HOTEL AMANEK Asahikawa

Good value for money, with a comfortable bed, pillows and towels. The room was a good size, and it’s a good hotel chain. We didn’t need much service during our stay. I wonder if they might let guests have the free coffee all day?

The outdoor onsen has a mountain view on a clear day, though it was cloudy when I went. Breakfast was standard for a business hotel. In the room, there’s a smart tablet for controlling the lights and checking how busy the onsen is before heading over. Soft drinks, coffee and tea are available in the lobby. It’s a clean, adequately sized room with everything we needed. The business hotel is in central asahikawa, close to JR and the shopping street, with convenience stores and restaurants nearby.

The room had an in-room fridge and four pillows. There’s no bottled water or bathtub, but neither bothered me. I liked being able to open the window for cool autumn air. The shower had strong hot water pressure, WiFi was fast, and the whole hotel is smoke free. It’s very close to the JR station, too.

The rooms are nice and clean, and the hotel is new and well located, but the facilities don’t seem sized for 13 floors of guests. There are only two elevators, and I sometimes waited 3-4 minutes. The bigger problem was laundry. There are just four machines, and over my three nights I tried mornings, early evenings and late at night, but never managed to do a load. People queue for their turn. The hotel even has a sign pointing guests to nearby coin laundries when it’s busy, which seems to be all the time. The outdoor section of the public bath is only two single-person tubs for the whole building. There also seemed to be lots of tour groups and larger groups of skiers. Common areas could suddenly get swamped. The lobby might have been a good place to work, but it felt like a noisy food court, with guests eating konbini meals, then more like an izakaya. I’d booked and paid for a hotel, not a hostel. The bath, already small, could also be left in a bad state with things scattered around. Housekeeping was another annoyance. On the day my room was scheduled for service, I cleared everything off the bed except the hotel pajamas. When I came back, there was a note saying they couldn’t make the bed because I’d left personal items on it. I hadn’t, just the pajamas. Where was I supposed to put them, in my suitcase as if I were taking them home? It felt like an excuse to finish faster. Despite the nice rooms, all these little issues soured the stay enough that I wouldn’t return.