Our first choice of Hotel in Sapporo was initially the JR Tower but it was fully booked on our dates, 02-05 July. This beautiful, Vienna inspired Hotel was actually our second choice. But other some minor glitches, we were more than happy with our assigned room.
The Deluxe Corner Twin room that we had booked, was really comfy and quite large at 40 square meters, for a 3 nights stay. As requested, I was assigned a high floor room, 2001, facing the beautiful Sapporo TV Tower. The comfy bathroom has a bathtub for some nice soaking, but with no showers.
Just outside the bathroom is the dresser table and the cupboard for storage of clothings and suit cases. Then there is another door that separates this area from the actual bedroom, making it like a junior suite. I travel extensively and I am quite certain other hotels could easily sell this room as a junior suite, charging at least 60-80,000 yen for it. However, due to the lower key period, we paid only 21,000 yen per night, with breakfasts!
In the bedroom, there is only one arm chair facing a flat screen TV (it would have been great if there were two arm chairs), comfy and big twin beds with a choice of 3 types of pillows. Views of the beautiful Sapporo TV Tower, quite romantic to look at especially during the night were visible from the room's 2 windows.
Other minor cons of this Hotel were -
1. distance from Hotel to Sapporo station is a good 8-10 minutes walk, likewise to nearby Odori Park.
2. reception staff cannot speak good English but were friendly.
3. no conceirge staff to provide tourism info of Hokkaido
4. no free Wi-fi in room
The Hotel's common areas are quite huge, and quite classy to look at. The buffet breakfasts was served each morning at a gigantic sized function hall, quite beautiful to look at but albeit a little too bright and too huge. Food offered include both Western and Japanese choices, good in both variety and quality. There is even a mini-sized convenience store behind the hotel for your drinks and titbits (not at the Hotel front but right behind it).
As the Hotel's client base is obviously the Japanese, rather than the international travellers, non-Japanese speakers would better do their research on tours and sights to catch before they arrive in Japan. Clues - the Nijo fish market (about 5 minutes away by taxi or a 10-12 minutes walk), the Mount Moiwa night scenery, Otaru (30-40 minutes by JR train), ramen at Ramen Republic (in front of the Sapporo station) - are all must dos'!
Enjoy, this is indeed a very good 4 star hotel!
