The check-in experience was very poor. No one properly explained anything about the hotel, such as where the onsens were, where breakfast was served, or how the property was organized. Since the hotel is very large and has multiple restaurants and facilities, this information should absolutely be explained at check-in. Instead, they simply photocopied our passports, handed us the keys, and sent a staff member with our luggage to explain things in broken English while we were going up in the lifts and trying to navigate the maze-like layout to find our room.
Another issue was checkout. Nobody told us that checkout was at 10:00 rather than 11:00, which is unusual compared with most hotels. I am still not sure whether that rule applied only to us, because we stayed in the lobby until 11:00 and saw many other guests checking out at that time. That made the situation even more frustrating, especially because the staff called us to pressure us and tried to upsell a late checkout extension for extra money.
Compared with other ryokans I have stayed at, this place charges extra for everything. Want to play ping pong? 500 yen. Want a drink in the lobby? Extra charge. I am not expecting everything to be free, but charging guests even for tea in the lobby feels cheap and in poor taste to me.
The checkout staff were not welcoming and their English was quite poor. The man at the front desk with the unusual hairstyle, who handled our checkout, seemed visibly annoyed. Overall, the atmosphere felt cold and unprofessional. I honestly would not recommend this place.
The property itself also feels very dated. The bathrooms look like they have not been updated since the 1970s, and the room had a slight smell of dirty feet when we first entered. The tatami mats had the same odor, although they at least looked clean. I will say that the onsens were clean, but they also felt old and dated.
The hotel is also far from the city center. If you are planning to go sightseeing during the day rather than stay at the hotel and relax, I would strongly suggest choosing somewhere more central, because you can easily lose 1 to 2 hours dealing with the slow tram.
Breakfast was also disappointing. The price is ¥2,700, not ¥2,200 (as mentioned on trip.com). It is a buffet, but the selection is very limited, and food that should be hot was not. The breakfast hours are also unreasonably short: 7:00 to 9:00, with last order at 8:30, which is ridiculous. They also did not have a proper coffee machine. Instead, coffee had to be poured from a hot container, which felt low quality and was not very enjoyable.
Taxi from Hakodate station to the hotel is ¥2800 circa (depends on the driver)
