Beppu Rikyu

We could walk to Beppu train station in about 10 minutes, and check-in itself went smoothly. The rooms are decent sized and clean. There’s no housekeeping or towel change during the stay, though they do leave a couple of extra towels. They ask guests to put trash out at 10 in the morning. Shampoo and washing supplies are provided, but no coffee or tea, which was fine for us. There’s a laundry room with two washer and dryer sets. Washing is free, while drying costs 100 yen for 10 minutes. The windows are huge and right beside the beds, but there are no blackout curtains or shades. It feels like they expect you to get up early and start the day, even if you’d rather sleep in. The noise complaints in other one-star reviews are real. You can hear even the lightest footsteps. We had booked two rooms, one above the other, so at least the people upstairs were our own group. But the next-door group upstairs, maybe teenagers or young people, kept singing and cheering loudly on and off from 10 PM until midnight. I heard them very clearly while doing laundry because the laundry room is right beside theirs. Around 11 PM I messaged the property through Expedia to report the disturbance, unsure anyone would respond at an unmanned hotel. At about midnight, my family was in bed and could still hear them, so I went to the check-in iPad and contacted staff. Thankfully, a call center was still answering video calls. They said they’d called the people in that unit and it shouldn’t happen again. On our last night, I think someone else complained about noise, because the property emailed guests a reminder to keep noise down, including footsteps. So we won’t stay here again, especially at this price. Despite the clean room and useful laundry setup, our experience was pretty bad and we probably wouldn’t recommend it.