Grand Mercure Wakayama Minabe Resort & Spa — Hotel in Minabe

We stayed in a Japanese style tatami room on the 5th floor and could not get a non-smoking room, so the hallway always smelled of cigarettes as did the room, mildly. The room was clean but the toilet smelled faintly of urine and I felt like the floor was unclean because we had to remember to wear slippers as is the Japanese custom while using the bathroom. We were placed in the room closest to the elevators, so we were forced to use earplugs to drown out the loud noises from the hall of children running and animated conversations. Even the extra sliding door between our sleeping quarters and the hallway was not enough to dampen the sound of the lively guests, and our inner sliding door would rattle from the movements of passing guests.||||We enjoyed the onsen (hot communal bath) but it was a step down from our ryokan in Hakone as it was a large hotel and thus much busier and I felt the water had no sulfur smell and wondered about the source of the water. There was a good supply of beauty products to use after the onsen, and I liked the locker and key system to ensure secure belongings, as well as the slipper tag system, since my slippers were taken by other guests during some of my visits to other ryokans... ewww. I had trouble remembered to bring down my own towels and wish they provided some there, but I guess that is not the custom. The black water outdoor pool left black residue on our skin and under our nails and I would have preferred a clear bath instead.||||The breakfast was really great. I enjoyed the grilled mackerel and multiple toppings for my rice porridge. The variety of Western and Chinese items was really impressive, and I could finally get my fruit and vegetables which I found were lacking in Japanese restaurants. I looked forward to breakfast every morning!||||The location of the hotel was good and bad. We loved the adjacent beach, where my kids would collect shells and explore tidepools, but there was an abysmal smell in the air around the resort that may have been sewage or fermented bamboo? Not sure what it was, but I did not like the strong smell on the steep path down to the beach, the smell in the air that permeated my runs up and down the hills around the hotel. The bad of the location was that we did not have a car so we took the shuttle into town. It is very infrequent, with the first one leaving around 9:10 am and the last one returning from the train station at 4:15 pm. Since the hotel had no restaurants surrounding it as it was situated out of town on a cliff top, we were either forced to eat in the hotel restaurant or to buy food before returning to the hotel, or to pay for a taxi ourselves. The taxi fare to the hotel is 1700Y from the station.||||We stayed four nights and were often swarmed by tour groups (seven busses at a time!) at this hotel who were noisy so we would try to use the onsen before each new group came and left. This also meant that horrendous congestion at the elevators with each group's entrances and exits so that we had to use the stairs and were thus thankful we were only on the 5th floor and not higher!||||We ate at the basement Japanese restaurant twice. The food was passable but the prices were reasonable, especially the tiny creme brulee for the bargain price of 160Y. I ordered a vegetarian tofu stew with a live flame (didn't know about the live flame) and the waiter accidentally slopped the boiling water out of the bowl and onto my young daughter's lap, which caused a third degree burn. It also splashed my legs as well and I was sitting one seat over, so the ground floor water must have bounced up onto my legs. She is a tough one, so she didn't scream, but she did make a noise (and I also yelped), and the waiter did not even notice the burnings but only knew he spilled boiling hot water onto the floor, and he did not apologize. We did not make a scene either. Perhaps he was hoping we didn't notice we were scalded? You would be better off eating off site. The smell of the grilling meat flowed out of the restaurant and into the women's change room of the onsen, which is unappealing as you leave the onsen clean then your hair absorbs the grilled meat smoke and cigarette smoke as you move from the change room to the elevators (and sometimes the stairs!).||||The staff was courteous and the shuttle driver was wonderful.||||We enjoyed our stay but not sure we would recommend this hotel due to the remote location and the sometimes obnoxious tour groups. Just factor in the cost of the taxi when...

My 70+ year old mother and I stayed at this hotel just for a night on 23 March 2018. We were part of a 20 pax tour group travelling around Central Japan so I’m not sure how much it costed us for that night (we paid a lump sum for the entire tour package). On first impressions, the room is very spacious and, the 2 beds in our room were each bigger than a single bed. The room also has an electric kettle to boil water and a mini-fridge. In the bathroom, toiletries were provided, which included shampoo, conditioner and body soap in large bottles next to the shower area. It also has a heated towel seat. However, there was no body lotion/moisturizer in the room (such lotion/moisturizer is provided at the onsen facility though). ||||The hotel has a hot spring (onsen) facility which was better (in comparison to the other one we been at Loisir Hotel Toyohashi). This was because the changing area had individual lockers to store away your belongings and it was much bigger. The hotel room has yukatas for you to change into when you go down to the hot spring facility. The temperature of the hot spring water was around 40-43 degrees, it is not recommended that you stay for very long. ||||Dinner and breakfast were provided but I’m not sure if it was the typical hotel breakfast prepared for the local tourists, as we were hosted in a very large banquet room with several other tour groups. There was a good variety of hot and cold dishes of international (bread, salad etc) and Japanese cuisine (sushi, miso soup etc), and even included fried noodles and hot rice. ||||Overall, it was a clean and decent hotel. I’ll...

My 70+ year old mother and I stayed at this hotel just for a night on 23 March 2018. We were part of a 20 pax tour group travelling around Central Japan so I’m not sure how much it costed us for that night (we paid a lump sum for the entire tour package). On first impressions, the room is very spacious and, the 2 beds in our room were each bigger than a single bed. The room also has an electric kettle to boil water and a mini-fridge. In the bathroom, toiletries were provided, which included shampoo, conditioner and body soap in large bottles next to the shower area. It also has a heated towel seat. However, there was no body lotion/moisturizer in the room (such lotion/moisturizer is provided at the onsen facility though). ||||The hotel has a hot spring (onsen) facility which was better (in comparison to the other one we been at Loisir Hotel Toyohashi). This was because the changing area had individual lockers to store away your belongings and it was much bigger. The hotel room has yukatas for you to change into when you go down to the hot spring facility. The temperature of the hot spring water was around 40-43 degrees, it is not recommended that you stay for very long. ||||Dinner and breakfast were provided but I’m not sure if it was the typical hotel breakfast prepared for the local tourists, as we were hosted in a very large banquet room with several other tour groups. There was a good variety of hot and cold dishes of international (bread, salad etc) and Japanese cuisine (sushi, miso soup etc), and even included fried noodles and hot rice. ||||Overall, it was a clean and decent hotel. I’ll...