Mitsui Garden Hotel Kyoto Kawaramachi Jokyoji — Hotel in Kyoto

This is not the first Mitsui Garden Hotel I have stayed in, but this is the WORST.

Let's start with the good points: the room is not small. The hotel is very beautifully decorated. The location is great. Breakfast is good (though not as good as advertised). The public bath is nice (but a bit small; good thing it's not very busy).

The bad: Dust everywhere. The housekeeping could do a better job.

The worst: The check-in took over 30 minutes. There was no staff at the counter when we arrived at 10:45 pm. An obviously very green and junior staff member, accompanied by a senior staff member, slowly came to serve us after we rang the bell. The junior staff, who somehow might have difficulties communicating in English, asked if we could speak Chinese, despite my Canadian passport and booking made on their official English website. However, the clearly Japanese staff’s Chinese proficiency was also limited. That alone is not the problem. The problem is the attitude of the senior staff. She was obviously very impatient with the junior staff when he was not clear about the steps for checking in and how to redeem the breakfast voucher we presented. She talked to the junior staff in a very rude manner. She made him to repeat everything, without addressing us directly, as if we were not there.

Although we confirmed with them that we only had one breakfast voucher, the senior staff specifically instructed the junior staff to "make sure they know they must pay 2530 for the other two persons." Her tone and manner seemed to suggest that we might try to use one voucher for all three of us, which was not our intention, and looked genuinely surprised when we directly confirmed that we knew the voucher was for one person. I don't know what they have experienced before, but we, as loyal members, would have appreciated a more respectful approach.

The junior staff also struggled with processing the credit card payment, so she took over after his failed attempts. She then threw my credit card and receipt on the countertop abruptly after completing the task. While I understand that training new employees can be challenging, I believe that it's important for staff members to maintain a professional demeanor and provide guidance to junior staff without causing discomfort to guests.

I will not recommend this...

The hotel is an attractive modern build with nice aesthetic touches, and conveniently located within easy walking distance of the river, Gion, Teramachi and Nishiki Market, Gion Shijo Station is nearby. The hotel is pretty good value for its location, and the staff were very good. It turned out they use Japan Post for luggage forwarding, and there's a 25kg weight limit (whereas Yamato is 30kg). My suitcase had gone over the limit, so the staff provided a cardboard box for me to offload some of the contents into, then securely taped it so it could be forwarded also. It was rather stressful despite their assistance though as I did the offloading in a hurry and was worried about possibly losing some of the things in the box, but it arrived safely at my next hotel. More expensive to send two items on of course. I hadn't come across the Japan Post/25kg situation before, including at other Mitsui Gardens as they used Yamato. ||Anyhow, I had a pleasant and comfortable twin room with an easy chair and footrest, and small table. Two bedside tables and a small chest of drawers, but no desk. Small fridge and safe, and a humidifier. The space was compact, but not as small as some I've stayed in. There was a city view across to the mountains, but the buildings in the foreground weren't very good-looking. I hadn't realised there'd be no bath. The sink was in the living area, just outside the separate compartments for the shower and toilet. I enjoyed the breakfasts,||I'd rate my experience as "good" rather than "very good" but as it has to be either "average" or "very good" I'm...

I’m currently staying here and wanted to provide some real time feedback.

The service from the staff is excellent. They are all very friendly and were happy to answer all of the questions we had regarding shipping our luggage. We also asked for water and they quickly brought it up to our room. 5/5

Now the cons.

We arrived at 1:50pm from a long journey from Tokyo and we were really hoping we could check-in to the room a bit early to rest a bit before heading back out. To our surprise they said our luggage we had shipped had arrived and were already delivered to our room. I thought great our room is ready. The front desk however said that we could check-in early but only if we pay an extra 1,000 yen ($6.60)…talk about nickel and diming your customers.

When my wife and I got to the room the first thing we noticed was that it was quite filthy..and what I mean by that is there was dust EVERYWHERE.

The provided cups near the sink and the nightstand had a layer of dust caked on it. When we moved the blanket we saw a ton of dust fly into the air. Dust on the tissue box, dust on the water pitcher (provided to refill the water in the air filter which by the way was empty), and so much dust on the table. It is as if nobody had been in this room for a long time. I can’t help but feel gross knowing I’ll be inhaling a lot of the dust while staying here.

This hotel had so much promise but fell quite short due to the lack of housekeeping and because of that I do not plan on staying at this...