Originally Posted by
RichardInSF
It's likely that the best accommodation in town is in the "Grand within Grand" section of the Sapporo Grand hotel. I've stayed there once and I thought the rooms were quite decent and, I suspect, dramatically different and better from the rest of the hotel, which likely is a not so good world. The problem is that the rooms are crazily overpriced when the Snow Festival is NOT on, so I cannot imagine what they would be charging when it is on. I am talking prices that are higher than the most expensive Tokyo hotels during the non-Snow Festival season -- Y80,000 a night and up for a 50sqmt regular room -- and again, these are the rates when the Snow Festival is NOT on.
Many thanks,
RichardInSF for your recommendation of the "Grand in Grand" section of the Sapporo Grand Hotel. We just returned from a five-night stay during the Snow Festival. I completely agree with you that this is not a true luxury hotel, but --despite the price-- it worked out fine for us.
The highlight of the hotel stay was being met by the Chief Concierge and several staff as we alighted from the hotel-arranged taxi that brought us from CTS. We were treated like celebrities and the reception was really memorable. The way this happened was that the Chief Concierge at a Tokyo hotel kindly contacted the Grand''s Chief Concierge to smooth our stay.
The Grand in Grand was a nice respite from the rest of the hotel, which we found buzzing with activity. The Grand in Grand lounge was a huge space and rarely had any guests within. The lounge was not open for breakfast, but had a small variety of appetizers in the afternoon. A reasonable variety of beer and hard liquor was available. Wine was passable to my wine-expert wife. Nothing remarkable, but the lounge staff did the best to accommodate.
The Grand in Grand offers complimentary daily massages in their spa area.
The Grand in Grand room corridor is accessed by a key card. Originally, we were in an Intelligence Double room, which was very outdated. My wife complained about one aspect of the room, and we were upgraded to a Garden View Deluxe Room, which had been nicely updated and had stunning views of the snow-covered garden.
Our room rate included breakfast, and we could used one of several restaurants or room service. We stuck to the room service option in which one could choose between a Japanese or Western breakfast service.
Our room was priced at 65,000 yen per night, including taxes and fees. For $600/night, the experience was a bit lacking, but the hotel did offer easy access to Odori Park Snow Festival Activities and came through to make our time there memorable.
We did have the opportunity to view rooms at one of the Grand's sister properties, the Sapporo Park Hotel. It is located a few subway stops from the Grand, in a more residential neighborhood and next to a beautiful snow-covered park. There were Nordic ski trails in the park. We were given a tour of four rooms, each of which was of stunning design. The lounge area was quite small, and at the mid-afternoon time of our visit, was not staffed or populated with food or drink. Should we return to Sapporo for the Snow Festival, we would probably stay at this property.