The Westin Yokohama — Hotel in Yokohama

I have stayed at this property several times and sadly after Marriott’s decision to do away with a General Manager and move this to a “cluster management” property (= nobody is responsible for anything, hotel is left unsupervised), service levels have gone into freefall.||1. Check in/Check out: as a Titanium Elite, there used to be a nice amenity set up in guest rooms upon arrival. This has now been economized away and is no longer given. Checkout in the lounge was no longer possible, it had been in the past. Checkout queues at the normal reception were long, no choice but to opt for express checkout to catch my train.|2. Breakfast: in disarray more than ever! Seems like the hotel has massively cut back on staff, or training, or both. Items on the buffet are constantly running out and not replenished. This is regardless of whether you attempt to have breakfast in the restaurant or the Executive Lounge. You had to hunt down staff to point out missing items and they would quite happily complete other chores and keep you waiting, near oblivious to you as a paying guest. I felt like I had to beg for basic items such as milk. Food quality has also taken a dive. Long gone are the amazing green-tea croissants that the Westin Yokohama used to have. Current pastries are stale, bread offering is limited to toast, salmon is rock hard, Japanese selection is uninspiring.|3. Health Club & Swimming Pool: pricing here is becoming increasingly tricky and outrageous. In earlier times, access for Titanium Bonvoy members was complimentary. Then it moved to a “per stay” charge, which was fine with me, as I swim every day when work permits. Now it has moved to a “per day” charge and the definition of the “day” is a calendar day, not a day of your stay. So if you arrive on a one night stay checking in on a Monday and leaving on a Tuesday, be prepared to pay for only one room night, but two swimming pool days. Pool and changing areas used to be spotlessly clean. Now, they look old and unkempt.|4. Laundry: this is what annoyed me the most. Knowing that some of my suits and other items are made of high care fibers and not of Teflon, I clearly marked my laundry form with the comment “do not iron/press” in several places. My first set of laundry was returned with one item completely unwashed and smelly, yet pressed to a crisp. My suit trousers were pressed with such high heat that trouser legs were stuck together and the fabric burnt. I mentioned this to Service Express and asked that my following day’s laundry be treated with more care. A representative from the laundry team also came up, acknowledged that the unwashed, yet pressed, item “must have missed a step”. The following morning, I once again pleaded with Service Express to remind the laundry team not to press any of the items to be picked up that day. I also once again marked the laundry form with “do not iron/press”. What did they do? You guessed it, all the items from the 2nd lot of laundry also came back singed and pressed to a crisp.||In total, that meant one burnt suit trouser, one singed T-shirt and countless burnt socks. The newly appointed Laundry Executive came, recognized the problem and apologized, yet offered the platitudes of “the hotel outsources laundry to a 3rd party”, “the hotel is not yet familiar with the processes of that 3rd party, we will look into it” and “the Service Express team is really busy and they also forgot to remind the laundry team not to press your items”.||I requested to speak to the General Manager, which was when I was informed that there no longer is one. The “Cluster Manager” was busy at an overseas Marriott conference and was uncontactable. I was then told that there was at least a Hotel Manager at the property (Soo Yoon), but that she was busy attending to other guests and could not speak with me. Repeated requests to do so before I departed saw her being continually “busy”. When I followed up via email subsequent to my stay, the excuse changed from her being busy to having supposedly been away on holiday the entirety of my stay. In short, nobody knows who is in charge at this property and the staff obviously love it that way!||The hotel never bothered to come up with a recovery strategy to appease me as a regular guest, had the audacity to charge the full price for my laundry (as discovered after express checkout), no compensation was offered for the damaged clothes despite the laundry team admitting to not following instructions and recognizing the resultant damage, no additional Bonvoy points, nada. ||This level of service is not acceptable for a 5 star property and I do not pay a hotel to damage my property in this manner. Adios Westin Yokohama. Truly one of the worst hotels I have ever stayed...

Possibly the least kid-friendly hotel we've ever stayed at where bureaucracy wins over customer happiness.

First let me just say that as one would expect, especially from a five star Japanese hotel, everyone was very nice, courteous and respectful in manner and action for the most part. Super professional staff. Design is fabulous - art pieces are incredible, interiors are stunning, everything you would expect from a fairly new Westin (2022). Location is phenomenal.

But that's it.

I rarely write hotel reviews (who has the time?), but I'm doing so this time because our stay was terrible despite what I said above.

