What is your Priority Club status?

Platinum Elite

Were you (or for multi-stayers are you generally) happy with the hotel/stay?

Yes

Which room did you book and which upgrade did you receive?

Booked King Bed Premium High Floor and that's what we got. I think the only rank above were suites and those are hard to be upgraded to as a Plat.

How are the rooms?

Comfortable enough, the rooms and bed were nice but the furniture needs to be updated. The desk was well-worn and had lots of scratches, the bathtub was full of black spots, and the humidifier has clearly not ever been cleaned as it was full of black mold when you took out the water tank to refill it. Typical of a Japanese Crowne Plaza, but it was comfortable enough.

How is the exec. lounge?




This hotel has an odd lounge system. Upon checking in we received two lounge passes which you then take to the main hotel bar and they give you an all-inclusive menu, so it's not a separate premier lounge. There are all-day soft drinks, and alcoholic drinks from 5:30-7:30PM. The bar is also directly connected to the hotel restaurant. During afternoon tea and cocktail times they give you a plate of sweets or food, which is just a selection of foods they take from the restaurant buffet and you cannot get refills on them or access the buffet on your own. Drink selection was all right, your standard beer, wine, whiskey, etc. Looking at the menu drinks start at the price of 1200yen each so certainly can get your money's worth quickly. For breakfast, you just go to the normal hotel restaurant, but you are seated in the lounge section.

One annoying thing is that I emailed the hotel before booking asking about if it's possible to bring a guest that isn't staying in the hotel to the lounge. They replied saying that you're allowed to bring one non-guest in. I asked about this at the front desk and they say it's not allowed. My guess is that they didn't understand that I was staying with another person and wanted to bring a 3rd person, and that everyone gets the 2 lounge passes so you can bring a second person in. After getting the email originally I had invited someone to join us at the lounge and they responded positively. In the end we had stayed out too late to make use of the lounge and it wasn't an issue, but it would have been a real loss of face if they had been looking forward to coming in and I probably would have fought to let them come in by showing them the emails.

What was good and what was bad?

Good:

-Location is convenient, near Kumamoto station and close to a streetcar station.
-Staff was very friendly, there are several foreign staff members that work there who are fluent in English.
-Breakfast was good and had lots of local Kumamoto specialities.
-Plenty of parking spaces.

Bad:

-As mentioned the rooms are a bit worn. The hotel has two connected buildings, there's the Crowne Plaza side which looks quite new and well-kept, but if you look at the exterior of the hotel, the side with the rooms has the logo "KNS", for Kumamoto New Sky, which is the original hotel name before converted to IHG. It's very obvious that this building is much more dated.
-There's not too much in the immediate walking distance of the hotel
-I used my IHG credit card which should give 10x points, but the statement had the merchant as "Newskyhotel Co.Ltd." and only gave me the 5x travel bonus. You will likely have to contact Chase and clarify that this is an IHG property to get the proper point return.

Value for $ or Priority Club Points? Would you return?

There aren't many hotels in Kumamoto of a high caliber, so you can't be too picky. Rates can be pretty cheap and I've frequently seen point rooms for less than 10,000 points a night which is a good value. I'd come back if I needed to stay in Kumamoto again although I'm not sure if I would pay extra for the premier rooms next time.