Originally Posted by
hailstorm
The Oiso Prince Hotel was my first taste of life as a SEIBU PRINCE CLUB Platinum member, and it left me far from impressed. Tried to use the Gold/Platinum benefit of "3 Hours Extra", whereby you can extend your stay by three hours by distributing the time as you wish (e.g. check in two hours early, check out one hour late), for three hour early check-in, but was told there was no room available, and ultimately was only able to check in a single hour early. Asked about the Platinum "welcome kit" and was told "we don't participate in that program". Room upgrades actually aren't a part of the SEIBU PRINCE CLUB program, and sure enough we didn't get anything more than a base room on a higher floor. There wasn't even any bottled water in the rooms, necessitating carrying many paper cups from the "fitness room", which consisted of two treadmills and nothing else. The only definite benefit we got from this hotel was free breakfast, which admittedly was quite decent.
Maybe I'll fare better off at one of the nicer "The Prince" establishments.
It's not really fair of me to leave that as the last word in the thread. The higher end places have treated me rather well as a Platinum over the past three years, including:
* The Prince Park Tower upgrading us to a Garden Suite on an award stay.
* The Prince Sakura Tower upgrading us to a junior suite on two (Marriott) award stays.
* Prince Karuizawa West upgrading us to bigger cabins on two week-long staycations last year.
This experience, along with the regular benefits associated with Platinum, leads to me to ultimately rank this status as...not bad.