APA Hotel Keisei Ueno-Ekimae — Hotel in Tokyo

Dear APA 242|Thank you for a frankly awful stay. Given your excellent location near the Ueno stations and park, you were charging for a premium 3 star product but failed to deliver this. There are fundamental issues with the hotel and your service which negatively impacted our whole visit.|1) Room size - we booked a double, which our room barely was. More importantly the photos you used to advertise the room type are NOT correct. You display pictures of a larger room type than the double. Most importantly, you show space around the bed which does not, in reality, exist. For a couple, this is a vital consideration. Without it, it is basically a single person’s room with a double bed in it.|This lack of space prevents it ever being a premium product. You provide both a luggage rest and a dehumidifier – but no space to use either. They are literally wasted. For example, if you put the rest up for use, you either block the fridge, or the bathroom and exit. The only place to keep luggage is under the desk – which is not very large and also has the chair in it. There is no storage at all.|This makes for a very cramped and unpleasant experience. It is clear you have had complaints about this in the past, as your TV systems has statements about how the small rooms are more efficient. This is not a defence. It is an advantage for you, not the guest. |2) Hotel Facilities – This hotel does not have the facilities which would be expected of a 3-star product. At least partially these shortages seem to stem from a practice of forcing in as much accommodation as possible. Impacts of this decision can be seen all through the building and significantly impacts a stay.|There is no laundry facility of any kind, and only a small vending facility on one floor. Cleaning carts are routinely left in the passageways as the cleaning rooms only have space for linen. |Most significant, and showing that this is a ‘hotel over-capacity’ issue, are the elevators and the luggage storage. The elevators are over-subscribed, especially during check out times. We have waited over 30 minutes for elevator space between 9 and 10am – and have no doubt people have missed their formal check out times due to this. And the free luggage storage, offered by most hotels, is available – literally on the floor of the lobby, which is both inherently insecure and makes the lobby a hazardous and cramped space for guests.|But there is no space for any of these facilities to be improved. It is all accommodation. But without the facilities, the accommodation is not a premium product.|3) Room Condition – If the focus of the hotel is on accommodation rooms, it is on volume, not condition. Maintenance seems to be poor, leaving you feeling unvalued as a guest. |Our bathroom had a marked smell of mildew – either from the loft hatch, or the gap in the bath framing. That staff were aware of this was obvious – the extractor was always left on after cleaning, and a spray of air freshener was beside the bathroom door. Neither was effective and the bathroom was a deeply unpleasant place to use. The bathroom door was also water and soap stained.|The bed was worse, with a damaged mattress sagging in the middle of the edges and preventing quality sleep. This fault went so far as to limit our activities each day as we were physically too tired to enjoy them properly. Pillows and bedding were of similar low quality. |There were a number of other issues in the room. There was tatty wallpaper around the window, and beside the desk where the chair had rested. Worse, the wallpapering had been completed in a poor fashion in hard to reach areas, with noticeable gaps and seams in the corners above the TV for example. The internet had a tendency to go down at random, so while you provided the facility to stream from our devices, it would often cut at random ruining the experience.|These are not premium hotel standards. This is superficially meeting those standards while a fundamental lack of quality remains. |We could continue: |– the staff were unapproachable, being both over-worked and had laughed at us on check-in. |- the overworked elevators also had to haul large bags of laundry around beside guests because there is no service chute network or elevator.|- the passageways are covered with a rubber weave carpet more commonly found in school exterior areas. Definitely not premium and seemingly hard to clean properly given its condition. |So we will not be returning. We enjoyed Ueno, and it suits us well, but any future visit will not be with you. We send no complements to your corporate office, you deserve no...

