I stayed at the Palace from the 12th till the 18th of August 23. We stayed in a executive suite and our children in a connecting club deluxe with balcony.
This was a very good room setup with the balconies, beautiful views a lot of space, a living room that was large enough for the four of us and 2 comfortable, dark and silent bedrooms, Also the bathrooms were large with good showers and a bath. The rooms ate not decorated in my style but apart from that they were perfect.
service in general was extremely good for such a large hotel. They recognized us, at most places they called me by my name and I only had to tell them my room number once during our stay. In such a large hotel that doesn’t happen anymore. Check-in we were immediately brought to the room and were checked in at our living room with a drink, breakfast someone was waiting for us down at the elevator and brought us to our table (we absolutely loved the breakfast on the terrace, the breakfast in the club lounge was a bit too business feel for me), spa was great with good service, the turn down service and room cleaning could have been better the first days, after we informed reception about this it improved a lot.
concierge was really good and helped us out for all our reservations ahead of stay. She was very proactive, quick in response, open to help and communicative. When we arrived at the hotel she immediately introduced herself and gave us our program on paper (this was before we were led to our room for the formalities )I would say that this was the best concierge that we had during our 23 days in Japan,( and one of the best ever)
General atmosphere and the guests changed a lot during our 6 nights. At the start we were the only foreigners between an overall young Japanese crowd. At the end half of the guests were middle aged Americans and French guests. Overall the atmosphere was lively (the lobby bar was always full of people, mostly Japanese, the club lounge was always half full…) there was a good vibe, it’s more stiff then the FS in Kyoto but not too stiff (bottomed up) for us. Note that we also like the atmosphere at the Dorchester in London or Bristol in Paris, so in the end this is really personal.
what we really did not like it the pool and the very strict rules and annoying lifeguards at the pool. Since it was warm we went back to the hotel after lunch to escape the warmth. We relaxed in the room, the club lounge and the pool. However the staff at the pool was so unpleasant and unreasonable that in the last days we didn’t go back. While the rest of the hotel was good, we willl not return and would only advise this hotel if you are not planning to use the pool.