The Royal Park Hotel Iconic Osaka-Midosuji — Hotel in Osaka

Where available, we normally stay in St.Regis or Ritz Carlton hotels, but ones in Osaka somehow managed to get so many bad-to-worse reviews lately, so my wife and I started searching for an alternative and stumbled onto Royal Park Iconic Osaka Midosuji, recent reviewers spoke well about. So, we stayed there for 3 nights in a Suite on executive floor in August.|Definitely we didn’t regret and – also definitely – we will stay here again, if our travels will bring us back into Osaka again in the future.|Everything in the hotel looks new, the staff is mainly young and very eager to assist, general speaking English is not bad at all judging by average Japanese standards. We are especially grateful to Ikumi Ikeda from Guest Relations, who were not only looking for restaurant options for us day and night, found an excellent place where I could eat tuna sashimi in unreasonable quantities, but where my wife at the same time could have some other dishes from cooked fish (she can’t eat raw one), but on top of that Ikumi manually translated all their menu for us during the night, so ordering next day was a breeze despite the fact that restaurant doesn’t have either English menu or English speaking-staff. |The majority of the hotels consider food/drinks in their Executive Lounges as something guests staying on Executive floors are getting “for free” and, thus, try to keep available options to a minimum. Lounge in Iconic turned out to be a positively surprising exception from general rule. It has an excellent choice of tasty bites in their Executive Lounge during “refreshment time” and even better variety of appetizers, hams, desserts and alcohol options during cocktail time starting at 15:00.|Unfortunately, there are some negative moments as well. To start with, the housekeeping hours are until 14:00 only. Normally, in hotels respecting themselves (and not necessarily 5-star ones only) the housekeeping comes to the rooms twice a day: first for regular room-cleaning and second time in the evening to prepare the rooms for the night: refresh the towels, close the curtains, turn down the bed. In many hotels they put some small complimentary presents onto your bed or night table, mainly some sweets. Doesn’t exist in Iconic. And if for some reason you didn’t get your room cleaned by 14:00 – bad luck, you won’t get any cleaning till next day at all. Can’t remember seeing anything like this in hotels calling themselves 5-star.|If you are paying JPY 100.000 per night for your room, then – I assume – you can expect to see something different on its floor and not exactly the same cheap carpeting that goes in all public use corridors and lounges of the hotel. And something more noble than faux wood panels and sofas made from unkillable grey flour sack type of fabric.|Finally, they don’t have dedicated Concierge Desk, there is a table with 2 – 3 employees calling themselves “Guest Relations”. In this very review I thanked Guest Relations staff for their willingness to assist. But their assistance mainly comes down to them trying to find whatever you are looking for online on the spot. Not necessarily unsuccessful, but very time-consuming. While in a top-notch hotel I would normally expect either to see either a bit more weathered Concierge with a good local knowledge or, at least, with more “homework” done beforehand aka information about restaurants of most popular types of cuisine and various shopping prepared beforehand. Just like it was, when I asked Guest Relations for Kobe beef recommendation – they immediately produced a card of a place and copy of a menu. While when I asked for Italian or French recommendations, which are also very popular in Japan even among the locals, they started hastily searching something online and, in the end, “approved” a restaurant that was found by our travel agent who had never even been to Osaka. Same happened when we ask for hi-end shopping. The only “help” we managed to get was their “approval” of a shopping mall we found...

The Front Service Desk Manager Keisuke Okada is extremely rude and aggressive.

We expected the hotel to acknowledge the seriousness of the toilet door being dislodged from its sliding track, especially given that this occurred after housekeeping and we returned to the room with children. Guest safety — particularly where young children are involved — should be a top priority.

The most basic housekeeping standard to ensure the room is clean and safe for their hotel guests, was overlooked.

The hotel offered complimentary breakfast for the remaining days as a form of service recovery (initiated on their own accord), which we utilized the morning after the incident in our bathroom. However, following an exceptionally unpleasant encounter with the Front Service Desk Manager — one of the worst experiences we’ve had at any hotel — we chose not to return for breakfast.

We approached the front desk requesting to speak with a Manager, as we felt it was important to raise the issue for the safety of all guests. Instead, we were met with an aggressive, rude, and defensive response from the Front Service Desk Manager.

When we paused during the conversation, he repeatedly asked, “What do you want?” Upon requesting to speak with another Manager, he insisted he was the only one. When we asked to speak to the General Manager, he placed his name card in front of us, tapped it twice, and told us to email him.

He then continued to taunt us and questioned, “What you want? You want discount?” — not once, but twice.