Dear APA 242|Thank you for a frankly awful stay. Given your excellent location near the Ueno stations and park, you were charging for a premium 3 star product but failed to deliver this. There are fundamental issues with the hotel and your service which negatively impacted our whole visit.|1) Room size - we booked a double, which our room barely was. More importantly the photos you used to advertise the room type are NOT correct. You display pictures of a larger room type than the double. Most importantly, you show space around the bed which does not, in reality, exist. For a couple, this is a vital consideration. Without it, it is basically a single person’s room with a double bed in it.|This lack of space prevents it ever being a premium product. You provide both a luggage rest and a dehumidifier – but no space to use either. They are literally wasted. For example, if you put the rest up for use, you either block the fridge, or the bathroom and exit. The only place to keep luggage is under the desk – which is not very large and also has the chair in it. There is no storage at all.|This makes for a very cramped and unpleasant experience. It is clear you have had complaints about this in the past, as your TV systems has statements about how the small rooms are more efficient. This is not a defence. It is an advantage for you, not the guest. |2) Hotel Facilities – This hotel does not have the facilities which would be expected of a 3-star product. At least partially these shortages seem to stem from a practice of forcing in as much accommodation as possible. Impacts of this decision can be seen all through the building and significantly impacts a stay.|There is no laundry facility of any kind, and only a small vending facility on one floor. Cleaning carts are routinely left in the passageways as the cleaning rooms only have space for linen. |Most significant, and showing that this is a ‘hotel over-capacity’ issue, are the elevators and the luggage storage. The elevators are over-subscribed, especially during check out times. We have waited over 30 minutes for elevator space between 9 and 10am – and have no doubt people have missed their formal check out times due to this. And the free luggage storage, offered by most hotels, is available – literally on the floor of the lobby, which is both inherently insecure and makes the lobby a hazardous and cramped space for guests.|But there is no space for any of these facilities to be improved. It is all accommodation. But without the facilities, the accommodation is not a premium product.|3) Room Condition – If the focus of the hotel is on accommodation rooms, it is on volume, not condition. Maintenance seems to be poor, leaving you feeling unvalued as a guest. |Our bathroom had a marked smell of mildew – either from the loft hatch, or the gap in the bath framing. That staff were aware of this was obvious – the extractor was always left on after cleaning, and a spray of air freshener was beside the bathroom door. Neither was effective and the bathroom was a deeply unpleasant place to use. The bathroom door was also water and soap stained.|The bed was worse, with a damaged mattress sagging in the middle of the edges and preventing quality sleep. This fault went so far as to limit our activities each day as we were physically too tired to enjoy them properly. Pillows and bedding were of similar low quality. |There were a number of other issues in the room. There was tatty wallpaper around the window, and beside the desk where the chair had rested. Worse, the wallpapering had been completed in a poor fashion in hard to reach areas, with noticeable gaps and seams in the corners above the TV for example. The internet had a tendency to go down at random, so while you provided the facility to stream from our devices, it would often cut at random ruining the experience.|These are not premium hotel standards. This is superficially meeting those standards while a fundamental lack of quality remains. |We could continue: |– the staff were unapproachable, being both over-worked and had laughed at us on check-in. |- the overworked elevators also had to haul large bags of laundry around beside guests because there is no service chute network or elevator.|- the passageways are covered with a rubber weave carpet more commonly found in school exterior areas. Definitely not premium and seemingly hard to clean properly given its condition. |So we will not be returning. We enjoyed Ueno, and it suits us well, but any future visit will not be with you. We send no complements to your corporate office, you deserve no...

Shoutout to Aqeel at the front desk for going above and beyond.

I've stayed at this APA hotel many nights previously for its excellent location and cozy rooms and knew it was an entirely non-smoking hotel, but today I was given a room that had previously been smoked in by a rule-breaking guest. It was a fairly weak odor, most people would have been fine or unable to detect it, but my allergy and asthma didn't care. Cue the painful lungs and difficulty breathing. At first I tried to bear with it and not make a fuss, maybe running the ventilator and AC for a few hours would help... it didn't. Eventually I had to go to the front desk and ask for a room change since I just couldn't use the room, and I had paid up to stay for a full week.

There were four front desk agents. The young man responding to me seemed very uncomfortable and unsure of what to do; after some hesitation, he went into a back room, presumably to talk to a manager, and came back and stumbled over explaining they were full and that I could have a different room the next day. I was prepared to do that if that were the only option, but it would suck as I had to go to work at 6am, so I'd have to wake at 5am to pack and check out and have them hold my luggage until I could check back in. As I was speaking English, we were struggling a bit to communicate as I tried to work out the details of that.

However, Aqeel stepped in to assist with fluent English. After establishing the situation, he went into the back room again, and came out with a solution. There was actually another room of the exact same layout that I could move to, but they needed the room I was in. It has to be turned around, and the cleaners were about to end their shift. They could swap me right then if I packed in 5 minutes and vacated the room so they could turn it around for a future guest. I took the offer, packed the fastest I'd ever packed in my life, put my stuff out in the corridor, the cleaners swept the room in minutes, and I got a new room that had no traces of cigarette allergen.

It's a great relief to be in a room I can breath freely in. I wanted to give Aqeel a gratuity discretely for his quick thinking and execution to solve a guests issue, as might be customary in Western hotels, but he refused and insisted he was just doing his job and took pride in being able to meet the needs of guests.

Now I know better, that trying to bear with my allergy and failing was sabotaging both myself and the hotel's hospitality. It's really hard to get smoke completely out of a room regardless of a nuisance guest breaking the rules and paying a fine. Guests need to listen to their gut if there's an issue and bring it up politely as soon as possible, not try to suffer through it and complain about it after.

Hotels can really only make things right that if the request is timely and feasible, and there's someone there who can understand and take action confidently. And that's what Aqeel did. His creative solution and English fluency in the very nick of time saved my trip. Thanks Aqeel!

Someone give him a bonus or even promotion please, this kind of multilingualism, problem solving ability, attention to detail and willingness to help is exemplary in the...