Renaissance Okinawa Resort — Hotel in Onna

My husband booked our stay here for my early birthday and what was suppose to be a relaxing weekend staycation ended up being a very mediocre stay. The resort is absolutely beautiful don’t get me wrong but there were so so SO many things wrong with this place and we wish we would have done more research.||We asked for early check in (noon) and was confirmed through the app since we had that option being Gold Elite members, went to the resort for our early check in and our rooms were not ready. We didn’t make much of a fuss since we figured we could just go grab a bite around the resort to wait. By the time we got done with grabbing food, it was about 1400 which is NORMAL check in time for everyone. Rooms should have been ready.. it wasn’t. They asked us to wait a little longer so we sat in the lounge to have a soda and wait. We did not check into our rooms until about 1500 and when we got to our rooms, it was SO HOT. We turned on the A/C, told ourselves we would wait until after 1600 to go to the beach/pool so it’s past peak temperature hours, that hour that we were in our room the air did not get any cooler. We complained and while I do appreciate the attentive service, it didn’t do anything for us. Honestly our house temps were so much cooler than this resort, ALL OVER. The entire resort is hot everywhere that you go. ||My husband mentioned to me later that he had birthday balloons and flowers reserved for the room for when we checked into the room and we DID NOT receive any of those things either. I told him he should say something in which I think he attempted to contact someone via Marriott app and they were of no help.||Anyway, it was so hot so we figured we would go dip in the waters, unfortunately not even 5 minutes in the beach water and we had a guard flag us down throwing x signs at us asking my husband if he had a t-shirt to wear… as this was not a tattoo friendly resort. So big fail on my husbands part for not doing his research but also bc of this it kind of ruined our stay here overall. He bought a $50 USD t-shirt from one of the stores inside and barely even wore it. Soon as we got into the pool, guards blow whistle to tell everyone to get out. Apparently they do this every hour for 10 minute breaks… we just decided to go back to our scorching hot room and shower after all this.||Dinner time, every single restaurant in this resort is beyond overpriced for what the food is actually worth. We had four seasons (French) and ordered something that costed us over ¥18,000 that did not even fill us up and not to mention every one of those dishes took 20+ min each time to come out. It was horrible, I was so over it by the third dish||The following day (today), we literally stayed in our room to hang out all day long.. I kid you not. Only time we stepped out was for food. Because we couldn’t really go swimming since it wasn’t tattoo friendly and every time we stepped out, it was so ridiculously hot and you immediately become drenched. This hotel does not have running A/C indoors in any of their common areas. After being there all day, we decided to just take a big L and check out early to drive back home where the air conditioning was actually cold. We decided to just skip out on our inclusive breakfast for the next morning and cancel the dolphin show we had planned, that’s how bad it was. Below I will list pros and cons for those who don’t want to read this thorough and lengthy review but I knew I had to write this to warn others before they book. ||PROS: top notch service, friendly staff, beautiful resort for photos/videos, good for kids.||CONS: no cold air conditioning anywhere in this resort (not in your room and definitely not in any of the restaurants or indoor common areas), NOT tattoo friendly, extremely overpriced food, 10 min swim break every hour.||Here are prices for some of the restaurants inside the resort I remember or ate at.||Sailfish Cafe Dinner: ¥6,000 per person; lunch ¥2,700|Four Seasons: ¥12,000 pp for teppanyaki and French was set menu or a la carte |Loy’s sushi...

