St Regis Osaka, Japan

1   Not Recommended
November 23, 2014 by

 Map | 7 Reviews | 71% Recommended
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The St Regis Osaka
 Map | 7 Reviews | 71% Recommended

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Share
Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
Stats

We stayed here for 4 nights as our first destination in Japan. The hotel, like all St Regis hotels, is stunning in its understated elegance. They are full this weekend, yet you feel like the only guests.

Room

Booked a Grand Deluxe Room and am surprised by how small it feels. Perhaps it's the room furniture but it feels very, very small. Check in was swift, and the breakfast is good, however the a la carte eggs do not feature such luxurious dishes such as the St Regis SIN.

Service

The Butler service, however is lacking. We don't ask for much, but when we make requests here it seems to be very difficult for the staff. Orders of drinks or ice take a long time for such a small hotel. They don't seem to anticipate, let alone meet your needs as we have come to expect from this brand.

Firstly, I'm not accustomed to hotels charging for concierge services. My partner was sick and needed cold and flu tablets. We didn't know that the pharmacy was a block away, but the hotel charged 15% to buy them for us. Similarly, if we want Shinkansen tickets to Tokyo they levy a 15% fee.

More annoying, however, was that we wanted express passes for Universal Studios and couldn't buy them online. Turns out it's a long weekend in Japan and they sold out far in advance. I kept checking the Japanese language website using Chrome as I really didn't want to spend hours in line for each attraction. After breakfast, I found the Express Pass for sale, released around 11AM. I tried to complete the transaction but couldn't work it out. I called and asked if the Butler could purchase the tickets for us. Instead, she came up to the room.

I asked her to help me complete the transaction which required some fields written in katakana. She basically said that you have to join the Universal online club and this is only for Japanese. What I expected was for her to either help me do so, or for the hotel to buy them under their name and charge me. In the end I worked it our for myself, and we managed to skip the very large lines, but with no thanks to the staff.

Overall

Generally, StR have exceptional Butler service, and we have experienced this in NYC, SIN and BKK, but here they need more training on what true Butler service means.

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