The Vale Rusutsu — Hotel in Rusutsu

2022/12/27 (4 nights)

3 stars at best, for now. Vale is a semi-serviced apartment, not a luxury hotel. I don’t see why they cannot just cut the clerical staff to 1/3 and operate it like a sharing condo using Airbnb. Their current model is not extracting much value out of the number of talented staffs on the scene.

★ Entrance Don’t allow cars to park so close to the entrance. The entrance hang over roof is too small and built too low. There is a lot of evidence for me to suspect that the entire facility was built too fast too soon and designed by someone who has never experienced real luxury ski resorts such as the ones in North America, Europe, etc.

★ Vale website user experience Frustratingly terrible, out of synch with reality. I own a company, a small one, only 15 people with only a few million USD sales. But our latest investment into our accounting software alone cost USD$300,000. It was a (calculated) gamble, but we needed it for our future growth. Both Vale and Rusutsu Resort managements, in conjunction (preferably cooperating with 3rd party transportation services), need to revamp their website/reservation/inquiry systems by plucking in at least a few million USD. This should solve at least 30~40% of their worries. With all respect to tech nerds, don't rely 100% on them, because what the cutomers are looking for is not a hight tech or design fancy website but a simple functionable one. I know this is easily said than done, and this is going to take a few years, but there is no way getting around this. Must hire a tech business oriented bilingual personnel that loves skiing/vacationing to become the director of your website.

★★ Reservation response I saw evidence of staffs trying genuingly hard to accommodate my needs admist the vast amount of assistance that they needed to execute.

★★ .5 Furnitures Very IKEA. Typical Japanese apartment design. No shelves in the bathroom. Painfully tiny single bed. Towel supply inadequate. Towel hanger is way too small. Trash can too small. Boring view (602, mountain side).

★★ Cleaning rule Every 3 days or so, they change towels and take the garbage, but it would be nice if the floor and carpets were at least lightly vacuumed.

★ ★ ★ .5 Onsen Plenty of showers to wash up. Onsen quality is very good. Cannot use after check out. Opening hours are a bit short. Entrance area is too small. Too few lockers. Entrance facade is comically antiquated.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Ski locker room and location Well thought out.

★ ★ ★ Ski slope access Way too flat in the beginning.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No of elevators (4) and the hallway width

★ Vale cafe Provides free coffee only in the morning. I question the purpose of this tiny space.

★ ★ ★ .5 Breakfast Take out box is a great idea. But the menu is the same every day.

Minus ★ Lunch This is not the Vale's fault but I need to adress this. Literally, nothing good available and the line is excruciatingly long. The menu is embarrassing to foreign visitors who are willing to pay a high price. High price is not an issue. Need to wake up and commit.

★ ★ ★ ★ Dinner Bellevue steak was plenty good for a Japanese ski resort. I would go again. Same applies somewhat to Sekkatei Japanese restaurant.

★ ★ ★ ★ Staff potential Sensed that everyone is highly stressed. Most need a lot more orientation. All due to terrible hectic management.

OVERALL: Unless the management overhauls their back end system, I would never again visit or invest toward the WEST side. Vale condo is is not a place to stay for an extended period. There is a kitchen but no nowhere to buy food (to prepare a meal). The concept of Vale condo and how they connected the East and West side facilities with a gondola and a monorail are a reminiscent of the legacy “Showa” period which ended over 30 years ago. Next time, I will give it a try with Westin on the West side or just...

I really wish I could give this a higher rating, but I think the two stars are all that’s deserved. For the price, I would not stay here again nor would I recommend it. I hope the feedback is helpful and I do hope to see it get implemented.

Service: a hotel of this cost should be offering concierge service. There’s a guest services email but we made multiple requests before arriving, none of which even received a response once we arrived at the hotel, our room was not ready. That’s understandable, given the time of year, but the staff’s handling of questions left something to be desired. I had very little confidence they had handled these issues before and little confidence that they would be resolved favorably. Rusutsu is fairly challenging to get to. Support in booking shuttle reservations, taxi reservations, etc. should be expected from a hotel of this cost.

Offering: this building is part of a massive resort (that was not clear to me upon booking via amex fine hotels and resorts). The food is, frankly, very bad - about the quality that you’d expect from a suburban shopping mall. it was not made clear upon booking that reservations would need to be booked in advance in order to eat somewhere other than a buffet or a sports bar. checkout is at 10am, our shuttle wasn’t until 1:45pm. The onsen (a fantastic amenity) is closed from 9am - 2pm. We asked ahead of time if we’d be able to use the amenities after we checked out, they answered yes, and alas we were not able to. the onsen is beautiful and is where the two stars originate from. I appreciate the thoughtfulness with which it was created. I understand (now) that this is part of a massive resort but I do think some education about the history of onsen culture and customs upon check in would be appreciated. There were many loud people (children and adults) in the onsen.

Rooms: perhaps one of my biggest complaints is that it was not made clear upon booking that this is a group of independently owned apartments, not a true hotel. While not an outright issue, some key services (like room service) are missing from this property. There are plenty of hotels where I’d prefer not to order room service but again, at the going rate, it feels like a serious oversight.

Amenities: it’s definitely ski out, but it’s not ski in. You’ll be hiking your skis up the final hill, and closer to a kilometer if you get off at the gondola. the food alone gives this place a 0/5 rating.

Overall, I’m super disappointed in my stay. The skiing was amazing - some of the best days I’ve had in years. But this place needs some serious changes made to their core offering, staff training, and overall management to warrant the price paid. I will not stay again and if you are expecting a luxurious experience, I’d suggest you look...

In terms of rooms, service and location, the vale is unbeatable and we loved the onsen (once getting over the nudity part as a westerner!).

The reason I’ve not given 5 stars is two fold: the cost of the food at the vale is extremely expensive. On our first night, we tried the buffet (£35/head) and having come from Tokyo, felt the food was very low quality for the cost of entry. We have eaten better buffets at much cheaper resorts. Additionally, the prebookable restaurants at £200+/head were way out of our price range. With the experience of the buffet in our minds, I have no idea if better quality ingredients would have been used in these restaurants, but we didn’t want to chance it. Instead, we ate most nights at the small independent restaurants outside of the resort on the main road. These were actually pretty great and much more reasonably priced.

Additionally, ski rental is very bad value for money here. I suppose it’s largely a captive audience being in a resort, but the options are either use the resorts Salomon shop (which I could nearly buy my own board for the same price of renting for a week), or use a local shop on the main road called “amuse sports” which has very low quality gear but much cheaper.

In the end, we rented premium gear all the way from niseko via Rhythm Japan as there is no guarantee from the Salomon shop that you get the correct gear for the conditions despite paying for the extortionate premium package. A pain in the arse overall. From what I could see, the non premium resort gear looked very average and everyone seemed to be riding/skiing the same hardware, with the premium gear looking good quality but of limited availability. Our Rhythm gear was the best I’ve ever used so make of that what you will!

Lastly, some other positives: our room was effectively an apartment with kitchenette/clothes washing and drying etc. We were very impressed with how well decked out the room was and it was cleaned exceptionally well. The included breakfast was great - large yoghurt with oats, a coffee, a muffin/cookie/banana bread of your choice and a loaded sandwich. We ended up keeping the sandwich and cookie for lunch and snacks on the slopes to save money and they were filling enough for us.

Overall, I’d probably go back as the accommodation is so good but I’d do a similar...