Smile Residence Hotels in Hakodate

The Smile Hotel Premium Hakodate Goryokaku is a typical Japanese business hotel, so although the photos of the rooms may look as though the rooms are reasonably spacious, in reality it’s just a typical business hotel, with minimal space.  While this should not be a big issue for many guests, if you’ve not experienced it before, be ready for a rather space limited experience.  Having said that, the room was quite clean and apart from some scuff marks on the walls, it presented quite well.  It’s also important to note, that since it’s a business hotel the bathroom is quite small, with the bathroom wash basin protruding into the bath tub & shower area and the toilet was clearly designed for significantly smaller users.  Apart from changing towels, providing new slippers and replenishing coffee & tea supplies, there was no servicing of my room over the duration of my 3-night stay.  This is all normal, so be ready for it. The biggest annoyance was that there was no air conditioning available during the period I stayed.  This is hotel policy at this time of the year, and the management clearly think that guests have no right to control the temperature, and therefore enjoy some level of comfort in their room.  Because of this, on my first night the room temperature was approximately 25°c (although I couldn’t turn the air conditioning on, the control unit displayed the actual room temperature), which when combined with the fact that the bed has an arctic standard duvet (or futon - whatever you want to call it), the temperature of the room was NOT conducive to restful sleep.  When I enquired about this the next morning, the front desk clerk bluntly said “open the window”, which of course I had tried to do during the night, but for some reason the handle to open and close the window had been removed, making it impossible to open the window.  The clerk kindly offered to go to my room and open the window (presumably using a special tool) once I had left the room for the day, which he did.  The difference in room temperature was quite noticeable when I returned that the evening, but why this policy in the first place, and the belligerence and attitude of management about guest comfort is beyond me. The other issue was the WiFi, which was patchy and unreliable on my floor.  The only way I could connect any of my devices (2 phones & 1 tablet), was to go to the lobby, connect and then return to my room.  Once a connection had been established, I was able to reconnect whenever I returned to my room, however the strength of the WiFi signal varied considerably when making calls using various apps (e.g., WhatsApp, Line and FB Messenger) and therefore the call stability was unreliable with calls frequently dropping out.  When I mentioned this to front desk staff, they offered to reset the WiFi on my floor, however it made little difference. The above matters (air conditioning and WiFi) are all things that are taken for granted these days and are expected of any reasonable hotel, so to experience the difficulties outlined indicates to me that the hotel management is not really serious about guest satisfaction or comfort. Draw what conclusions you will from this review, but from my perspective, it’s is unlikely I would stay at this hotel again when I next return to Hakodate.

It's a clean, modern hotel in a walkable distance to the tram station and to the ropeway. The room is spacious, clean, and modern. Bed is comfortable, air conditioning and TV works great. Clean and modern bathroom.