Hotel Grandspa Avenue

The public onsen was alright, though basic and old. Without that, my stay would have been a zero-star experience. I wouldn’t recommend this hotel to non-local tourists looking for an overnight Japanese-style room in Asakura. I booked a Japanese-style room expecting something like the APA hotels I’d stayed at without problems in Tokyo and elsewhere in Honshu. The website photos looked bright and clean, but they were misleading. I suspect they were taken a long time ago. I was put in a fourth-floor room normally used as a day-use lounge for day visitors. Guests renting by the hour made noise in the rooms and corridors late at night. There were no curtains, and the broken paper window had holes that weren’t even taped up, so sunlight woke me around 5 a.m. The futons were extremely thin and hard. The floor mats, seating mats, and tatami were dusty, dirty, slimy, and mouldy, like a motel room. My towels had yellow and brown stains. When I asked for replacements, the new ones had blood-red stains. It’s also the only hotel I’ve stayed at in Japan that didn’t provide fabric or surface spray. The toilet was narrow and had no ventilation. I asked to change rooms and the Western-style room was cleaner and more habitable, but the corridor often smelled of cigarette smoke. The included breakfast buffet had few options, poor quality, and dirty plates. I skipped it the next morning and went to the nearby McDonald’s instead. The onsen was the one part I could understand the positive Google reviews about. There’s significant room for improvement.