LOTTE ARAI RESORT — Hotel in Myoko

My family and I recently spent 7 nights at this ski resort in the Myoko region of Japan. The resort itself was 5 stars in so many ways in terms of the accommodation, the setting, the surrounds and the beautiful mountain it has to itself for awesome skiing.

Our issue was not with the rooms or the gorgeously arranged decor and feel of the resort as this was definitely excellent. The pool and onsens were superb. The sitting areas, the Library, the cafe areas were all stunning and the web site photos dont do them justice. There were however a few key problems for us that we hope the resort can address and fix for future guests. They were:

The quality of the food from pretty much every restaurant at the resort was of a poor standard for the type of resort. Even the ones which wanted to appear 'fancy', offered up very mediocre food but with high prices. Apart from the Korean restaurant which was half decent, the rest were not up to scratch. It's such a shame as the capacity is there but they really need to improve this part of the stay as there are no other real options unless you organise to get yourself on a shuttle bus from the resort into the closest town which is about 20 mins away. Still on the topic of food, my family and I filled up on the buffet breakfast to keep us going but even that for a 5 star hotel/resort is not great.

Another thing we didn't like was the lack of English speaking attendants around the hotel and ski areas. Those that worked there were polite and friendly and did their best, but again for an international hotel/resort of this caliber there should be way more people able to communicate effective in English. Often a simple question for a staff member particularly around the ski centre station was very difficult to be understood. Even when understood, the customer service side of their operation definitely needs a lot of attention. They are genuinely trying but I think better training would really help them.

By way of example, my teenage son had a fall coming down one of the runs and was clearly concussed, so much so that we needed to get ski patrol to him to assist him down the mountain. I left him there with my adult daughter to go and find help. I got to the top of a chair lift and got the attention of an attendant. It took close to 10 mins before he could understand what I had explained had happened to my son on the run and then another 10 mins before ski patrol got to him. He wasn't on some off-piste track, just one of the runs on the mountain. Thankfully it was nothing more serious but if it had been, then that is definitely too long to get some medical attention to someone on the mountain. When finally in the first aid room downstairs he was looked after well by a Japanese and UK ski patrol team who had good general first aid experience.

I should mention two wonderful people who assisted us with our questions at the Lotte reception; they were Maria and George. Both very helpful and a good benchmark of how other staff should respond.

The other criticism is that there is no ATM on the whole resort. This wouldnt be the biggest problem if you could then use your credit card everywhere. We charged what we could to our rooms which was fine. Our issue came up when the central food court only has vending machines that place your order to the kitchen and only accepts cash. So if there is no ATM, how is someone to use this facility? It makes no sense not having an ATM. They have a money exchange machine which is good but still not the same.

So all in all I could only rate this resort a 3 out of 5 unfortunately but if a few of these things are addressed it could easily be a perfect place. They have only been open for 12 months so hopefully these are things that are still teething problems from being relatively new. You wouldnt mind so much if it was inexpensive but for the price you are paying, its not unreasonable to expect more.

I hope this review gives you a bit of insight into this resort. It has the potential for so much more and becoming much...

Hard to give a completely balanced review due to the disaster that befell us (which I will detail in a moment) but the problem with this resort is that whilst the location is beautiful and the facilities impressive, you are essentially forced to use all of those facilities (ski lifts, gear rental, food, etc) and they are ridiculously overpriced. Don't be fooled by relatively inexpensive accommodation offers - you will end up paying...

An example of how this resort's policies make this a real money-trap (and in our case, so much worse than that) is as follows. For our first day of skiing, we went to the resort gear rental shop to find that their basic equipment only consists of one type of ski (which I've never seen before) with a very narrow waist (maybe 70mm) - if you were prepared the pay for premium gear, then multiple options were made available. Since we hadn't skied there before & our lift ticket was for 2 days (part of our package) we figured we would hire the basic gear for 2 days - it's obviously cheaper the longer you hire for but we weren't sure if we would ski 3 days in a row so took the middle ground - we could always upgrade to the premium gear if required.

