Fliar

Interestingly three of my favourite Amans are all urban properties: Aman Tokyo (best city hotel I've stayed in), Aman Venice and Beijing (despite flaws - but it had only been open a couple of months when I stayed).

mike_la_jolla

Curious. Would be willing to share the full list of Amans you've visited? And when you visited Aman Tokyo, was it for leisure or business? Same question for ASP.

Kagehitokiri

Fliar has been to most amans and is one of the long time aman regulars here. a year ago >

as they said, they were at beijing when it opened. (opened late september 2008.) they were also one of quite a few aman regulars here who were at dayan when it soft opened.

clearly venice (owners live up stairs) and summer palace (summer palace) are unique from those perspectives. many looked forward to staying at summer palace. i was interested in venice property when residents were just renting rooms after a prior lease ended.

amans overall vary quite dramatically based on when, GM, staff, etc.

tokyo - 5khours, NYBanker (business), others very positive. MacMyDay checked out of MO solely because of aman's hard product, ignoring soft/F&B. 5khours was there opening night, and their experience was not matched by another here who was there at same time.

beijing >

sept 2012 Groombridge >
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/luxur...l#post19988229
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/luxur...l#post19403878
GM christine hodder was not onsite during stay

2011 >
2008 Amanjunkie http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/luxur...l#post10268654

tokyo >
ups and downs etc came up here re some amans long before 2014.

in tokyo, when peninsula has slipped, FS still lacks facilities, SL seems to be cutting some costs, and MO is reportedly showing some age in some of the rooms, it seems the market is not what it once was. regulars seem to continue to get great treatment at hyatt and perhaps okura too.

presumably lots of poaching by newer hotels in beijing and tokyo. hard to believe aman beijing has been open 9 years now. aman tokyo got the concierge from peninsula that was well regarded here.

seems like MO is not friendly to business travelers, and some platinum FHR. hope that is not the case elsewhere, including amans.

mike_la_jolla

Interesting. My stays at ASP (2x? 3x?) and Aman Tokyo (1X) have been on business, and I very much disliked both. I'm trying to figure out what I am missing.

FlyerEC

Been to AmanSP a few ? times . First , soon after opening for a meal .
The meal was quite a disappointment / disaster but liked the tour of the property which had me figuring which suite to try .
Thankfully when we eventually stayed , the restaurants were much better .
Mark S , who was the GM back then , did an amazing job .

Arguably the best Peking duck I have had in China was at the Chinese restaurant
The chestnut ice cream was quite a treat too ..

The suite Mark upgraded us to was also a wise choice , considering my mishap on The Great Wall
As sort of usual , provided the team there with unscheduled " training " .

Now , trying to decide if to stay again in mid October or go for a meal with friends as maybe travelling alone .

Kagehitokiri

mike_la_jolla, i am assuming you were not at summer palace in september 2012.. that was why i gave dates. when not traveling at same exact time and experiencing same exact staff, one is not missing anything, one is experiencing something different.

its kind of like once harish left amanbagh, as another recent example, but clearly for aman china they had english speaking staff that are now gone from both properties, and fayun for example if they do not give butler for translating that leads to serious problems.

and re tokyo as i said another poster did not have the good/great experience that 5khours did on opening night. two people at the same time, experiencing two different levels of service. as i recall specific examples not just preferences.

many amans can change dramatically with occupancy, as FS hualalai started to. best tokyo reports here may have been low occupancy especially very early on after opening. it has dramatically increased, and may include many guests being given stays by aman corp owner. i recall when noi and ruya opened, incredible reports around opening sliding some as occupancy increased. its easy to watch the change here when so many here stay so soon after opening. with zoe i wonder if owner recently started cutting costs as they are going to sell by 2019.

