Just left this property after 3 nights. I stayed here once before in 2019.

Mostly the same as pre-COVID. Lounge maybe reduced a bit but I can't remember very well.

Had a very bad experience with trying to send my luggage to another hotel. Asked what the deadline to give them my luggage for takkyubin and was told 3PM. Come to check out with my bags, wanting them sent to Kyoto where I will be checking in the next day after a night in Nara, and told that they can't get my bags to Kyoto until the day after tomorrow. Never experienced anything like this as takkyubin is a next-day service except for remote regions and I'm literally sending it from Osaka to Kyoto.

Didn't really understand their rationale except that apparently any bags given to them on a day get sent out the next morning, for delivery the day after that. Totally screwed up my plans, and completely their fault with inadequate communication. Obviously I am asking for the dropoff deadline for next-day delivery for takkyubin. That's what the service is. If for some reason your hotel manages things such that it takes two days, you need to explain that properly as that is something I've never seen before and is honestly enough of an inconvenience that I wouldn't stay here again if I was intending to send bags onward.

They ended up looking into what it would take for them to send it to Kyoto to arrive afternoon next day, and somehow the cost was quoted as 25K JPY for two carry-on suitcases. I told them they were ridiculous for even suggesting this as I could probably get a car to my next hotel with the bags for that amount, and we just left.

Normally stay at StR on corp rate but we had some early shinkansen trips out of shin-osaka so the hotel location was convenient, but I think it's a never-again for me after lugging bags all the way to Nara unplanned.

If something like this happened at the StR they probably would eat the 25K JPY themselves to make up for their communication screwup.