HOSHINOYA Guguan

The private Hot-Spring in the room helped ease our tiredness after a long drive. The location is quite far from Taichung and difficult to reach by public transportation. On site, the facilities and rooms are very well maintained, and the attentive staff are well trained. Hoshinoya Guguan is very impressive.

After a really poor experience with customer service before arrival, I'm updating my review to cover the hotel itself too. The property is lovely, the scenery beautiful, and the service excellent. Kevin and George were especially hospitable, thank you. The hotel compensated us for the problems beforehand, which I appreciated. I think the trouble came from poor customer service operations at their Japanese HQ rather than the on-site team. They'd also benefit from a more modern, functional website where guests could book meals and activities directly and get more detail about the meals. The current site undersells the resort's amenities and quality by a lot, and I worry it costs them business. The rooms are very nice and well appointed, and the food is delicious, especially the tasting menu dinner. The facilities and scenery are lovely, in one of the most relaxing settings I've visited. The spa is highly recommended, one of the best massages of my life. My only disappointment on site was that the public onsen closes for cleaning from 1 to 4pm, prime daytime hours, which doesn't make much sense. Before arrival, the customer service was awful. I spent three weeks trying to book, called four times and exchanged more than a dozen emails. The online booking system was terrible, nobody helped on the phone and they often hung up, and the emails were hard to understand and didn't answer my questions. I finally had to book through Expedia because their own website wouldn't work. Then I tried to add a third night, but they wouldn't let me or honor the price listed on their website. It was incredibly frustrating. I stay in hotels 100 to 200 nights a year around the world and have never had worse service before arrival. God awful, stay away.

The in-room hot spring was a unique highlight and the main reason I'd rate the room four rather than three. The room itself was nice, with fresh, fairly new furnishings, but the layout was awkward: the toilet was upstairs, while the bathroom and hot tub were downstairs, making it inconvenient to use the toilet before bathing. Red lights around the room made sleeping difficult, and the huge exit sign on the stairs was so bright we had to hang a bathrobe over it. I understand it needs to be visible for emergencies, but it doesn't need to be that bright. The blinds also let in morning light, so blackout curtains would help; even tired, I found it hard to sleep in. Check-in was chaotic and the service wasn't good. For this price, I expected evening turndown, which many cheaper hotels offer. We moved the pillows from one bed to the sofa for extra support, but they didn't put some back on the bed. The bedmaking was messier than at many hotels I've stayed in. Restaurant service was better than housekeeping and admin, but the meal was way overpriced. In town, six people can have a full, satisfying dinner for $2500, while this dinner was $4000 per person with barely any choices. If you need to stay here or love hiking or hot springs, I recommend coming. For similar scenery at a similar price, I'd choose another hotel.

It's a very nice place, designed especially well outside. But a lot of the activities were already fully booked, including the spa, forest walk and kaiseki dinner. If you come for a couple of days to enjoy this magical place, expect some activities may not be available.