Originally Posted by
AZ Travels the World
In my experience your assumptions are pretty accurate.
While it's true the largely standing desks they use at the Centric are right in front of the guest room elevators, I did not find the staff to be especially competent. You get plenty of smiles and pleasantries, but when I wanted to ship baggage ahead, discuss some dining options and reservations and coordinate transit logistics, it took a lot more work and follow up on my end. Nothing like dealing with a Park Hyatt concierge. These folks just aren't trained and developed to play those roles. I have considerable experience in Tokyo, so I was able to work through it all, but if someone was less familiar, it felt like key requests would have fallen through the cracks.
Yeah, then you're pretty much describing what I mean...haha.. We had a great time at Andaz 5th and Thompson CP, really nice modern rooms but they are there to just check you in and out. Maybe I got lucky, during our previous stay this year, which was the first time we stayed at PH Tokyo. They really went out of their way, they apologized for no upgrades which was true, I checked the app and there were no rooms but they brought up a kids robe, amenity kit, checked up on us during our stay for any other needs, things like that.
My compromise because in general I prefer a larger room, I saw the Atrium Suite at the HR next door open up on points, so we're going to do 2 days at HR Tokyo after. I was going to stay at the IC ANA Tokyo but the reviews in that thread are average anyway since I booked the cheapest room, even if I'm a diamond ambassador.