SPAWORLD HOTEL&RESORT — Hotel in Osaka

Basically Spa World is a spa theme park with a hotel and restaurants all in one location. I stayed 2 nights in the annex which is the newer section of the hotel easily accessible from the main building by a walkway. As soon as you enter SpaWorld you are meant to put your shoes into a shoe locker. If you are staying overnight and don’t want to bother just take off your shoes and bring them to your room. My room was tiny but super clean, The bathroom was perfect and had a toilet that does much more than flush, basin and shower. The room itself was not much bigger than the bed but had a TV and chair, fridge and heaps of plugs. I was alone so it was fine. The room was only 7200 Yen per night which was a very low price I thought as the room includes the buffet breakfast and entry to the spas. Breakfast had lots of choices both western and Japanese and was really quite good. Note very few of the staff speak much English so best to use Google Translate on your mobile phone which seems to be best option. Most of the staff used that or another translate site to communicate. The spas are separated by sex. The women have one floor and the men another floor which changes every month I believe. The pool is on the top floor but be aware it is meant for families and kids. There is no proper lap pool where you can swim laps. I went to do that but had to swim inside the kiddie loop that surrounds the water slides. When you enter the spa level there are lockers which require a 100 yen coin but you get the coin back after you are done. There is a machine that dispenses 100 yen coins if you do not have any. You put ALL of your clothes and gear into the locker and the the only thing you are meant to bring into the spa area is your naked self and a small yellow towel which they provide. You are meant to wash yourself thoroughly before you enter any of the pools. There are many washing stations throughout the spa floor. The spas are separated into country themes such as Persia, Turkey, Bali, Singapore and Japan. Each pool has a temperature readout and there are at least 2 cold pools to cool off. The Japanese area was outdoors which was nice as you see the sky and a bit of the city skyline. In the men’s area the steam rooms were small and not very impressive but there were 2 saunas that were huge and hot. Unfortunately both saunas’s had TV inside so it was hard to relax with the TV’s blaring. This must be a Japanese thing as I have not experienced TV’s in saunas anywhere else. The great thing about having so many different pools with various temperature is that you can choose what you like, stay as long as you like and then cool down in one of the cold pools. Overall the spa floor was quite good and provided lots of hot and cold options. There is a separate floor called the Stone Sauna section which you access via the entry to the spa area. Even if you are a hotel guest you have to pay 3800 yen to buy a separate outfit for the Stone Sauna experience which is coed. You get 3000 back when you return your outfit. I did the stone sauna experience which was themed by country. There was a Russian sauna. Korean Sauna, Israeli Salt Sauna, Turkish sauna which was strangely not heated, etc etc. Of all of the sauna rooms, there was only one that was really hot at 60 degrees but this one had a TV in it while the others were quiet which smoothing music.. The other sauna rooms were warn but not really hot. Overall the Stone Saunas were more like fancy themed chill zones. While I did not partake there were a few restaurants, a gym and games room so you really could bring the entire family and have plenty to do! If you like onsens then this is a good city option as it offers much more than your average onsen but in an...

We have also reported the case to National Consumer Affairs Centre of Japan for Tourist on 23 May 2023.

On May 20, 2023, my family of four (two adults and two children) checked into Spa World (スパワールド世界の大温泉) for a two-night stay. However, we had a very unpleasant experience during our stay that left a negative impression of Japanese people on us.

Firstly, when we arrived at the hotel reception at around 7:30 p.m. on May 20, a male staff member instructed us to pay in cash and informed us that the total cost for our two-night stay was 64,000 yen. We paid the amount 65,000 yen in cash as directed and the staff member counted the cash note by note. After confirming the amount, he gave us the correct change of 1,000 yen, and we went up to our room. However, at around 9:00 p.m., I went out alone to buy something and was detained when he returned to the hotel. The staff claimed that we were short of 10,000 yen in the cash payment we had made earlier. They said they had checked the security cameras and completely deceived me. We were on a tight schedule, and we had not yet had a chance to enjoy the hot springs, so I had no choice but to pay the additional amount. They did not provide us with any receipt, which made us feel deceived and untrustworthy.

Secondly, on the morning of May 22 at around 8:30 a.m., when we were packing to leave, we found that the tap in the bathroom was not working, and there was no water in the washroom. We called the front desk to report the issue, but despite their repeated attempts to fix it, they could not solve the problem. We were on a tight schedule and did not have time to wait for them to fix the issue, so we had to check out without any resolution. It was ironic that a large hot spring hotel like Spa World did not have running water in its rooms.

Lastly, when we checked out, we requested to view the CCTV footage from the previous night, but the manager ignored our request and kept saying, "We are checking" in English. They also rushed us to leave and did not provide us with any clear information on how to pay for the parking fee. Initially, they told us that parking was free, but when we were leaving, they showed us a bill of 22,200 yen for parking. This made us feel angry and confused. Eventually, after a long time, the parking attendant figured out that the front desk had not handled our parking card correctly, and they told us to pay only 2,000 yen, which was the amount they had initially informed us of. However, all of this had already delayed our schedule, and the manager's attitude and the hotel's lack of transparency made us completely disappointed with our stay.

We believe that these issues were not just related to facilities but also to hotel management and service attitude. In particular, the missing 10,000 yen was very suspicious as they refused to let us view the CCTV footage. We hope that a third party can help us view the footage and give us an...

This is a massive onsen/sauna spa complex which is open 24 hours and can thus be used as a place to spend the night in, just like Korea's jimjilbang. If you are a foreigner in Japan, visiting demands a little attention to the house's operating system and protocol which, like everything else in Japan, are both efficient and somewhat complicated. First you need to pay 1,300 yen to get in. You can buy a ticket from a vending machine. If you have any tatoos anywhere, you are not allowed in. This give you access to the ground floor, where the shoe lockers are, the so-called relaxation floor, where several restaurants can be found and used, and whichever floor happens to be the appropriate one for your gender (they alternate every month) -when I visited, the European-theme floor was the male one and the Asian-theme floor was the female one. On the gender-seggregated floors, the dress code is no dress. If you want to use the mix-gender saunas, you must pay extra and wear a special spa-supplied robe which gives you access to them, so it doubles up as a ticket. When using the restaurants, you wear either the gender-mix robe or a (complimentary) gender-seggregated area robe and pay with a chip bracelet which will relay any expenses to your final bill. The gender-segregated floor includes, as well as several Japanese-style hot baths and saunas, a rest area where many people were trying to sleep, although when I checked the place out the lighting was kept far too bright for sleeping and there was some incredibly loud snoring going on, so I decided to pay the xtra charge and try the mix-gender area, which has various stone saunas. There you must wear the robe (if you are from a German-speaking country, you may be used to mix-gender nude saunas, but this does not happen in Japan -if there are people of the opposite gender around, you must be clothed). All the co-ed saunas were themselves too bright or too loud (with music) or too warm for sleeping, the only exception being the so-called "Canada Forest" room, which was kept dim and at a reasonable temperature (actually quite cool, I needed to use a towel as a blanket) and has several recliners, which, however, cannot be pushed totally flat. When you want to leave the facility, which must be by 09:00 am, you have to settle your bill, which will include a hefty extra charge if you have spent the night in. So you end up paying three times -one to get in, one to optionally access the mix gender area and one for the overnight use. Generally I recommend this place as a spa, but not as a place to sleep in, and I found the mixed-gender area doesn't make any sense unless you are with a person of the opposite gender OR you are planning to spend the night. Do make sure you've got enough money to cover the costs, because if you don't settle your bill you will...