Funaya — Hotel in Matsuyama

We had decided to splurge on our final day of 3 in Shikoku and chose this hotel due to its high ratings and website. Although the room was quite nice and overall service decent, we were very disappointed in especially the dinner dining experience.||The ryokan we stayed the night before in Takamatsu was half the cost and heads and shoulders above in terms of service and personal attention. For the rate a hotel of this reputation charges, expectations for a dining experience are very high on the guests' end. There was no welcome and no staff when we entered the rather mundane dining area. The dining room itself resembled a simple family restaurant. This started us off on the wrong foot because we were made to stand in the entrance like idiots while staff hurried about. The food itself was subpar for the cost, in particular the main course. I know quality wagyu beef and this was not that. We ultimately were so disappointed we left without finishing the course and went out for food in the village. ||Breakfast was decent. Nothing to have a parade about, but passable and well done. ||||We did vocalize our disappointment and one of the managers personally apologized and we were given some very nice towels made by the very famous Imabari towel company. A local prized industry. They were very kind and this did make up for the experience to some degree and allowed us to leave on good terms. The final evening meal however was disappointing and it more or less put a damper on the whole experience of Matsuyama and the Dogo onsen area. ||||On the plus side, our room was quite nice with very good quality beds, bedding, towels, and it included an in room hinoki wood bathtub with natural hot spring water piped in. Certainly one of the nicer rooms I've stayed it. Over all, we were happy to receive the nice towel gesture and enjoyed the room, however we do not have a desire to return to this hotel nor the Dogo onsen area. ||||I hope our experience was a fluke and...

We had decided to splurge on our final day of 3 in Shikoku and chose this hotel due to its high ratings and website. Although the room was quite nice and overall service decent, we were very disappointed in especially the dinner dining experience.||The ryokan we stayed the night before in Takamatsu was half the cost and heads and shoulders above in terms of service and personal attention. For the rate a hotel of this reputation charges, expectations for a dining experience are very high on the guests' end. There was no welcome and no staff when we entered the rather mundane dining area. The dining room itself resembled a simple family restaurant. This started us off on the wrong foot because we were made to stand in the entrance like idiots while staff hurried about. The food itself was subpar for the cost, in particular the main course. I know quality wagyu beef and this was not that. We ultimately were so disappointed we left without finishing the course and went out for food in the village. ||Breakfast was decent. Nothing to have a parade about, but passable and well done. ||||We did vocalize our disappointment and one of the managers personally apologized and we were given some very nice towels made by the very famous Imabari towel company. A local prized industry. They were very kind and this did make up for the experience to some degree and allowed us to leave on good terms. The final evening meal however was disappointing and it more or less put a damper on the whole experience of Matsuyama and the Dogo onsen area. ||||On the plus side, our room was quite nice with very good quality beds, bedding, towels, and it included an in room hinoki wood bathtub with natural hot spring water piped in. Certainly one of the nicer rooms I've stayed it. Over all, we were happy to receive the nice towel gesture and enjoyed the room, however we do not have a desire to return to this hotel nor the Dogo onsen area. ||||I hope our experience was a fluke and...

Loved the hotel, the onsite onsen bath, the Japanese garden, friendly staff, all top-notch! The website was not easy to navigate even translated to English, so we had a hard time deciding what package to book. I have no idea how we did this (we couldn't tell from the booking at all), but we booked the Royal Suite with about 8 rooms, half Japanese style and half Western style plus a private bath in the suite fed by the natural spring waters in Dogo Onsen!!! We had breakfast and dinner served by Kadoya, our friendly attendant. We opted to have futons set out for us each night in the tatami rooms rather than use the western beds. There was another option to have dinner at these beautiful free-standing tatami rooms next to the river in the garden - we would have liked to do that one night in addition to having dinner in our room a different night, but could not figure out how to do that on the website and it didn't seem to be an option. Compared to our other hotels this really was the Royal treatment. Such a wonderful location and beautiful spot. If the Royal Suite sounds like what you're looking for, it was Room 801!...