Minn Umeda-North — Hotel in Osaka

Where do I even begin. This “Hotel” has no front desk staff, so having our bags sent ahead was a total nightmare since they were undeliverable. They told us they were not delivered, nor could they be delivered, when in fact they had been delivered the whole time and waiting in our room. My party of 6 all cried when we entered and saw our bags safe inside. I would not call this place a hotel at all. Very confusing. Check-in is performed on a tablet that will likely not even be on the correct screen, so navigating it in a foreign language was a total joy. When we tried to address our baggage issue with the staff member via the tablet, we were essentially told we were SOL. There is only one small elevator serving the entire 10 floors, so hopefully you won’t be in a hurry. Getting up to the room and getting the key from the lock box was simple enough. The front door was clear glass, but only our suite was on the top floor. Getting inside, everything seemed ok until you start looking closely. Nothing over 6ft gets cleaned. I am an HVAC technician by trade and was absolutely disgusted with the state of any device that moved air. Every filter in the A/C units were completely clogged with a thick layer of dust, hair and every other nasty thing that floats in your air. I personally had to clean two of the units so that we could try and cool down our suite. The unit in the bathroom was likewise completely clogged up and initially struggled to do its job until I cleaned it as well. The washing machine looks clean until you open the fabric softener tray or go to clean the lint trap bag and everyone’s clothes smelt worse after washing. The walls where dirty. The linens where stained and blankets had hair and debris all over them. The view was nice. I will not be...

Location wise it's good. It's a leisurely 10min walk to Osaka station. ||The room was good size and had kitchen facilities and even washing machine.||On the downside: Our room had a futon large enough to sleep 4 taking up most of the floor space making moving around difficult unless walking on on the bed. ||We had a small balcony that isn't useful for anything except maybe for 1 person to sit outside during warmer weather. ||The big letdown was however the check in procedure. We advised them in advance that we were arriving late. The premise has self check in via a tablet and there is no reception.It is basically an apartment building with some rooms being rented out. The check in requires some interaction with remote staff to issue a room key code. Noone answered at the other end. There was also a phone number provided and we tried calling many times only to get a voice mail message. ||We also tried calling other Minn premise to get help but only got voice mail. ||After 30minutes of trying we went outside the building and found what seemed to be a number to a caretaker of the building (no mention if that person also managed check in.) This time we got an answer and managed to finish the check in process. ||It was not a pleasant experience way past midnight and not even having access to a bathtroom so we won't be keen to book a self check in room next time if arriving at odd hours. ||Overall otherwise we...

The apartment itself is very nice and spacious. We were very disappointed from 2 things in particular, somehow connected: we arrived at 14:00 and they were inflexible with an early check in (official check in is at 15:00). He didn’t bother to check if the room was - maybe - already clean (how it happens all over the world in any hotel). But the worst is that combined with this, it’s not even allowed to leave any bags, as there is no storage room. These 2 points should be improved definitely in order to have a better check in experience. Connected to this, also for the check out, it should be possible to leave the bags for the day, since the check out is at 10AM. On the other hand the cloud check in idea is nice and advanced but you might improve giving direct contact with the agent in charge directly from the room, maybe putting a tablet in the room so that if you need help, you don’t need to get down on the first floor (and wait for others to check in, as there is only 1 iPad). You might consider also daily cleaning and maybe put some protection in the room as there are many sharp corners...