This was an appalling breach of professionalism and a deeply demeaning experience. No hotel guest should ever be treated with such disregard or disrespect.

Unfortunately for him, all we wanted was a sincere acknowledgement and assurance -that the lapse in the housekeeping was serious and they will ensure it would not happen to any guests. It was important for us as it was a safety concern.

We managed to speak to the service manager after we went to another staff to request. The Front Service Desk manager relented.

We were explicitly clear that this matter needed to be escalated, as the attitude and behavior of the Front Service Desk Manager were entirely unacceptable. No follow up on this — a failure that speaks volumes about the level of accountability and service.

We looked through the reviews and this is not the only review about the Front Service Desk Manager.

While we will never return to this hotel, we hope the hotel use this opportunity to straighten things out.

It is deeply concerning when other front service staff, who witnessed the exchange, felt compelled to apologize and acknowledged that they heard everything — after the Front Service Desk Manager walked away. His behaviour is an indicative of a troubling pattern of domineering behaviour that cannot be overlooked.

We stayed for 8 Nights, 2 rooms

When we checked out, this Manager kept up with his impolite disposition.

Prior to this stay, we stayed at three other hotels — all of which were very pleasant. Those hotels had children’s amenities prepped in-room without the need for request. While this hotel does offer such amenities, they were not prepared in advance despite knowing we had children, and were only provided upon request.

Housekeeping standards also fell short. Basic items like soap were only replenished when specifically requested. Bathroom slippers and children’s amenities — which were eventually provided only after we raised the issue of our child’s slippers going missing after housekeeping — were placed haphazardly each day, reflecting a lack of care and attention to detail.

In summary, while service recovery has its place, what truly matters is a genuine acknowledgment of the service lapse and a clear, decisive recourse action from the hotel. Anything less falls short of basic accountability.

Not every guest is seeking compensation or a discount. This kind of treatment is wholly indefensible and should never happen...

Honestly, there are so many other cool places to stay in Osaka... You should just go stay there.

This is a long one, so I wanted to preface this with the fact that my job requires me to be on the road 200+days a year, so I know what to expect from a hotel and I understand what the staff has to deal with on a regular basis. I'm not being a disgruntled/entitled traveler, I'm just giving you the full picture of my experience.

The staff Other than the one English speaking concierge, who was very pleasant and as helpful as she could be, almost every other interaction was unpleasant. Their basic starting point of any conversation with me as if I was an idiot. They all come with some false "air of sophistication" that just comes off pompus and rude.

The rooms Are microscopic. And I mean this by Japanese standards. To say that these rooms accommodate 2 people is laughable. There's barely enough space for a single carry on suitcase, let alone if you are traveling with a partner. There's not even access on both sides of the bed, so you have to scootch to the end of the bed to get in or out if you're not on the nightstand side. And really, none of that would have been a deal-breaker, but they don't permit you to "hang out" in the bar without buying one of their insanely overpriced drinks or in their lobby at all. My spouse and I were trying to relax with my parents at the end of a long day, and we were told that we were "in the public space and needed to move to our rooms". These rooms barley fitted 2 people and to suggest the 4 of us to reconvene in our room was utterly ridiculous. Especially because the lobby was completely empty and we weren't being loud or unruly in any way whatsoever. Our air conditioning would keep randomly shutting off throughout the night, making sleeping nearly impossible. When we tried to address it, they just said it was working fine and showed me how to "turn it on" as if we didn't know how to do that. When I tried to explain the issue, they'd just get another person involved and I'd have the exact same conversation with them with no real resolution. On top of all that, the room has a bunch of unnecessary "decoration" and other things eating up the already minimal space. There's a whole shelf in the only cabinet in the room where they glued down a gigantic vase (with nothing in it) rendering one of the only places to organize/store stuff completely useless. We ended up building or own shelf structure in the corner or of some of the random shit they put in the room just to make it usable.

The food/breakfast When you first walk in the spread comes off as impressive until you start trying to eat anything. It's unorganized causing patrons to constantly bump into and cut in front of one another. Almost every food item is cold or undercooked. And if you send a plate back, you get a dirty look from the staff of you've left any of their inedible food uneaten. And if something runs out, God forbid you ask anyone to replenish it. I waited over 15 minutes for them to refill any of the fruit juice or water dispensers after asking multiple people multiple times. Overall breakfast was so bad that we decided to walk 25 minutes to find literally anything else than to deal with it again.

Tldr: this place is going to cost you an arm and a leg to stay in and most likely cause you more stress and discomfort than if you just went to any budget hotel nearby. I would not stay again without a complete management overhaul. Truly a dark stain on what has otherwise been a wonderful trip to a...