Please don’t eat, shop, stay or do anything at this hotel!!!!!!!!!!!! If you don’t support animal abuse or a seal being kept in a bathtub, don’t go to this hotel! This hotel is known as a family friendly and five star hotel but if you’re looking for a real five star hotel and a place that you’ll feel comfortable in, that hotel is far from it. I am writing this review as I am coming out of the hotel because I am so disappointed and angry with this hotel chain. I have stayed at renaissance hotels before but I had never seen anything like the Okinawa one. The renaissance hotel in Okinawa offers photos with dolphins, dolphin feeding, dolphin shows and swimming with dolphins. Of course these dolphins are captured but what really shocked me is that one dolphin has a tiny square of water to swim in all day. This was the most ridiculous amount of space I had ever seen a dolphin be in. The dolphins were not the worst part though; the turtles were. There was a really big turtle in a small area that was very shallow once again but the worse part about it is that this turtle could see the sea. While I stood watching this turtle, I saw how it went back and forth on the edge of this pond and popped its head out to look at the sea and try to get up on this edge to escape. Frankly, I considered helping it escape because i could not believe in what condition it was in. Another example of this hotel abusing animals was how parakeets and other birds were in the lobby attached to a log. There were two macaws (parakeets) at two extremities of the lobby. These poor things were trying to close their eyes and had their heads turned away from the public. Both of them had lost many feathers on their chest which shows how stressed they were. Both were attached to a small branch and were clearly annoyed with what was happening around them. There were also two exotic small birds in a tiny cage which were clearly exhausted and irritated. These birds were in the lobby, a place where all guests arriving in the hotel HAVE to go through. This place is also very loud and bright which was not an ideal condition for these birds to say the least. “Lastly”, there were about five wallabies, a toucan, two land turtles, a pink parakeet, two sea turtles, two earless seals (small seals) and an eared seal (big seal) all in one cage. The cage was made of a net and a plastic net like surrounding to stop the animals from escaping. The toucan was jumping around this cage and was trying to get out through the top of the cage. This poor bird was obviously irritated/upset because it had it’s beak half open which is a sign of annoyance in birds. The pink parakeet was on a log and just stood still not making any sound, not reacting and not moving at all. The wallabies were all on the floor looking exhausted from the heat and one of them kept on sticking its nose out of the cage and biting the fence to break it which obviously wasn’t going to happen. Now the most shocking thing was seeing an earless seal (the type of seals which usually lives on glaciers) in a SQUARE SHALLOW BATHTUB!!! This seemed ridiculous to me as the seal was too big for the bathtub it was in and looked like it was suffering from this heat. The small seals were in another tub next to it where they pretty much swam 1 meter, flipped and went back because they had nowhere to go since the area they were in were so small. So basically all these animals were in one cage with no separations. There were two tiny water tubs in this cage and on the floor were all these other animals which shouldn’t be living together in my opinion. This is the worst condition in which I have ever seen animals and believe me I have been to many places all over the world. DONT GO TO THIS HOTEL AND DONT...

Stayed here for three nights as part of a longer vacation in Okinawa. ||Our experience was positive overall after we arrived and settled it. It was very tough to plan and book this hotel though…perhaps the most complicated booking experience of any hotel I have stayed at. There is a bewildering array of options that are super tough to figure out. I read the hotel website, watched YouTube videos, scrolled through TripAdvisor…but it was so hard to understand what room or package gives you access to what benefits and amenities. I ended up booking a club level room as we really value having a lounge when traveling. These rooms are on the top floor (11) which is accessed via a private elevator. The room was decent, with a large balcony. The quality of the fit and finish was a lot better than the photos on the hotel website. There is a major road running close to the hotel. We could hear the noise of trucks whenever we opened our door…the smell of exhaust emissions came into our room too. Thankfully the room was very quiet when the door was closed. There was not a lot of storage in the room plus no options for decaf coffee. Housekeeping was outstanding. They did an excellent job. You do have to request your room to be cleaned otherwise you can decline, and you will receive a daily 1,000 yen voucher that can be redeemed in the Market Place shop. ||The club lounge was a great disappointment. It is very small, and the food options are extremely limited. What’s worse is they repeat the same food options every meal, every day. Certainly not worth the extra cost associated with securing access. There was no decaf in the coffee machines here either. The staff on the club level were amazing though. Everyone was so super friendly and helpful. Special mention to Sotomura Chiaki and Yoshimi Yuya for their help. Their service was some of the best we have ever received anywhere in the world. We miss them. The hotel is lucky to have them.||We had heard that the hotel does not offer complimentary lounge access to qualifying elites. I was, therefore, very surprised to learn that there was a happy hour offered every evening in the Four Seasons bar area. This was extremely nice and upscale. The food provided was almost the same as the food on the Club Level. There was no variation in what was served each night either, but this offering was greatly appreciated.||The resort beach is nice with a lot of super helpful beach staff. I was grateful that the indoor and outdoor pools were open which allowed me to swim. The gym is large and varied too but a little tired. In fact much of the outdoor facilities are dated and worn. Note: folks with tattoos must cover them when moving around the resort (which is the norm across Japan). This is not something to contest…the country just doesn’t look favorably on them. ||We didn’t know what to expect from this property, but we were pleasantly surprised. Don’t think we could have done more than three days though…there is just not enough variety in the food offerings in the lounge or breakfast...