1. This is possibly the least kid friendly hotel we've ever stayed at and that says a fair amount since we are lifetime top tier status on two hotel alliances. E.g., the new policy starting January 2023 (would have been nice to know this prior to coming not just at check in): your Titanium Elite access to their lovely lounge doesn't mean anything when you have two kids in tow - no kids allowed in the the lounge. Wuuuut. If you're old it's clear you get better service than if you're young at the restaurant. Maybe they just got sick of our (lively) kids. I kinda don’t blame them TBH.

2. Bureaucracy wins over customer happiness every time. Want to swim? You have to wait for someone to let you in and sign their disclaimer every_single_time_you_go. You'd think signing it once is fine. No. Every single time. I understand there’s no lifeguard. Okay. But you sign it once. In fact you’d think it would be part of the thing you sign when you check in.

3. Slow. Everything is just really really slow. Not just Japan slow. I mean slow even for Japan. Took an average of three minutes to get a table for breakfast every day. I actually timed it on my watch after day 3 since the pattern was obvious. There are tons of empty tables, we have impatient kids. Just let us grab a table and you can write things down, communicate with your colleagues, whatever you need to do later. If the restaurant was actually full then okay but that's not the case. No. Lady has to write stuff down, call someone to come over, wait for them to arrive, take you to your table. Did I mention we have two active kids who are starving?

Calling guest services? Forget it. Didn't answer on multiple occasions. Had to just go down and talk to someone. Impossible to reach concierge by phone. Once they said concierge would call me back. Never did. So I had to just go downstairs. Lucked out that the manager was there and he was awesome.

4. Food was meh. More fancy than good. Curry served every day for breakfast and exec lounge. Fabulous idea. Too bad it just wasn't very good. Yes original Yokohama curry. Too tart, little to no meat, just gross. Why can't they have curry like a normal place - not even asking for the legendary JAL First Class lounge curry BTW. Gogo Curry would be life changing. Nearly zero variance in breakfast selection each morning.

Not staying here again.

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To their credit they did respond on email shortly after and said they appreciated the feedback and after discussing have already implemented some changes. Perhaps to the breakfast intake process. That is the...

This is going to be a bit long, so forgive me :-). ||The location and hotel overall, was perfect! Business District but with so many restaurants, malls with excellent shopping, very close to many train stations which have tons of eateries and stores for shopping as well as grocery stores! 7/11 and Lawson are very close. Feels and is very safe. ||Hotel was clean, views are nice, humble, hospitable and very kind staff. The area is quiet, as is the whole of Japan it seems. Not far from Haneda Airport. ||They do not speak much English, but there are several people who does. A very nice gentleman by the name of Andrew Gee, was superb. He checked on us every day as we were leaving the hotel, to offer recommendations and to see what we were up to for the day. He was really nice and welcoming. English is great as well. ||Rooms: Good size, comfortable. Beds were nice. Bathroom is huge and inviting. Small refrigerator included. No Microwave, but that was ok for us.||Room Service: Food was always received hot and quickly! We enjoyed the Japanese breakfast and dinner options. ||Taxis are always available if you prefer not to walk. ||Staff were really great and even though English is not their language they tried to help and use the translator. ||Reception: Check in process was easy and very good. I was disappointed in one thing, however. Prior to arrival, I advised that we would be arriving in the wee morning around 4am. I was told to book a room for the day before, to ensure that the room would be available, because check-in is not until 3pm the day of my arrival. |So, I did that. ||When we arrived at the hotel, I was told I was a no-show for that day. I told the Supervisor on duty who checked me in, that it was the Marriott Bonvoy Rep that advised that I should book a day earlier to ensure the room. She advised that they did have my room ready for an early morning arrival in any case, it would have been available. I asked if they would consider a refund in this situation, for the one (1) unnecessary night I was advised to book, as I did have email correspondence of this. |They reviewed the email and still said, "no." It is what it is, I guess. It didn't bother me, however, I didn't like the fact that they stated, I was a "no show" when in fact I was not. ||One thing I was a bit frustrated with was the fact that the site confirms that there is a laundry on site. If there is, it is not for the use of guests. You have the option of having them wash your clothes, where you are charged for every single piece, and they return 24-48 hours later. There is no coin laundry as this is what we were expecting after reviewing this hotel before booking. We were able to catch a cab a few minutes away to a coin laundry which was beyond super clean, and we were done in one hour and on our way back to the hotel. It was nice exploring that area of town as well. Fun times and lots of memories. ||I would give the hotel, food, location, staff and overall comfort, a 9.5/10.||Looking forward to returning to this same hotel in another two years. You can never get...