Our third and last property of stay for our trip. The initial itinerary from some months back required just a single night stay. We’d be arriving into Hakodate in the mid-afternoon and just to go up Mt. Hakodate for the night perspective, followed by a check-out the next morning to head back to Tokyo. With that in mind, we decided to keep our requirements really simple: a property with rooms for the four of us, and close to the Hakodate JR station we’d be arriving from Sapporo, and we deliberately wanted to look for properties with low rates. One hotel met all these requirements: Hotel Smile Hakodate, and the hotel was also able to extend our stay by an additional night after we dropped the Niseko segment of our trip. Our quick summary first: this was a decidedly three star property, and also the lowest quality overall of the three hotels we stayed at this trip. And it was inexcusable for hot water to be unavailable for the second night – see below on that.
Our comments and couple of pictures from our two night stay.
The hotel directly faces the main Hakodate train station, and it’s an easy 2-3 minutes walk across a couple of pedestrian crossings from Hakodate station. Check-in time is 2PM, and our rate included breakfast. The benefits of being so close to the station are apparent: there are plenty of small eateries within easy walking distance nearby – there is a ramen joint just beside the hotel in fact. There’s also a small and modern-looking shopping mall with a Family Mart convenience store, a basement with a sushi restaurant, a Pronto restaurant, and a foodcourt (“Hakodate Food Port” LOL) that whipped up really yummy steaks and hamburger styled patties. This part of the city also didn’t feel crowded as well, unlike Sapporo central or Susukino – which means we could again consider our dining options leisurely.
We opted for a triple single, as that was the only room I could find to accommodate 2 adults and 2 kids. In terms of actual room size, the room at Hotel Smile was the largest of the three properties. It was welcome relief not to have to constantly make way for each other after 12 days of squeezing in small rooms with double beds!
For want of a better description, the hotel room is functional. There is no decoration or styling whatsoever to speak of: just a room with beds, a window-facing table for writing (and blogging haha), a refrigerator, and a standing TV console with the ~32” TV place on-top it to save space. There’s no wardrobe – just wall-mounted hooks for you to hang your jackets and the like. Really, Hotel Smile understands that it’s not a luxury hotel but a budget one, and just ensures that you have a bed to sleep on and a toilet to wash-up.
The room has ceiling mounted heating but there didn’t seem to be an option to toggle it to air-conditioning instead. Odd as it might sound, in rooms with windows fully closed, I’d rather have the air cooler on and set to a modest cooling degree than a sauna-like room. The room’s windows however could be opened, so the ability to let a little cold air in was again a welcome change from the last two hotels where it was processed air only.
The bathroom tub shares common piped water as the sink, i.e. only one person can use either facility at a time. The temperature of the water is controlled by two knobs – one for hot, and the other for cold. If you have kids, you’ll want to be careful that they don’t accidentally set the water temperature to a point where it’ll scald them.
The breakfast buffet spread was, surprisingly, good for such a small hotel. It’s no Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park type of spread of course, and the way it’s laid out is functional and intended only to feed, not impress. I was, honestly, just expecting some bread items and hot beverages. But there was salad, cereals for Peter, a small variety of juices, soup, and a small range of both cold and hot meat types. As the restaurant is bereft of windows or styling, most guests came, ate, and left without dallying.
In-room WIFI was alright with occasional slow-downs. What was more worrying though was that this was an open WIFI without password and I couldn’t tell the encryption protocol it was using. You’ll want to be safe connecting devices to the hotel WIFI, e.g. visiting sites that are SSL encrypted or connect through a VPN.
Things rolled along swimmingly for the first day and we got used to the small beds. But on the second day, we encountered the biggest whopper of any property we’d stayed at: when we’d returned to the hotel in the evening, the hot water pump in our room – and possibly others in the floor – failed. i.e. No hot water. In winter no less. The hotel took more than a few hours to finally decide to offer us alternative rooms, but this was now close to midnight and with the kids fast asleep, we couldn’t take up the offer without waking them up and subjecting them to a room move. No apologies were rendered when we checked-out.
In all; quite a budget stay. The room was large enough for us and it was really liberating to have quite a bit more space between us. But the hot water failure and slow problem resolution was something that really peeved us. So no – on that account alone, we cannot recommend this property – unless budget and proximity to the train station are everything to you.
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