That day, the conditions were close to what we were used to in Australia and the skis were fine - had a great day. That night, it dumped snow and we were really excited to get out into some powder which we had little experience of. Within the first half hour we realized that the skis were completely unsuitable for the conditions (we stayed on the groomers by the way)- we were both having alot of trouble turning efficiently and the variable speed seemed dangerous. We duly returned to the rental shop and asked to upgrade our skis to something more appropriate to the conditions - we were of course happy to pay the extra to upgrade. We were refused - the only way to get the better gear was to 'return' the gear we had and hire the new gear - effectively paying twice for the same day (hundreds of dollars). We thought the attendant must have misunderstood what we were asking - surely they wouldn't really have such a draconian policy - and when we went to another attendant at the info desk who spoke fluent English, she seemed to agree that there must have been a misunderstanding and offered to translate. She spoke to the rental manager on our behalf who confirmed the ridiculous policy and we walked out angry and frustrated. We debated whether or not to continue skiing, finally deciding to push ahead (it was about 10.30am at this stage) - sure enough, a couple of hours later my partner got her right ski stuck in a particularly chopped up bit of soft snow and ruptured her medial ligament, meaning that the rest of our skiing holiday was essentially ruined.

I completely accept that skiing is a risky pursuit and no resort can control the conditions or skiing ability or just plain bad luck - BUT to only offer one option for a basic ski rental package with skis inappropriate to the prevailing conditions and then not allow for upgrade if required should be considered a breach of duty of care.

My partner was shattered of course and whilst we did our best to enjoy the rest of our trip, it put a pretty serious dampener on the whole thing. I complained in writing to the resort - it wasn't until my second attempt about 3 days after the event that I received a reply. The ensuing outcome was a $200 reduction in further resort expenses - completely inadequate considering the thousands of dollars spent on...

We booked this hotel for 4 days 3 nights and ended up checking out early. Lotte Arai resort is still about 30 mins away from JoetsuMyoko station. The resort offers free shuttle ride to the train station but it will need to be reserved in advanced. It's located in a remote area away from the city. It takes about 10 min taxi ride to the nearest convinence store so you are pretty much stuck in the resort. The resort does not have the feel of Japanese hospitality that we were accustomed to while traveling in Japan. The resort is filled with foreigners and feels like an average ski resort back at home. ||The resort is fairly large and consists of couple buildings accessible through internal walkways. The resort is kept well but it is not luxury as other reviews have mentioned. The most annoying thing is that there is a wood burning fireplace in the lobby. The smoke is trapped in the lobby area through the 2nd floor making it hard to breathe.||A good size room and the bathroom is large. The room is equipped with an annoying automatic sensor foyer light that turns on automatically whenever you are in the foyer area. The rolling bathroom door is also annoying since it makes a lot of noise. Both items makes it hard to stay quiet while sharing your room with others. Our room was in the hallway of going to the onsen so noise is an issue with the foot traffic. There is a sign that tells guest to be quiet but nobody pays attention.||It does have different things you can do but most of them cost money. The room costs comes with breakfast for adults only. There's a charge for children. The onsen facility is included in the cost of the hotel room. Lotte charges for the indoor pool even for hotel guests. They also have billards, ping pong, karaoke, adventure park, washer/dryer all for a fee to use. One note about the laundry facility, it is constantly packed with people. Especially guests who forget to pull their clothes out of the machines. Their dryer is also completely useless! It doesn't even dry your clothes with 1 hour drying time. This causes a huge delay of people waiting for dryers.||Since there is nothing around the resort, your option is to find dinner at the resort or take a taxi to a restaurant. For lunch there is a food hall at the village. It is pricey and food is medicore. We did the dinner buffet at The Plate and it was abosultely disappointing. Our reservation time was at 6:45 and when we arrived there was no food left. Many of the plates/displays were all empty. The restaurant could not keep up with the demand of the idea of a buffet. The buffet is expensive and we barely got to eat anything decent. ||The best part of this resort is the onsen. You can tell there are some bathtubs that are not kept up but overall the facility is large and has a beautiful outdoor soaking tub. This was the highlight of the stay.||Overall, if you are there to hit the slopes the resort is fine. But if you are not hitting the slopes and trying to pass the time, it would cost a lot to keep yourself entertain. Thank goodness snowplay is free! Had I did more research on this place, I would have brought my own food and other items to pass the time. The hotel is overpriced for...