When booking a hotel in Japan, you would be best to avoid JapanHotel.net. And if you ever stay in Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture you would be best to avoid the Gifu Washington Hotel Plaza. At the worst, these two entities are guilty of purposeful false advertising. At best they are guilty of negligence which could be extremely detrimental to the consumer.
My wife wanted to spend a nice weekend at a natural hot spring, which in Japan are called "onsen." We browsed the hotels at JapanHotel.net looking for a hotel which had a hot spring. We went to this site because they have a link on their home page which specifically directs you to hotels with onsens. There we found the Gifu Washington Hotel Plaza. JapanHotel.net reported it to have the following amenities: a Japanese style bathhouse, a sauna, a natural hot spring, tennis courts, and free Internet in every room. All of this for 6,800 yen a night (between 60 and 70 USD). Sounds good huh? Well we thought so too. We reserved my wife a room for two nights.
Imagine my wife's surprise when she arrived at the hotel to find none of the above-mentioned facilities. Oh wait... There was an onsen. But you had to either pay 1,500 yen to take a taxi there or you had to wait for a bus which only came by once every three hours. And once you arrived, you had to pay to use the hot spring. This was ridiculous to say the least. Hotels cannot claim to have something on their grounds if you must take a cab to get to them.
And the free Internet??? My wife was told that the Internet wasn't working that day because it was a holiday. I didn't know that the Internet took vacations did you?
After a quick phone call to me, she checked out of the hotel and came back home. Luckily for us, we live in Japan and it wasn't too far away, but I can just imagine what would happen to some poor people who were flying in from outside the country. They would've been stuck with a sub-par hotel and their entire vacation would've been ruined.
In the end some of the blame must fall on us for not checking the hotel closer. I should have been suspicious when I couldn't find their phone number posted on the booking page. That is suspect.in the future, I will be more careful.
However, most of the blame falls on the hotel and also on JapanHotel.net. The Gifu Washington Plaza Hotel cannot make false claims. This is downright fraud. But the JapanHotel.net and its staff must be more vigilant. They were negligent in that they did not check on the validity of the hotel's facilities. Again, what would've happened if a tourist had made the same reservation???
Perhaps, JapanHotel.net is ultimately a good site, but the first time we used it to book a hotel will be the only time we use it to book a hotel.
Let the buyer beware!!!
CWAM
Konan-shi
Japan
0 comments