Kamenoi Hotel Aso Park Resort

The buffet and all-you-can-drink option were a big part of our great stay. The buffet manager spoke perfect English and was so helpful and kind. He went out of his way to make us comfortable and made the visit more enjoyable. We'll come back the next time we're in Aso.

The buffet was substantial, tasty, and not bad overall, and the staff in the corridors were polite and hardworking. But service was my biggest disappointment. While we waited in line for dinner, an older Japanese staff member who looked like the restaurant manager served the older Japanese couple behind us by speaking past us, even though we were clearly next. He spoke Japanese, then used perfect English only after we asked him to. It left me feeling there was a clear bias toward local Japanese guests and that foreigners could be treated poorly. Maybe some tourists are rude, but ignoring customers doesn't make for a good experience. The hotel is in a good location, though the rooms and building feel worn and dated, as expected from reviews. The onsen is old too, like many from the 80s or early 90s that I've visited. It was very crowded, with lots of tour buses and tourists from Taiwan, hong kong and Japan. Meals and check-in were noisy, and guests could be quite rude. After my post edit, it was interesting to see the issue acknowledged, but with no apology or promise to improve, which gives future guests a sense of what kind of service recovery to expect.

Breakfast was really nice, but given how poorly maintained the hotel felt, I wasn't keen on the thought of the kitchen. The onsen was pleasant too, though a bit dirty, with the usual mold on the ceiling and sand or dirt in the cold bath. Staff kindly moved me to the north building because the east building was too stinky, dirty, and moldy. The north rooms have small tatami spaces and were quite decent, if old, and in my opinion good value. They were cold, though, and I couldn't work out how to heat the room. I guessed the central AC was still cooling. The cold seemed to bring the humidity to 100%, and I saw more mold on the yukata jacket in the new room. The whole hotel had humidity and HVAC problems, with no clear maintenance solution. In the moldiest east building, humidifiers were running, maybe with perfume, but that just made things worse. The place is dirty and smells bad. The investors should be ashamed of the state of the facilities and the image it gives Japan. It feels like they're just squeezing out the last penny. Dynamic pricing gets out of hand too. The rooms are worth ¥5000-10.000.

For the moderate price and the age of the place, the refurbished rooms and dining hall were better than I expected. The buffet layout worked well and kept things from getting too chaotic despite the crowds, though high season might be different. The food was perfectly decent. My biggest gripe is that there's only one key per room. That's ridiculous and needs fixing.