APA Hotel & Resort Ōsaka Umeda-eki Tower — Hotel in Osaka

I travel a lot and do a lot of reviews. I try to be objective and not do "anger" reviews or oversell places. I want to relay my experiences accurately and let others decide for themselves based on the content and not the emotional overtones of a reviews. Please keep that in mind here.

I stayed here over a period of 5 days in 2025 in early April. To be fair, it was quite crowded, but not overly so based on my observations of the people in and around the hotel.

The location is great. The rooms are clean, but they mattress is very poor and thin. I do like the storage under the bed, but it seems like they sacrificed comfort of the bed for this extra space.

The staff is very helpful and demonstrated good service on two separate occasions (finding me an HDMI cable and securing extra hangers).

What totally blew up my experience here was the elevator system that is in use here. It always took about 10 to 15 minutes from a floor above 4 to any floors on the 4th, 3rd, and 1st floors. The 3rd and 4th floors have the gym, laundry, Family Mart, etc... It was terribly annoying and we were subjected to queues and long wait times at virtually all times of the day. We did not see a difference between the 5-18 area or the 19-34 area. I talked with other patrons that had similar experiences.

Each living floor has about 60 rooms on it, so around 1700 rooms overall serverd by these elevators (each holds 15 people, not including any luggage, backpacks, strollers, etc...

They have 9 elevators - 4 serving floors 1-18, and 5 serving 1,3,4 and 19-34. The big issue here seems to be that all the elevators tend to stop on 1,3, 4 most of the time regardless of the section of living areas. You cannot use the stairs to go between 1, 3, 4 at all but they do have an escalator (that was not used much from what I could tell) to get you from 1 - 3.

So, if you want to go up from 1 to 20, you have to stop at 3 and 4 every time because the people on 3 and 4 are trying to move between those floors or go up or down from there. This creates a lot of contention for elevator space, so if you are in a hurry, you actually have a better shot at going in the opposite direction first. We started taking any elevator that reached 20 UP to go down because otherwise the car may be full when it came back down to 20.

T.hey would have been way better off dedicating one or two elevators just to deal with the 3rd and 4th floors and left 3 or 4 to service the lower living area and the upper living area.

If you have a tight schedule (flight, etc), you need to plan way ahead especially if you have luggage as the elevators are constantly full.

So, nice hotel, nice location, nice staff, horrible logistics. I won't stay here or recommend this hotel to anyone until this gets resolved. From the looks at prior reviews complaining about the elevator (there are MANY and some quite old), this won't change so I will not be spending ANY money in my future travels at an APA owned site. There are too many other better places to stay in Japan.

As expected, they responded with "working on it" but based on their history, that...

I stayed in the hotel in May as a solo traveler for a total of 4 days and 3 nights to attend the World Expo 2025 and Universal Studio Japan. Overall I really enjoyed my stay here. I would recommend staying here and I would stay here again if I get the chance. If that’s all you need feel free to stop reading my review but for a more in depth review in the rooms the customer service, amenities and location keep reading!

Rooms: 3 ⭐️ mainly because of the bed and the bathroom The room did its job it had a bed a desk a bathroom and a TV for entertainment with WiFi.The bed was a full size bed so it was a perfect size for me as a 5ft 8in adult. The only down side to the bed is that the bed was very firm and I prefer a softer bed. The bathroom was also a bit small, I felt a bit claustrophobic when using the toilet. The sink in the bathroom fit the size of the bathroom and was too small. If you require a lot of space to do skincare or just need a lot of room, I wouldn’t recommend booking here. Another big down side (I’ve noticed this with most Japanese hotels) there was a unique odor coming from the bathtub drain. If you do stay here you’ll need to get an air freshener to keep in the bathroom which you can get at the conbini outside of the hotel. Because of this the room gets a 3

Customer service: 5 ⭐️ I originally booked with booking.com but when I got to the hotel for check in somehow booking.com messed up and my original booking was canceled. I was able to book a different hotel room without any issue. In fact the concierge who helped me book my room recommended that I re-book through bookings.com because it would be cheaper. Every day coming back to my room I had fresh towels hanging in my door for me to use so that was very nice. When checking out of the hotel I asked for some tape to tape close one of my gift bags and they happily assured with helping me tape my bag close.

Amenities: I didn’t take advantage of any of the amenities besides the lawson’s that’s inside the hotel. They have an onsen in the hotel but I have tattoos so I didn’t even try to use it since I know most public onsens don’t allow people with tattoos. They have restaurants for breakfast and dinner but again I didn’t use them. I’m not really a breakfast person and I opted to just walk around and stumble into a restaurant. As mentioned before if you’re in the hotel they do have a fully operational Lawsons. So if you don’t feel like going outside of the hotel just swing by the 4th floor and it’s right there.

Location: 5 ⭐️ The location of the hotel is perfect in my opinion. It was only a 5-10 minute walk depending on how fast you walk (I tend to speed walk when I’m by myself) from Osaka- Umeda station. It was adjacent to a long street of just restaurants to choose from. I would compare the strip as a less hectic dontonbori street with only restaurants and bars in a very walkable area

Overall this is a great hotel for a solo traveler. And I would definitely stay here again if I get a chance to come...

When choosing hotel accommodation, my main priority is a comfortable bed, pillows, a clean shower, and a toilet, ideally close to the areas I want to visit.

I’m not sure how they came up with the name, but, in my opinion, this is more of an overpriced hostel than a resort or hotel. I've stayed in plenty of resorts, including those in Las Vegas, and this place doesn’t compare at all.

There’s virtually no customer service; you check yourself in, scan your passport, get your own room key, check in for breakfast (we had the buffet included in our package), and check yourself out.

As for the room size, I understand Japanese rooms are typically smaller, but this was extreme—it felt like an airplane toilet. With two tall adults, there was hardly any space to move. The bed was cramped, making it impossible to walk around, so if one of us got up in the middle of the night, it disturbed the other. The mattress was okay, but the pillows were awful, causing me to wake up with headaches and a sore neck every morning.

The shower and toilet were barely functional. There was a tiny bathtub, seemingly only big enough for a small child. The bathroom was so small that I had to dry myself on the carpet because there wasn’t enough room inside. It really did feel like the size of an airplane restroom.

They expected us to put our suitcases under the bed, but they didn’t fit, which further crowded the already cramped room.

The air conditioning was another issue. The room’s rules stated we couldn’t change between heating and cooling, which I found absurd. I prefer a cooler room, but the temperature was stuck at 26.8°C, making it uncomfortably warm. I tried opening the window, but the noise from bikes racing outside kept me up all night.

I also felt discriminated against. Due to having tattoos, I wasn’t allowed to use the public bath or open-air bath. The notice said, "We will refuse entry to those with tattoos. Even after entrance, you will be asked to leave immediately if it’s discovered." This policy felt offensive, and such restrictions should be made clear with booking agents. It’s disappointing and outdated.

The buffet breakfast was very very average the hot food (bacon, eggs) were cold as. I couldn't even eat it. The eggs looks like a running much, not scrambled. If the food was kept hot, would have been OK.

The only positives were that it was close to many shops, eateries, and the train station, and there was a convenience store and laundry facilities on-site—although the dryers were expensive and ineffective.

To top it off, I believe I got bed bugs from this place, as I ended up with itchy red bumps all over my skin, and they only appeared after staying here.

If you want an overpriced hostel, then go ahead and book here, but I won’t be staying with this...