hotel around TAKAYAMA, Ascend Hotel Collection — Hotel in Takayama

Whilst Takayama is a relatively remote mountain area village it is home to a large number of hotels. “ Build them and they will come”, and judging by the number of tour groups they do, presumably to see the buildings in the old village area of the town.||The “Hotel Around” (weird choice of name) is one of the newer hotels and a potential 4- star candidate. After 4 days of B/C-grade hotels, the Hotel Around was a welcome breath of fresh air. It is a well designed, ultra-modern hotel with a full range of amenities; his and her hot water bath (an Onsen hotel), modern laundry, nice bars and restaurant.||The rooms are relatively spacious. The bathrooms are small but functional with bath/shower and the obligatory heated toilet/bidet. Nice towels and instant hot water. After over 50 years of travel, the “Around” broke our World-wide record for bed size (took me two nights to find my wife.) The bed size comes at a cost and the only obvious design fault, no bedside tables except for a small, narrow shelf in the middle of the bed head. There is also no facility for bag storage although the room does have a study desk which we used for one of our cases. Couple of comfortable chairs and small table, fridge, wall-mounted TV and drink making facilities. Hard to fault except for the bedside tables.||The “Around” also has an interesting breakfast regime. After several days of queueing for breakfast, the Around has a set menu, cold and very Japanese, which is laid out on the tables before you arrive. You just have to get your own drinks. It works as we were in and out in 25 minutes. Perhaps a hot, full English breakfast would have been better but hot and breakfast are terms you can’t link in Japan, so a cold Japanese style breakfast is probably better.||So in summary, a 4/5 star hotel which is hard to fault so HIGHLY...

We availed ourselves of a weekend sojourn with our family in mid-September, well beyond the zenith of the high season, opting for a single night's accommodation. Our quarters were a spacious chamber on the eighth floor. If I may be so bold as to inquire, might one question the efficacy of the housekeeping staff's cleaning regimen or their adherence to stringent hygienic principles? One must ponder whether this establishment truly merits the endorsement bestowed upon it by TripAdvisor. Upon opening the door, we were assailed by an unmistakable odour reminiscent of soiled hosiery. Despite employing the provided deodorising agent and operating the air purification apparatus at full capacity, the malodour persisted unabated. Given the modestly elevated tariff during the holiday period, one cannot help but perceive it as an inflated levy targeted at foreign visitors, thereby treating patrons with a certain disdain. Should one aspire to a truly agreeable lodging experience, I would never deign to select this...

The hotel was a last minute booking for the Festival, as everywhere else was fully booked, so had to have a slightly more expensive deluxe room. The room was lovely and by far the largest in Japan we have had. ||The location of the hotel is great, as we could walk into the town in a matter of minutes, and we were situated close to the train station for travel, but not too close for the noise.||The staff were friendly and professional, the facilities were excellent and really well thought out, in fact the only thing to let the hotel down was the breakfast. ||We stayed two nights so had the same bento both mornings. The rice was over cooked and had obviously sat in the box for a while as it was baked to the sides. The salmon was also very over cooked, like eating felt fabric. The orange “juice” was like squash, and the salad needed more anything to give it some flavour.||The serving of the bento and the staff in the restaurant were all good, but the food was the most disappointing of 24...