The second leg of our 2022 15 day to Kansai Japan is centered around Kanazawa. So, shortly after our vacation start and end dates were confirmed in September and the main region of travel decided upon, we quickly went about finding a suitable hotel that is near Kanzawa Station and found Hyatt Hotel Kanazawa. Oddly, Google Maps places another hotel right beside this property and it’s called Hyatt Centric Kanazawa. I’m not certain is it the same establishment, but it seems to be in the the same spot.
In any case, we stayed here for 5D4N, and our comments!
The place is a very short 2 minute walk from the exit gantry of Kanazawa Station. Basically, as soon as you get past the gantry off the train, walk straight-through the Kanazawa Hyakubangai, the shopping mall you see in front of you. Alternatively, you’d be more likely to immediately see Rinto, the name of the store. Enter it, keep to the left and keep walking until you see a Kaldi Coffee Shop. On the is a side entrance/exit. Go through it, and you’ll see the hotel a short 20 meters away. In inclement weather, you can also further walk part of this stretch through the two level shopping mall – Cross Gate Kanazawa – adjacent to the hotel.
The lobby and hotel reception area isn’t on the ground floor. Rather, you enter into the hotel via a little electronic sliding door on your left, then take a lift up to L(obby) floor. Yep, not a great first impression. But as soon as the lift door opens at the Lobby floor, we wowed with the very modern, cool looking ambiance, with colorful and comfortable seating area. Definitely a chic hotel with young people vibes!
The room we reserved was a Studio Twin Room, with an approximate per night rate of SGD223. Quite a bit more pricey than our first stay this trip at Almont Hotel Kyoto, but Hyatt Hotel Kanazawa is altogether in a different class. The room also has two twin beds, a large sofa bed, and another super-single bed. It can sleep six in a pinch!
Our Studio Twin Room is a relatively large 41 m², and has loads of amenities: including a 55″ Smart TV, a proper fridge with a chiller compartment, a kitchen with electronic stove, sink and dishwasher, a microwave, a large strongbox that I could leave our iPads, laptop and Sony A73 in, a coffee maker with complimentary house blend coffee and also other assorted teas. And finally, the bathroom is separate from the toilet.
Our room was located on the fourth floor. There’s a room with coin-operated washers and dryers (these dispense their own detergent), so we could do a couple of laundry cycles during our 5D stay. Each floor also has a drinking water dispenser, and our room comes with four reusable water bottles.
Unlike Almont Hotel Kyoto where we couldn’t get its room air-conditioning to work (note: it might had been centrally disabled during winter season), the room unit at Hyatt Hotel Kanazawa worked just fine: especially necessary since the windows cannot be opened here.
Breakfast is included for a single adult and one child could eat for free. But we can purchase another seats at SGD12 per adult. The breakfast spread isn’t very large, but it’s buffet-styled, in a lovely if small restaurant that provided great views of the snow fall in the viewing deck.
The room is replete with power-points and also built-in USB type charging ports. Something odd happened though: we charged our two powerbanks yesterday using the USB charging ports beside our beds. The 20,000mAh charged fine, but the other – a 10,000mAh – did not. In fact, it overcharged and led to the USB-C charging port on the powerbank melting in heat. We’re fortunate to have noticed it quickly enough before it affected the built-in batteries inside the powerbank and becoming a fire hazard. The other powerbank had no issues. Something to note then, and also a general piece of advice: never leave your charging devices unattended!
The lobby staff receiving us at check-in spoke good English, and were also happy to hold onto our luggage since we arrived well before the normal check-in time of 2PM.
In all, we’re terrifically pleased with this stay, and the kids absolutely loved the room we’re in. We’d be checking out of Hyatt Hotel Kanazawa in the day after tomorrow, and the kids already say they’re going to miss this hotel!