Four Seasons Hotel Osaka

Originaly booked the great Conrad for our Osaka visit but after staying in FS Tokyo and FS Kyoto, got the info that FS Osaka was just receiving its first guests we decided to move to this brand new Four Seasons Osaka. A very good choice, great rooms with panorama view...

Originaly booked the great Conrad for our Osaka visit but after staying in FS Tokyo and FS Kyoto, got the info that FS Osaka was just receiving its first guests we decided to move to this brand new Four Seasons Osaka. A very good choice, great rooms with panorama view of the city, perfectly located in a quiet area close to the river, walking distance to interesting places and restaurants, great new team that was supported by FS specialists from all over the world, a GM with lots of experience connecting easily with the guests: a formula for success! The best place in Osaka..

Great service. Beautiful hotel. Team was super responsive to my constant messages and requests. Especially special thank you to the concierge team who secured some already sold out tickets and a ton of restaurant reservations. Four notes: 1. French onion soup on in room dining was bad. Burger was good....

Great service. Beautiful hotel. Team was super responsive to my constant messages and requests. Especially special thank you to the concierge team who secured some already sold out tickets and a ton of restaurant reservations. Four notes: 1. French onion soup on in room dining was bad. Burger was good. 2. The guys at the front were super nice but if you get dropped off on the road instead of right in the drive, they don’t seem to notice. Which is an issue since taxis often don’t turn into the drive. 3. Rooms are a tad on the small side. We were in the largest non signature suite and it was very nice but wish they had given a bit more real estate. 4. Would be nice if pool had adult only hours. I’ve stayed at the st Regis as well and the food, service, and facilities are all nice here (though the st Regis is also very nice) Overall we really liked it. Super cozy home in Osaka! Thank you to the team for your hard work.

We had high expectations for the brand-new Four Seasons Osaka, and were especially excited to have booked a room on the Gensui floor, which is marketed as being an exclusive hotel-within-a-hotel ryokan experience. Unfortunately, our sense that Gensui isn't ready for prime time hit us as soon as we checked...

We had high expectations for the brand-new Four Seasons Osaka, and were especially excited to have booked a room on the Gensui floor, which is marketed as being an exclusive hotel-within-a-hotel ryokan experience. Unfortunately, our sense that Gensui isn't ready for prime time hit us as soon as we checked in. In some hotels, a club-level floor offers its own personalized check-in. Here, rather than being checked in at the front desk, we were ushered up to the Gensui level and brought into the Sabo lounge where we were handed off to a woman who, while very well-meaning, had difficulty communicating with us in English (though she was not Japanese, either) and proceeded to serve us our "welcome tea" in a perfunctory manner (it was a glass of iced tea and a jelly on a tray, nothing special) and than rattle off a list of rules and procedures for the floor. I think we had hoped for a warm and gracious welcome like we'd received elsewhere throughout Japan, but this was not it. No "welcome to Osaka!", more like, "we need to know whether you intend to take breakfast in the hotel lobby or in the Gensui lounge tomorrow morning and the day after." We were also told that the daily happy hour for Gensui guests in the Sabo lounge from 5-8pm was, as of March 1st, no longer complimentary and was 5000 yen per guest -- $60 USD for a couple to sit in a quiet lounge and have a glass of wine? What? The Sabo lounge is also advertised as offering all-day snacks and tea but if you're expecting the equivalent of a club lounge, you're in for a shock. There are no self-serve snacks, waters or sodas, and we asked for a black tea and were told that would be an extra charge, that only green tea was complimentary. I mean, we could have gotten a free bag of black tea from our room if we'd wished, but the lounge could not have been more of an unwelcoming place. The Gensui floor is also supposed to offer an "exclusive concierge service" for its guests but we never saw evidence of this and based on our interactions with staff on this floor-- who, after two days, still didn't know our names and needed us to confirm our room numbers (again, this is an "exclusive" floor with just a handful of rooms)-- suffice it to say we put our faith in the hotel's main concierge on the ground floor. Anyone expecting an abundance of goodies and amenities in the rooms -- as is common in many luxury hotels in Japan -- is going to be disappointed. Water was free (but we were asked at check-in how many bottles of water we needed at turndown-- why was this even a question?) -- as were very small packets of nuts, coffee, and tea-- and the so-called "exclusive minibar" offered to Gensui guests was just an ordinary minibar; not sure why this is marketed on the hotel's website as being a perk (it also wasn't free, even for non-alcoholic items, FYI -- again, not out of the ordinary, but if you're going to advertise this as a perk on your exclusive floor, put some effort into it). The toiletries offered with the room paled into comparison to the toiletries offered at hotels half the price, like the Andaz in Tokyo or even the Ace in Kyoto. On the plus side, our room was spectacularly beautiful and indeed very very special. It's a shame these rooms aren't simply marketed as tatami rooms at a slight upcharge without the misleading nonsense about how the Gensui floor is a prestige, exclusive hotel-within-a-hotel. It simply isn't, and if you're expecting the Four Seasons equivalent of the Ritz Carlton Club Floor, you're going to be in for a shock. It wouldn't take much for the Four Seasons to improve the Sabo lounge, add self-serve snacks and an all-day lounge type environment, and hire the best of the best to staff the floor competently and with warmth and character and real Japanese hospitality. As for the rest of the hotel-- it is exquisite. The staff at the front desk was warm and hyper-competent, the bar on the top floor is sleek and offers fantastic views, and breakfast at Jardin was a daily highlight. Our server at Jardin not only recognized us our second morning, but called us each by name and remembered our order. That's the level of Four Seasons service the rest of the hotel offers that is simply missing from Gensui. Though we offered genuinely constructive feedback to management, we were offered a "comped" happy hour at Sabo where we found ourselves the sole people in the silent lounge and wondered why on earth anyone would pay $30 a person for the privilege. I did write a kind and constructive email to management after our stay that went unanswered. At this point, 3 weeks after our checkout with not a word from the hotel, I feel that I can only be honest at this point and post this review for others to see. I have not seen from the hotel any effort at recognizing that the Gensui floor is not yet a fully fleshed out concept, and at no point was there any sort of service recovery or even acknowledgement of our concerns. It's as shame. If I come back to Osaka, I would have said after our stay that without hesitation I would stay at the Four Seasons again on one of the "standard" floors. However, at this point, the hotel doesn't seem interested in client feedback and I think there are other hotels (the Waldorf-Astoria, the Ritz-Carlton) that can compete on equal footing, if not exceed, the FS.