We were starting our honeymoon in LA and the Kyoto grand was a great place to start. The room was a great size with good facilities with a nice view of downtown.
The rooftop gardens are awesome, a feature that I hope is not lost with the hiltons upcoming takeover. The gardens are a unique parts of the grands character.
We had breakfast in the hotel both mornings and were very impressed. I love an American breakfast any way but the surroundings and friendly staff made it all the more enjoyable.
The reception staff also deserve a mention as they were very friendly and helpful when it came to advice on getting around the vast city, the best advice being the metro, $5 for metro and buses all day! Bargain! They also sorted us a town car to pick up our car back at LAX for a very competitive price.
To sum up, a great hotel full of character in a good location and very friendly staff.

This is one of the worst hotel experiences I’ve ever had. My complaint is with the terrible service I received from the front desk staff and not hotel amenities, although the condition of the room is a bit dated. The bathroom faucet would not stop dripping and the room ceilings looked like something from 1960s.

When I first checked into the hotel on Friday morning (3am) the person at the front desk did not appear to know what he were doing. He seemed like he was arguing with the other person at the front desk about which room to give me. As a result, I was standing there at 3am for 20 minutes waiting for him to check me in. I understand if you are “new,” but at 3am, the last thing a customer wants to do is wait for 20 minutes while you try to figure out what to do. Not to mention that I could barely understand what he was saying. When I had asked him how much the internet charge was, he told me $9.99 per day.

The next morning at 8:30am, I was woken up to a drill (due to hotel renovation) in what felt like the room next door. Unfortunately, the drilling and construction work seemed to go on for the entire day. This means that if you plan to visit this “business hotel” and try to work out of it, don’t plan on it since you’ll definitely be distracted by the sound. As a matter of fact, don’t plan to sleep past 8am either if you are a light sleeper like I am.

When I finally called down to the front desk to complain, the staff replied “ “Oh didn’t you see the signs at the front.” First, “I did not see any signs” and more importantly “why would you put your hotel guests in a room where construction work was occurring next door?” She assured us that Friday was the last day that construction was going to occur. Saturday & Sunday morning at 9:22am, I started to hear the drills again. When I called down again, they said, oh we didn’t know this was happening but you can talk to our supervisor if you like. My reply was “I don’t want to waste anymore time with this but will speak to your supervisor when I check out.”

When I checked out, I had complained again, and they said ‘oh sorry, we’ll have our supervisor give you a call to talk to you more about it.” I politely left my number with them and have not yet received a call. Also, the internet charge for the room is $9.99 per computer although the front desk only told us $9.99 per day.

For the same price, I’d stay at a Kimpton property hotel or The Standard instead this hotel charges $25 per day for parking anyways. At least at those other hotels, I can expect better customer service and free internet.

hairs were all over the bathroom, on the towels, hand and bath. breakfast in the morning was prompt and ok, cottage cheese didn't taste too good. 7th floor wireless did not connect and then i still got a $9.95 charge on the bill. staff at front desk are mildly friendly, do not go above and beyond to help you. overall comfortable stay, close to where i needed to be.

I felt the need to review this hotel again despite having reviewed it a couple years ago. The first thing to note is that the prices have gone up a little bit, but that's acceptable because compared to the other hotels in downtown LA, this one is still a bargain. I believe in my last review that I said they don't charge more for the renovated "deluxe" rooms (which are on the higher floors). However this time there was a difference of maybe +/- $20/night between the standard and deluxe rooms on their website. The next item is that the Kyoto is in the process of becoming a Doubletree by Hilton. I believe they said this should be completed sometime in the summer of 2012. For me this is long overdue, as I use this hotel frequently when downtown for business, and getting Diamond recognition and credit (points) for my stays is always a positive. But the drawback is that lots of things are being worked on and there were major maintenance issues during my stay last week (early Feb 2012). The deluxe room has a great large HD LCD tv in it, but this does you no good when there's only about 10 channels that come in at all. And at that, only half of those were of watchable because the picture quality was so horrific. There was no HD on any channel. Every channel that I enjoy watching when unwinding in the evenings was totally out (A&E and Travel Channel). On the first night I asked maintenance to come up and see if they could fix the television. The tech came up and said that the satellite people have known about it for a while and that they don't know when it is going to be resolved. I got a key to another room on a different floor just to verify the outage was affecting more than just my room. I suspect they aren't going to fix it, and am hoping they are just going to put a whole new TV system in place. Not being able to enjoy television (for me) is a HUGE problem. When I called the front desk to express my dissatisfaction, they said they could comp a day of my parking, which they did, but that didn't do anything for me whatsoever since it was a business trip and it was me, not the company, that was having to deal with the problem. It would have been so much better if they would have offered me a room credit that I could have applied toward all the times I ate/drank in the lounge. The next thing is the water. In my last review I stated that the bathrooms in even the deluxe rooms are very old. Old to where when you turn the light on in the bathroom you can hear the lights "clink" on, and the sink/vanity is VERY low. But on this trip they must have been doing work with the plumbing and water pressure, because on one occasion when I turned on the water, nothing came out, I heard a loud bumping noise and then it shot water out like an explosion and ended up all over me and my pants. Not the best situation when you're about to walk downstairs for dinner. On another occasion during my stay, I turned on the water and again heard the grumbling sound in the pipes and it shot out brown/dirty water. And on the morning I checked out, a note was under the door that they were doing maintenance and that the water supply for the entire hotel would be turned off for short period of time. Here's the thing about this hotel - the price is good and the people are terrific. They have a great staff and everyone from the bar to the room service to the valet are all wonderful. Being right downtown next to the Japanese village with great restaurants and shops is a huge bonus, and if you want to go a little further, the hotel has a free shuttle (remember to tip, people!). So I'd gladly give them another chance, but I truly hope that this Doubletree upgrade will involve a re-do of the bathrooms and vanities, fix the plumbing issues, and get a real TV channel line up with HD channels. Having those things would finally make this a truly fantastic hotel.