Cynicor

generally really simple. find the hotel email and ask them to book a given restaurant

Gradfly

I've dealt with their concierge before and had no problem with reserving restaurants, as long as there was an opening. Here's the email address: [email protected]

saaveraward

Not simple. If you have a dedicated concierge service on your credit card like Visa Signature, Citi Concierge or World Mastercard, absolutely have them make the reservations. The hotel concierge is tied in to 1,000 guests and their requests. The credit card concierges have dining contacts in Japan who will work specifically on your requests and keep trying until you secure a reservation. Most high end will also require a credit card to secure the booking, which the hotel can not turn over.

A hotel in Japan (not this one) told me a restaurant (not even crazy popular) was completely sold out during my stay. My concierge service kept trying until someone answered the phone at the restaurant and got me a booking.

Good luck!

NoY

I have used this email for the Concierge at Tokyo Hilton to book concert tix etc & had excellent results. It took a day or so to respond and was all perfectly executed ^

cruisr

kapooncha

That's kind of where I'm at. I'm opting to repeat the Conrad. Hilton Tokyo looks nice and I wouldn't hesitate to stay there but the Conrad is a nice nice treat. And since I'm diamond, I get to have their awesome breakfast spread with those amazing views. Hard to beat that.

hailstorm

Conrad opened up award availability for 2019 a few days after I complained about it. Before that, they offered to upsell me to a Bay room for points and about 10000 yen a night, on the condition that they would move our reservation to a straight points one should award availability open up (which it soon did) So there is definitely room for negotiation by dealing directly with the hotel.

kapooncha

Good work! I love the Conrad, happy I'll get to stay there again. Going in April, room rates are about $950 per night so tremendous value using my points.

hailstorm

Obviously the Conrad is a better hotel, but Shinjuku and Shinbashi are far enough apart that location need also be a consideration. If most of your activities are going to be around Shinjuku, then the 30 minute one way train trip will quickly become a burden.

kapooncha

Just a pleasure trip for me. Time is of no consequence.

iahphx

You're easy to please. I do think the Hilton has good location for many visitors to Tokyo. Other than that, it's just a decent place to sleep with some good (but not extraordinary) Diamond perks. I would definitely return. Or I'd stay elsewhere if I got a better deal. There's not much to get excited about.

monahos

I believe kapooncha is talking about the Conrad.

kapooncha

jackpot

Gradfly

When you contacted them directly, was it through their general email or a specific dept? I'm considering doing this myself. Been looking at weekends in Jan 2019 for awhile now, but they seem to be blocked out. My suspicion is that they're trying to limit the free weekend certificate holders from cashing in.

monahos

Saturday nights are the most expensive ones at nicer hotels in Japan because of their highly lucrative wedding business. Understandably hotels would much rather cash in than receive the meager compensation HH gives them.
I am unaware of HH practices, but one advantage of IHG is that they compensate the hotel for its average room rate when occupancy exceeds 95%, which helps with award availability and makes it a win-win for the hotel and the guest, if not for IHG.
That said I have been regularly checking Tokyo award availability for a specific Saturday this winter, and am reasonably confident the Conrad never made even one standard award room available at any point.

This all comes down to those certificates, where the original intent was for US customers to use them on weekends when business was slow; Japan has always been an exception, and is where I have redeemed most of my IC AMB weekend BOGO certs for the past decades.