A bit of a rant, apologies. I came back from my home country and thought about taking a little break in a nice hotel (4 stars, very close to narita airport).
From the pictures it looked quite nice, gym, swimming pool… but… it’s fucking old. You can see that the moquette has a weird color and the room has a weird smell. The bathroom is meh. The breakfast is so so with bacon being hard like a shoe, to say one. Probably something built in the 80s and renovated. There’s only one restaurant (the one above is closed), it’s super expensive, limited in terms of food and absolutely nothing special. It costs me 13,000 per night, but it’s not worth it at all. Luckily I booked only 2 nights then I’ll be gone.
Any advise about how to avoid those kind of old crappy moldy hotels without being tricked by pictures or stars? I really wonder how they can say they’re 4 stars.
8 comments
Star ratings are first and foremost about the amenities (restaurants, pool, gym, etc.). The state of the place can make them lose the rating but your experience falls into the tolerance levels there. They do just enough to keep it up. Stop going by star ratings alone. You need reviews as well. Look at pictures other than promotional material, e.g. Google maps. You’ll still get screwed every once in a while though unless you have experience or good word of mouth.
Just check ratings and comments on Japanese sites such as ikyu
I mean 13,000 is not expensive for a hotel in Japan. At that price they’re fighting with love hotels for the stay rate yet you mentioned it has a gym, pool, etc? Sure you can get business hotels or places like APA or Toyoko Inn for 6-8k but for 13k really you should be expecting Holiday Inn level and that seems like what you got? Good (not talking the Peninsula here) hotels are 30k+ generally.
Read the reviews
Got to reviews and sort by the worst reviews. A lot of people give good reviews to everything, so don’t just read the first few good reviews and move on. Check those bad ones. If there’s more than two or three saying a place is old and crappy then it’s probably true.
Sounds extremely standard price for a business hotel with amenities near the airport.
Should have been 60-70000 nowadays especially with no tourists….just sayin.
Just use TripAdvisor. It’s how I also find the “best” restaurants for the region’s 名物