Lake Akan Tsuruga Wings

Utterly wonderful place! We were greeted at the door by staff who took our bags and then gave us hot tea and snacks while we booked in. The staff were amazing and and always had at least one person who could speak English. The food was fantastic and the baths were astounding! The bath in our room and the room itself was perfect. The roof top bath at night in the snow was especially a highlight!

I don't usually expect English speakers and we had a somewhat decent Jp speaker, but to have none at the check-in counter of a tourist area hotel is baffling. Regardless, staff was friendly and tried their best to help where possible. Felt like they lacked staff. We had to pay for shuttle to their parking area? We only stayed for a night as we only wanted to use the onsen and see lake Akan on the drive back to Sapporo. Not at the age to enjoy cultural tourism so we couldn't be bothered to see all the Ainu stuff but if that's your cup of tea you'd probably enjoy a longer stay. The night walk is pretty nice but nothing to rave about for 3000/3500 yen. Room is fine, had a great view but definitely too small for 4 people. It was extremely warm and much too hot at times. The en-suite is terrible but you can always use the toilet downstairs and bathe at the onsen anyways so we barely used it. The onsen was nice but perhaps too overhyped. Visited both 8f open air and the 1f at the sister hotel. I liked the indoors one more. We came during off peak season, and even then there were a lot of people.

I'm actually shocked to say that I'm very disappointed in this hotel. It's way overly commercial, very crowded getting and combining two hotels actually subtracts from the end result. Whether it's the answer or the restaurant it feels like you're just a number here in the customer service level while still exceptionally high on an individual level with employees it's overall much less than what you experience across Japan and other properties. The buffet is massive and disappointing which is purely tied to the size of what they're trying to pull off. Again bigger isn't better. The refurbished room that we had was actually exceptionally well done and designed. There are a few things that are way over engineered. Like the automatic motion control light at the entry which goes on in the middle of the night if you happen to want to go from your bed to the couch thus waking everyone else up! There's no way to shut this thing off without turning off the master. The coffee maker is a disaster. It's also very disappointing that the big hotels are clearly crushed any local restaurants who have tried to establish presents here. They're basically is no town outside of the hotels.