Fliar, NYBanker, others specifically said "city hotels" - aman tokyo has huge entry level rooms, only ~80 rooms with a pool, IIRC NYBanker was in a higher level suite, and the lobby which some value. many if not most cities like NYC are actually downright poorly regarded here or luxury hotels, at least in terms of consistency/reliability. FS NY still does not serve dinner other than room service, and its owned by a billionaire.

in terms of best city hotels in the past here, two i recall coming up a number of times, both small, were FS marunouchi and Landmark MO HK. paris and bangkok are probably the best regarded cities here, unusually so. FS paris was almost exclusively positive here for a long time, but became more mixed. MO bangkok has probably remained very consistent, with the main exception of a certain type of issue under kurt in the past.

in other words city hotels have lower limits re potential, especially when larger. comparisons are often being made within certain categories or subsets, in this case city in general. in weak cities/places the best (for that weak city) is not competitive with best in world.

Aventine

MO Tokyo should be friendly to business travelers? They do get a lot of them.

Altocumulus

We haven't been to Aman Venice yet (will remedy that in a month) but I must admit neither Tokyo nor, in particular, ASP have been among our Aman favorites. We have almost universally preferred the non-city properties (with the exception of Fayun)

To me ASP felt cold and service was lacklustre; it was after Mark S had moved to Indo, which may have had something to do with it. Agree that the duck was good though.

In Tokyo we LOVED the hardware (we had a beautiful suite) but service was a big let-down with little attention to detail and a significant logistical concierge flub (I think I wrote about it here somewhere..) This was just over 2 years ago when Jeffrey Seward was GM so I assume things may have changed (although maybe not so much based on feedback here...)

We did love Delhi though, what seems like aeons ago. Possibly because it was our first Aman. Or possibly because we were arriving from trekking in the Himalayas so anything with a hot shower would have been impressive.

jctrav

That certainly lines up with my experience at Tokyo where I stayed twice last September:

• The first stay was Sunday-Thursday when it was pretty quiet. As others have mentioned the hard product is incredible, and having the pool to ourselves was very nice. Service was OK, in particular with the concierge and friendly door staff, but breakfast was consistently error-prone (forgetting items, asking for 1 of something each and getting 1 to share, etc) but nothing that got us bothered.
• Contrast this with a Friday night stay the following week when it was incredibly busy, the lobby was packed, and staff seemed very flustered. At breakfast my wife received her order and I gave up waiting after 30 minutes and just left - no service recovery though I didn't bother complaining since it was our last day.
• I'd still return for the hard product, and would just have low expectations for service if there during a busy period (apparently that's always now?).

At Venice service was much better and more polished, though as others here have mentioned one has to find a phone and call for anything when in one of the many beautiful lounge spaces, whereas in the non-city locations it wouldn't be as hard to find a staff member.

Aventine

This all would need to heavily improve for it to be competing with the other big Tokyo luxury hotels. It's funny how they still forget things for breakfast almost 3 years later.
I've stayed at all of the competition and the service level doesn't fluctuate depending on occupancy. It shouldn't.

Kagehitokiri

forgot to specifically raise whether openings (and other times) have staff from other aman who then leave/return to other aman.

sorry, i was also discussing MO brand/corporate.

Aventine, seems all tokyo hotels are down from where they were. peninsula was incredibly well regarded here for years. hyatts (and okura? [5khours was a long time regular there]) seem to focus on regulars [compared to the best regarded luxury properties here]

pre-opening, aman tokyo was first/originally aman's sue reitz.

Aventine

To be fair, all Tokyo luxury hotels focus on their regulars. They'd be fools not to.

​​​
I think the unfortunate part for Aman Tokyo was hiring a GM with a non Aman background, no Japan experience either and hoping it would sort itself out. It kind of set the stage for the maddening inconsistencies we see now.

I don't know if Okura belongs in the luxury conversation.

Shangri-La

How does the RC in Tokyo compete? It'll be interesting to see how the new second FS Tokyo property opens in a few years.

Aventine

RC Tokyo is a solid, solid hotel. Everything is well done there and service exemplary.

I've heard it's going to be gorgeous but probably have teething problems like Kyoto and Seoul.

Shangri-La

Good to hear about the RC. I know it got a much needed facelift recently.

Yeah, it should be gorgeous. Being on the top 6 stories of a 39-story hotel, the views should be pretty and add a dynamic competitive advantage to it. And it won't be a 300-key+ property like Seoul, which hopefully helps.