damaged furniture and some sort of viscous sputum on the wall. We complained and got a new room immediately - which was nice - but without having to argue for it at all, as if this happens all the time. The room we got relocated to was stuck between very loud Chinese and a baby playing on the balcony by hitting stones on the metal fence surrounding the building at 7am. Not ideal at all. You would think room allocation is being thought out by the employees, especially considering the posh and luxurious image the hotel pretends to have; apparently common sense wasn’t taught during staff training. Forget getting any kind of compensation for this matter, free meal, free breakfast or anything at all, a very weak move from a hotel pretending to put forward customer service through an apparent luxurious image.

To even consider giving a room as filthy as we first had is in itself highly irresponsible and a huge lack of respect towards the customer.

But in the end, that’s all it is, a worn down hotel that has seen better days, and somehow wishes to stick to a quality it no longer can or wants to provide, maybe because of economic reasons, maybe to save a few bucks over your wellbeing.

Pool and gym come with an entrance fee, off course, and forget going there if you have a tattoo: in 2024 this is still an issue for some, as they link having one with being part of organized crime. Again, an ironic and short sighted attitude considering this establishment wants to welcome guests from all over the world, without willing to adapt, using common sense and intelligence.

Poor sound isolation - both from the other rooms and from the street (the area is used by tuning aficionados on weekends, you can hear the very loud engines and accelerations) at night. Don’t even get me started about noise when a boat docks, the hole place is shaking.

There is a weird huge window in the bathroom looking over the room and the entire bay, but at the same time a recommendation from the hotel to close the shutter on that window in order to avoid anybody peeking in while you take a shower (why bother to have a window there in the first place)?

Overall a sad experience, and a surprising one: Japans hosting standards are high, the customer service is always the one thing you can rely on, as the respect for tourists - and basically everybody - is part of the very culture of the country. What happens here is unworthy of what you should expect and hopefully an exception.

Sadly, it is doubtful that the hotel will take immediate and serious action in order to correct those flaws. A standardized answer to this review will be given by the hotel or one of a bot the use, and that will be the end of it. Considering the many negative reviews we saw online, nothing will change any time soon.

But in today’s world, especially considering the impact of social media and influence one might have over a possibly quite large potential audience willing to travel to Japan, it would be sad, but understandable, to see future customers go elsewhere for accommodation, in the Kobe area.

So far, I wouldn’t recommend the place. Or maybe just a little, as it’s quite close to a...

This hotel is ideally located in Kobe. You can take harbor cruises or even a ferry that goes up to Sapporo/Tokyo or down to Kyushu, be prepared to pay for it though lol. A few minutes walk away is an Anpanman Museum, which if you have kiddos you must check out, and a mall like area with a plethora of restaurants, including the most interesting bikkuri donkey I've yet to see. A 15 minute walk will take you to a tower like mall area with all the Western shops your heart could ever want and a food court filled with awesome places to eat. I recommend the gyouza place. So that's the area around the hotel. ||The hotel itself is luxurious. There is a shuttle bus running from the nearby train station's bus terminal, which is handy because you can take the shuttle to catch other buses for excursions you may want to embark on. The employees are beyond polite, professional and helpful and most can communicate in English. They provide top notch service most Westerners won't be used to, even for Japanese its top notch. The rooms are nice, free wifi, we had a ocean view room and it was pretty awesome to just chill on the balcony at night and watch the bay traffic. Even saw a submarine moored across the way, that was gone the next day. Pretty cool. My Japanese spouse kept mentioning that the hotel was old, as if there may be something wrong but the only sign of age I could tell was the balcony railings may be due for a paint job. The beds were comfy and I slept well. ||Food. We had our evening meal and breakfast in the buffet style place next to the lobby. The evening meal was decent, lots of selections and I was happy. The breakfast was great. I give both a thumbs up. If, for whatever reason you miss or don't want to do the restaurants there, there is a Family Mart konbini, near the parking entrance on the Lobby level. And, get this, the prices are normal.|There is a stand alone Starbucks, something you rarely see in Japan, right next to the hotel too, for those of you who need particular coffee or teas. ||All in all, this hotel is very conveniently located if you're gonna explore Kobe and depending on the train you catch, 15-30 minutes from Osaka. I would definitely stay here again, if my son has his...

This hotel is in the shape of an ocean going liner and is possibly the same size as some of the latest ships built. It is huge yet luxurious and overlooks the Kobe Harbour (which it would do as being situated in Harbourside).||It is about a 10 minute walk to a couple of shopping centres/eating outlets but there is a hotel bus running most of the day if you’d rather not walk.||We were part of a group of 35 arriving at the same time but rooms had been allocated prior to arrival and “keys” prepared so the whole process was easy.||Rooms were fantastic – clean and bright. The only comment we would make is that, in this age of conserving resources, the bath tub (with perfectly good shower over) should be removed and replaced with a walk-in shower. Some of the more mature in years people in our group may have found getting in and out of the tub a little tricky as it was quite high.||Free wifi is available throughout the hotel with easy access.||The provision of tea/coffee ingredients was a little sparse and there was no English Breakfast tea! Go prepared – we did – and with milk sticks!||The whole building was spotless and the staff dressed immaculately.||A significant number of staff spoke English to a greater or lesser degree but all were very helpful.||Our group had dinner in this hotel which was of buffet style and very enjoyable.||Breakfast was a buffet of a wide selection of Western and Japanese food although not all the hot food was more than warm (the pitfalls of catering for a large number of people).||Once again, no English Breakfast tea and no cold milk by the coffee/hot water machines – find the cereals for that! Chop-sticks and knives/forks were available.||Check out was simple with the staff at the desk rather than a machine we had encountered in other hotels during our stay!||Would we return – if we went back to Kobe, it would be a serious contender. Our trip’s brochure said we would be staying in a mixture of 3 and 4 star hotels. This is certainly an hotel in the upper range of a...