I'm attending my nephew's wedding at Hard Rock Punta Cana. I didn't want to book with their travel agent and booked a room with my own agent for my family (four adults total). My nephew's agent is asking us to pay $800 to her for us to attend the wedding ceremony and reception. Is this a normal practice? ]
Where: Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto, along the Kamo River
Rate: Entry-level rooms from around $500/night; suites roughly double
What we paid: $600/night for a suite
Stay: Suite, with two adults and one child
Disclosure: We paid our own way. This was not a hosted stay.
If a hotel's food and beverage program is the thing that decides your booking, you will love it here. The kitchen has done something genuinely difficult, married Japanese quality standards to French culinary techniques.
If you are traveling with young children, keep reading before you book.
I originally booked a refundable rate, then rebooked about 30 days before check-in when a suite dropped to $600/night. That single move saved us more than $1,000.
Worth knowing: FAUCHON L'Hôtel Kyoto is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, which means it's bookable through Hilton Honors. We paid cash, but points are on the table.
The hotel sits along the Kamo River, the one locals call Kyoto's Seine, and it is an easy walk to Gion. Our favorite ritual of the trip cost nothing: walking along the river at sunset. Kyoto is really beautiful at night.
A bus stop sits directly in front of the hotel with direct routes to Kyoto Station and Kinkaku-ji. Keihan Kiyomizu-Gojo Station is about six minutes on foot, and Hankyu Kyoto-Kawaramachi around ten. We ended up taking a taxi to the train station most days. For three of us, it cost roughly the same as three bus fares.
One piece of advice Google Maps will not give you. The hotel sits between a main road and a smaller tree-lined street running behind it. Maps will route you along the main road every time. Walk the back street instead, especially after dark, when lantern-shaped lamps throw light across the pavement and the whole block turns old-Kyoto. Do use the main road if you are searching for a good, though. The restaurants there are excellent, and there's a wine bar directly across from the hotel I'd send anyone to.
Rooms and suites run small. To calibrate: our suite was the same footprint as an entry-level room at the Andaz Tokyo.
The suite has a generous foyer, which turned out to be useful. Like most Japanese hotels, storage is limited, so our suitcases lived there and most of our clothes never left them. The bathroom, by contrast, is genuinely spacious, well stocked, and comes with a Dyson hair dryer.
Wi-Fi was solid and complimentary, and the separate living area with a proper table meant I could get work done before the day started. It is not an open-plan suite. Two pocket doors close the bedroom off entirely, which sounds ideal until August. With those doors shut, no air circulates into the living space, and it gets hot.
One thing to flag. When I booked for two adults and a child, no one mentioned a fee for the sofa bed. There is one: 9,600 yen per night, roughly $65. I think that's unreasonable for a booking made under a stated occupancy. Our son slept in the bed with us and it was fine, but you should know before you arrive.
My son's favorite feature, incidentally, was the complimentary gourmet bar. A large cabinet just inside the door comes stocked with Japanese sweets, cookie sandwiches, savory snacks, and a couple of house-made pastries and they restock it when you empty it. Drinks are the exception and cost extra, so we'd stop by the lounge in the afternoon and carry a few back.
This is a boutique property, not a full-service one, and it is unapologetic about where its attention goes. There is a spa, but it opens around 11am and we were out the door long before that, so I never got in. I never tried the gym.
This is where the hotel earns its rate.
The property operates under a licensing agreement between FAUCHON Hospitality and a Japanese hotel management company, which makes more sense once you know that Japan accounts for around 40% of FAUCHON's global sales. The brand has been in this market for decades. This is not a French house guessing at Japanese taste.
Breakfast, included with the suite, is the standout. Alongside the croissants, pains au chocolat, and baguette, as flaky and correct as anything I've had in France, you'll find teriyaki chicken and Kyoto rice porridge, the kind of Japanese breakfast staples a global brand would have smoothed away. The milk and yogurt come from a farm here in Kyoto, and both were excellent.
Evening lounge access came with the suite, and we never made it to the rooftop bar as a result. There's no arguing with an aperitif you already have. The lounge puts out small bites and sweets, and that was a great way to wind down after a day of site seeing.
Excellent in the way that Japanese service is reliably excellent: attentive, precise, warm. But I wouldn't call it exceptional. At a boutique property this size, I'd hoped for something anticipatory, the sense of being known by the second morning. It never quite arrived. It was simply good.
I came with my family, and I'll be direct: this is not a family hotel.
There are no connecting rooms, and suites cap at three occupants. If your kids are older, two rooms works. If they're small, look elsewhere. I did not see a single young child during our stay, and the design tells you why. Everything is black and FAUCHON pink, Art Deco and deliberate, and it reads romantic rather than practical. There's no meeting space beyond the lounge tables.
So, couples, absolutely. Solo travelers who care about pastries, yes. Two adults and a teenager, comfortably. A wonderful stay, and the right one for the wrong family. Some hotels tell you clearly who they were built for, and the honest thing is to listen.